Reported by Tsui Ming Hei, Fifi Edited by Kenji
Even the government implemented various cooling measures, adding 15% tax to the owner who own more than one property, advocating double stamp duty against the high price of Hong Kong housing market since 2012, still the average housing price in central and western district of Hong Kong created the new high record, reached $2,3502 per square feats in July this year.
“The price of the new Home Ownership flats (HOS) in July has increased from $1.18 million to $4.68 million, the government will offer the local residents with a 52% discount off from buying HOS. We will also allocate part of the public housing applicants with flats in the next year, February,” Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong said.
Comparing the Hong Kong housing market with the highest price of the residential area in Singapore, according to the global property guide in 2018, which is US$1,258 (around $10,064). The price is still half cheaper than Hong Kong’s housing price. Chu Chung-ling, the fresh graduate from the local university. She has planned to buy a flat in Hong Kong since she was young, because she wants her family to live in a better environment. She is now working as a full time salesperson with $18,000 monthly salary. “I have planned to buy a flat in Hong Kong since I was young, I don’t want to let my family live in the shady old place anymore.” Chu said.
Chu said that it is hard to buy a flat in Hong Kong because the price is ridiculously high and the first installment needs so many long years to pay. She doesn't want her dad to worry about her shelter after he retired.
“The property cooling measure done by the government did help to lower the housing price, but it takes decades to save money for affording a flat.” Chu said. With Chu’s salary, even spends on nothing, still she needs around 223 years to save money for the first installment of an $4 million flat.
Although the government advocated the property cooling measure, buying a flat in Hong Kong is still an unreachable goal to people like Chu. “It doesn’t fit to our standard of spending; our average salary is incomparable when it comes to buying an apartment.” Chu said.
Not only the lower class think the housing market price is too high, but also the middle class found it was a big difficulty to them. “Although I have extra money for saving and financial support from my family, it takes me quite a long time to save enough money for the first installment.” Wong Ho-yan Joyce, a subject director of a direct subsidy scheme(DSS) secondary school.
Wong has been teaching for 10 years in DSS secondary school with a monthly income of $67,000. She planned to buy a flat in Hong Kong where the MTR station is located nearby. “Even though the government is advocating double property cooling measure method to help the local residents, it can’t solve the root of the problem.” Wong mentioned.
Only saving money from the salary would be a long journey to Wong to pay for the first installment, therefore she chose to invest on stock so that she could make some more money. She said that managing stock wisely will have a higher chance to become rich and buy a flat.
“The government housing policy should not be the only focus. Land policy and town planning policy are crucial to have a better urban planning for the citizens in Hong Kong.” Dr. Yung Betty-Lock said, who is the visiting fellow from the City University of Hong Kong. She believes these three criterion play the important roles if the government really want their policy address to benefit the citizens.
According to the policy address in 2017, the government implemented the property cooling measures to help the local residents to buy a flat, such as handling 15% tax who own more than one property, increasing tax to those who own more than 1 property and so on. “Such measure is effective by preventing the house price in Hong Kong from worsening compare to the previous situation.” Dr. Yung said.
Some buyers have their tricks to minimise the tax payment under the current regulation. “Some smart buyers can buy flats by using their companies’ name as legal buyers and change the legal owner names to their name afterwards.” Dr. Yung said.
“Most of the fresh graduates can hardly afford the housing price in Hong Kong. They don’t have any financial support from their family. Middle class also have the same problem but they don’t need that much of time comparing to fresh graduates.” Dr. Yung said.
In the society, there are protest for reclamation and relocating the country parks to build more flats in order to tackle the housing problem. “If there are too many flats, it leads to a decrease of the housing price.” Dr. Yung said.
While, the decrease of housing price may lead to some other social and economical problem.
Dr. Yung thinks the government has done a lot of property cooling measures over the decades. Although they aren’t super effective, the situation may get worse without the government. “If the housing price, median household income and the inflation is similar, then this would be the best condition for people to buy flats. Therefore, government should try to make these three criterion to possess the similar proportion.” Dr. Yung said.
#housingproblem#policyaddress2018#HongKong
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