A joint survey conducted by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and Macdonald & Company shows that average salary of property professionals in Asia Pacific fell 20 percent to $65,267 a year in 2008 from $82,636 in the previous year due to the financial turmoil.

The survey interviewed 1,090 professionals across the region between September and October.

RICS also predicted that Hong Kong surveying sector will see a less-than-one-percent layoff and salary freeze next year amid the economic downturn.

It attributed the drop in average salary to the challenging operating environment in the financial services and investment/development sectors since 2007.

Among the peers, professionals from Singapore have the highest pay in the region, where the mainland professionals reported the maximum salary hike with a 16.2 percent increase as against 9.5 percent in 2007.

Financial services professionals faced the biggest downslide in average salary sector-wise, dropping from $127,300 per annum in 2007 to $73,200 this year.

Average salaries of investment/development professionals declined from $98,100 to $71,700 during the period, and from $70,600 to $60,400 for surveying professionals.

As for Hong Kong, professionals' average salary dropped from $75,500 in 2007 to $64,900 this year. RICS Managing Director David Tse said the shrinking average income was because a large proportion of respondents in this year's survey are junior employees. This dragged the average income down significantly.

Tse said that property agencies were the hardest hit amid the financial turmoil.

He said that Hong Kong surveyors might face salary freeze over the next 12 months, or their salary adjustments will be linked to their performances.

"Some local surveying firms could make redundancies next year with the worsening economy," he said." But the size of the lay-off will be less than 1 percent of the total workforce in the market," he said.

Some RICS-chartered surveyors might look for new jobs in emerging markets such as Malaysia and India, he noted.

Talking about the market outlook, he said that local surveyors still have a competitive edge, noting the imminent 10-project infrastructure plan in Hong Kong will trigger demand for surveyors.

Separately, only 26 percent property professional respondents to the survey anticipated an economic improvement in their specialized areas over the next 12 months, compared with 57 percent in 2007.

Fewer than 20 percent of the respondents from Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore expected a change for the better amid economic gloom.

(HK Edition 11/21/2008 page2)