Hong Kong housing director pours cold water on fears over health of subsidised homes market, despite rash of cancellations with lost deposits
- Housing director Rosanna Law says she is ‘not very worried’ and highlights number of people ‘waiting in line’ for public flats
- She adds ‘demand is still there’, despite people pulling out of deals and forfeiting deposits
Rosanna Law Shuk-pui said on Sunday she was not worried about a lack of demand for subsidised flats and added there was still interest in the government’s Home Ownership Scheme.
“When property prices face downward pressure, it is true that buyers will have different considerations,” Law said in a television interview. “Even if there are people forfeiting their deposits [on subsidised housing], I believe the demand is still there.
“Since we have so many people in line waiting to buy a public flat, I am not very worried.”
According to media reports, six buyers at Kai Chuen Court in Kai Tak forfeited their deposits after finance minister Paul Chan Mo-po scrapped property cooling measures in February’s budget.
The six were among the 132 buyers at Kai Chuen Court who had pulled out of purchases and given up their deposits by early March, despite an overwhelming response when homes on the estate were put on the market at the end of 2021.
Chan’s measures included an end to three types of stamp duty – one levied on buyers and designed to target non-permanent residents, one paid by second-time purchasers and a special tax aimed at homeowners who resold their property within two years.
Two of the people who lost their deposits were buyers of nano flats as small as 184 sq ft and three had put money down on studios of between 274 and 287 sq ft.
But Law said it was too early to tell whether sales had weakened.
“We have sold 57 per cent of the flats as of Saturday, compared with the 54 per cent from the same period in the 2022 round, so we are actually performing better than last year,” she said.
Kai Tak a hit with buyers at Hong Kong sale of about 9,000 subsidised flats
“It is too early to say if there are flats that will not sell. We still have many people who eagerly want them.”
Housing authorities earlier announced a new round of crackdowns on tenants who break the rules governing public rental flats.
They said last Friday they would send out asset declaration forms to more than 250,000 tenants from Tuesday.
Law said authorities would look into the ownership of expensive cars as one of the strands in their investigations.
She added that the task force included former members of the disciplined services who would carry out investigations “like a criminal case”.
Fewer Hongkongers applying to buy subsidised flats ‘could be positive sign’
“We have stepped up our inspection of public housing car parks, especially if there are expensive cars in the newer estates, or cars that have both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong licence plates,” Law said.
“We will check the ownership, how long they have owned it and whether it is a second-hand car.”
She added that authorities might also consider bounties of HK$3,000 (US$383) for people who reported others later found to have breached public rental housing rules.
“If we can take back flats using small amounts of rewards, this is a worthy business,” she said.
Authorities sent out forms to the first group of more than 88,000 households last October, which asked them to declare they occupied their flats and did not own any other property in the city.
Law said they found that 190 tenants owned other properties in the first round and she predicted more abuses would surface in the next cycle of checks.
The government stepped up enforcement against well-off public housing tenants last October after Kwong Kau, 66, the former father-in-law of murdered model Abby Choi Tin-fung, was found to have owned a luxury home while also buying a subsidised flat.
