Time for bold new housing measures
Updated: 2012-10-31 06:07
By Hong Liang(HK Edition)
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By now, many of us have already arrived at the conclusion that the government's latest move to curb escalating property prices in Hong Kong is not going to produce any significant result.
As many economists and market analysts have noted, property prices here are driven by the negative real interest rate, which is imposed on the government by the pegged exchange rate regime. For that reason, raising the cost of quick property turnovers to discourage speculative trading is not expected to have much of a price dampening effect.
Much of the blame for the apparent overheating property market has been directed to buyers from outside Hong Kong, particularly from the mainland. But together mainland buyers accounted for less than 7 percent of all transactions and their purchases were focused on the upper-end of the market, where prices are beyond the reach of most Hong Kong people, anyway. These overseas buyers, who are scouting markets around the world to park their personal wealth, are likely to be more concerned about expected asset appreciation than a tax hike.
To be sure, the government's latest action does no harm to the vast majority of Hong Kong people. Whatever effects it may have on slowing the surge in property prices are welcomed. What's more, the higher taxes can bring additional income to the public coffers without adding any burden to the vast majority of people in Hong Kong. But we expect the government to take more effective action to address the housing problem, that has been a major concern to the many frustrated middle-class families who are losing hope of owning their own homes.
High property prices are nothing new to Hong Kong people. But never before have they caused such seething and widespread public discontent as they do now.
Many people are seeing unaffordable housing as a manifestation of the widening wealth gap, resulting from an unbalanced economy that is threatening to destroy the middle-class and snuff out social mobility. With wealth concentrated in the hands of the top one percent of the population, the economy that is driven mainly by the capital-intensive property and financial sectors offers little opportunity for the less-well-to-do majority to move up the social scale.
As the biggest landlord in Hong Kong, the government has focused on addressing the housing problem first by a proposal to increase the supply of affordable apartments for sale to qualified home buyers at subsidized prices. It will take years before the benefit of this proposal can be felt by the public.
Meanwhile, the effect of the latest move announced last Friday on property prices is widely expected to be too small to make a difference to prospective home buyers, many of whom are finding it hard to put up the 30 percent deposit for a mortgage loan for an average apartment costing HK$5 million upward.
None of these measures came close to addressing the core economic and social issues that are the root of mounting public discontent. We have been waiting too long for the government to produce a plan that can convince us that it has the wisdom and courage to set a new direction and lead us into a bold era of development. We hope to see the government taking the initiative in nurturing and promoting industries that can provide good jobs to people with the right skills. But instead, we are seeing the government doing more of the same.
It seems sad that the government is still holding tight to old dogmas and stale ideas, while many young people in Hong Kong are questioning the validity of the free-market principle, which is not seen to have brought them any real benefit. On the contrary, the free market is seen to be a stumbling block against social mobility, which was taken for granted by their forebears. High property prices in the past didn't cause as much despair as they do now, because people had hope then. The government must try to restore that hope.
The author is a current affairs commentator.
(HK Edition 10/31/2012 page3)