Victor Li Tzar-kuoi’s denial this week that his family home was being sold has stirred public curiosity about the address that has been the residence of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families and property developers for more than six decades.

Located at 79 Deep Water Bay Road in the Southern district of Hong Kong Island, the mansion features three stories that sit atop an elevated podium with a swimming pool and a lawn to one side.

The original building was bought in 1963 for HK$650,000 by Chong Yuet-ming, the late wife of tycoon Li Ka-shing. The building was previously registered to Thomas Le Cheuk-kuen, a local accountant who was the president of the Society of Chinese Accountants and Auditors of Hong Kong, according to Land Registry records.

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The Li family has lived at the same address ever since. They raised both their sons, Victor and Richard Li Tzar-kai, there. Victor and his wife, Cynthia Wong, and their children still live there with their father, who turned 97 last month.

After Chong died in 1990, the deed of the property was transferred to Victor Li in 1991 as the administrator, and then registered under Li Ka-shing’s name by assent in 1994.

During the 1990s, the property did not appear to feature a swimming pool, according to the South China Morning Post’s photographs from the time. The family extended and renovated the home in late 2010.

According to the government’s approval of the extension application, the building had 8,842 sq ft of gross floor area (GFA), along with over 9,165 sq ft of exempted floor area, yielding an exemption ratio of 1.03 times.

A source close to the matter explained at the time that the largest portion of the exempted area – over 6,018 sq ft, or 68 per cent of the total – was attributed to a car park and loading zone for the home. Additionally, facilities outside these areas, such as the machine rooms, accounted for more than 1,100 sq ft of the property. These areas can be disregarded from the calculation of the GFA under Hong Kong’s Buildings Ordinance.

The government also leased a vacant site next to the building for the family to build a 10,000 sq ft garden. Li paid a land premium of HK$54 million for the reconstruction of the house.

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Renovations were finished in 2013, complete with sophisticated security. The property had reported two break-ins over the decades. In 2015, an attempted burglary by an unemployed mainlander was thwarted by police. In December 1993, a robber was overpowered by three of the family’s staff when he broke into the home at 3am, according to the Post’s report at the time.

The annual rental value of the Li mansion was assessed at over HK$9.27 million ($1.52 million) in March by the Rating and Valuation Department, an increase of 2.7% from a year earlier, as Hong Kong’s luxury home rents continued to rally. The valuation, which assumes the property was vacant on the open market, provides the basis for calculating Hong Kong’s property rates.

Deep Water Bay in Hong Kong is renowned for being a prestigious residential area, particularly known for its high concentration of wealthy individuals and their properties, such as the Sun Hung Kai Properties’ Kwok brothers and their families.

In June, Chuang’s Consortium International sold a four-storey house at No. 37 Island Road, Deep Water Bay, for HK$538 million, or HK$101,952 per square foot.

To be sure, the Li family home is neither the most ostentatious nor the biggest among Hong Kong’s wealthiest tycoons. That crown belongs to the home of Henderson Land Development’s late founder Lee Shau-kee, which sits on an elevated podium between two bungalows owned by his two sons at 35 Barker Road. It was assessed at HK$25.6 million in annual rental value, according to the valuation data released in March.

For more than a week, the Li family home had been the subject of rumours on social media. Blogs of the property’s listing circulated online under the logo of one of Hong Kong’s largest real estate agencies, with headlines that claimed the elder Li was selling the last of his assets in Hong Kong.

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The purported listing was a hoax, said Louis Chan Wing-kit, chief executive of Centaline Property Agency’s residential division, whose logo was featured in the blog posts.

“It was forged and completely fake,” Chan said in a statement to the Post. “We have already reported the fraudulent website to the police and taken legal steps.”

CK Asset Holdings, on behalf of its chairman Victor Li, issued a rebuttal to the rumours on social media. “The reports and posts on certain websites and social media platforms regarding the sale of 79 Deep Water Bay Road are entirely fabricated, speculative, and lack any factual basis,” CK Asset said in a statement on Aug 4.