The Hong Kong SAR government's recent acts to dampen rapidly escalating property prices are most likely to be fruitless.
This is because the measures introduced do not solve the fundamental problem of increasing the supply of housing units demanded by average Hong Kong wage earners.
Even if the government increases many-fold the supply of residential sites, there is no guarantee that the small number of large developers will build the kind of units that most Hong Kong residents can afford.
Developers can always build luxurious units, large or small, and then release them onto the market whenever they wish. They can still ask very high prices for apartments in their developments. As long as there are foreign buyers entering the market and property speculators, it is difficult to see how property prices can come down.
Most governments in the world intervene in some way with housing policies, especially when the free market creates an imbalance.
Many administrations in western Europe and North America have constructed subsidised housing for rental or sale to their citizens.