HONG KONG — Something strange happened recently in the Hong Kong property market.

On New Year’s Eve, a buyer put down a five percent deposit for the purchase of a three-story, $92.5 million luxury house perched high up on the hills of Hong Kong Island.

With a garden and a pool, the house offers sweeping views of the city below and the harbor beyond.

A month later, the buyer backed out of the purchase, losing the $4.6 million deposit.

It is unclear what caused the whopping default. The unidentified buyer may have had financing problems. Or the buyer might have decided it was a bad bet.

But a default of this scale is “very, very rare,” said Nicole Wong, the regional head of property research at CLSA, an investment and brokerage group.