CE: Housing market tightening measures working
The government’s property market cooling measures have started to influence the city’s overheated home market, Chief Executive Leung Chunying said on Friday.
He was speaking at a media luncheon organized by construction and surveying industry organizations. Leung said the cooling measures had curbed short-term speculative and long-term overseas and domestic investment demand for Hong Kong properties.
“In the fourth quarter last year, short-term private home transactions accounted for 0.4 percent of the total transaction number. Home transactions by non-Hong Kong residents and corporations accounted for 2.1 percent of total transactions in the same period, signifying speculative demand and foreign demand for local homes have been curtailed,” Leung noted.
“Regarding home transactions involving Hong Kong residents in January, 95 percent of them are first-time homebuyers, illustrating many overseas home investors have exited the Hong Kong property market,” Leung added.
Since Leung took office in 2012, the government has levied a spate of stamp duties payments to dampen excessive investment demand for local properties. The latest measures included increasing stamp duty on property transactions for non-first-time buyers to 15 percent last November.
Besides curbing demand, enhancing residential land site supply is another way to rein in soaring home prices in Hong Kong.
The government will put up 28 residential sites, including 20 new sites, in the 2017-18 land sale program. These are capable of providing 18,910 units. Taking into account railway property development projects, the Urban Renewal Authority’s projects as well as private redevelopment and development projects, poten- tial residential flat supply will be around 31,620 units in the coming financial year.
In the first quarter of the coming financial year (April to June), approximately 8,000 units will be available.
“The number of residential land sales conducted by the current-term government in the last five years is 2.5 times higher than the last-term government in the period between 2007 and 2012,” Leung said.