HK to continue to boost housing supply: HK chief executive

Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said on Wednesday that the government will continue to boost housing supply and will not relax demand-side management measures or reduce land supply.

Delivering his annual policy address at the Legislative Council, Leung said housing is still the most important livelihood issue to address in Hong Kong, with exorbitant property prices, high rentals, small living spaces, the proliferation of subdivided flats and record high Public Rental Housing (PRH) applications.

Leung said the Housing Authority and the Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) will, over the next five years, produce about 97,100 public housing units, of which about 76, 700 will be PRH units and about 20,400 will be subsidized sale flats. This latest production forecast is higher than similar forecasts starting from 2013-14 and 2014-15.

The Housing Authority and HKHS will put up a total of about 3,700 flats for pre-sale this year. Another batch of about 2,600 flats in total will be put up for pre-sale in 2017.

On private housing, projected supply from the first-hand residential property market for the coming three to four years is approximately 87,000 units, a record high since the first release in September 2004 of the quarterly statistics on supply.

Leung said the government is determined to identify more sites, and will consider slightly expanding the area of certain sites to generate an additional supply of about 17,000 units, 90 percent of which will be public housing units.

In 2015-16, 16 residential sites were sold or will be put up for sale, with a production capacity of about 20,300 flats. Endit