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HONG KONG (CHINESE NETWORK / ASIA NEWS) – Last month, news of the world's most expensive parking lot attracted media attention
A couple sold a single parking spot in Kowloon for HK $ 6 million ($ 1.04 million) The previous record was set last June when a Hong Kong island was sold for HK $ 5.88 million.
As we can see, Hong Kong has big problems with the prices of real estate; they have never been higher and since 2003 have increased almost without a break.
According to the Centa-City index, real estate prices rose nearly 300 percent from 2003 to this year.
The large increase has many explanations – the increase in population, the lack of building land, the weakness of government policies on land premiums, the restrictions imposed by users on leases and landlords. planning controls. Others include land grabbing by developers, tropical parks, extremely low interest rates, the lack of attractive alternative investments, huge sums of money Chinese and foreign money and a Hong Kong dollar undervalued among others. owning one's own home has become an impossible dream.
The housing shortage has caused not only subsistence problems, but also political conflicts and social unrest.
Nevertheless, most of the problems mentioned are very complex and often interdependent. All proposed solutions would not please a particular sector of the community
In this article, I will focus on one cause – land grabbing by developers.
A study by the Department of Real Estate and Construction of the University of Hong Kong, published in January 2016, revealed that between 1990 and 2014, only about 45% of residential projects proposed as part of the Global Development Zone (ZCD)
This is only when the majority in Hong Kong understands what is in the long-term best interest of the community, and that any solution requires compromise, can we hope that an average citizen can finally afford a
Delays in the development process of CDA projects have kept about half of the private residential units originally planned for the Outside the market.
The team identified 355 projects submitted for ADC zoning starting in January. 1, 1990 to October 31, 2014.
Of these, 146 had some form of domestic use building.
The remainder was used for commercial or other purposes, including open storage.
Of the residential projects, only 65 were ready for occupancy by October 2014.
Given the limited land resources, this situation is worrying.
The study considers that the true reasons for the long process of development are not certain.
However, I do not It is too bold to say that in some cases, developers accumulate land or delay their development in the hope that their value will appreciate significantly in a few years.
This hypothesis has not proven until now that we have seen how prices have skyrocketed since 2003.
It is legitimate for proponents to act in this way because everything in the world is not the same. they want, it's making a profit, but at the same time there is a bigger good at stake – the right to housing Hong Kongers. The same issue has been successfully addressed in Singapore where, to prevent land hoarding, promoters with non-Singaporean shareholders have set a fixed deadline for completing their projects and selling all their units: Promoters must complete and sell all apartments within five years. years of contract award or a penalty of at least 10 percent of the cost of the land.
This would require developers to consider a reasonable price without relying on the hoarding of this land waiting for a better price, sometimes It is an effective way to stop the Hoarding and stabilizing real estate prices by putting pressure on the developers for them to sell as quickly as possible.
The Hong Kong government, aware of this problem, has approached the introduction of a new housing tax to release the 9,000 vacant homes estimated by developers, but this approach is not the most appropriate: deadlines for vacancy rates should be preferred because, even if both mechanisms are valid, the selling time, as they did in Singapore, is much more likely to achieve the desired result.
This method is more suitable in Hong Kong because hoarding can disrupt the functioning of the free market mechanism.
There is no single magic solution to all Hong Kong property matters at one time, and a multi-pronged approach is needed.
At the heart of all this lies a serious mismatch between the land supply and the willingness of the developers to build they already own and sell these housing units as soon as they are built, including the huge stock of vacant dwellings already in their unsold inventory.
None of the proposed solutions up to here have won the approval of the community so the government should determine what is best for the majority and has the political courage to deal with it. Sectoral opposition and to go forward.
In this article, I suggested that the government sets a sell-by date for developers.
In many cases, such as the opposition to the development of brown sites or the total rejection by the environmental groups of any new land development, the environmental groups are those who block all possible solutions. 19659002] They fail to see the whole picture with their well – intentioned but narrow – minded stance.
Only when the majority in Hong Kong understands what is in common The greatest long-term interest, and that any solution requires compromise, can we hope that an average citizen will eventually be able to afford an apartment decent to live and raise a family.
The author has written a number of articles on Hong Kong public housing, the law on urban planning and land policy. China Daily is a member of media partner The Straits Times Asia News Network, an alliance of 23 news media entities.
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