Hong Kong Housing Authority may set quota for single buyers of subsidised homes
Housing Authority considers the move after a huge number of unmarried people applied to buy subsidised Home Ownership Scheme units
The Housing Authority will consider setting aside a proportion of future Home Ownership Scheme flats for single people wishing to buy subsidised homes, after it emerged that they accounted for nearly 60 per cent of applicants vying for the latest batch of units put up for sale.
Ballots were drawn on Thursday for the 135,000 applicants competing for 2,160 flats - the highest response rate since the scheme was introduced in 1977. The number was corrected from the figure of 128,900 announced two months ago. A spokesman for the authority explained that staff had missed some applications when they made an initial count.
The lucky ones will be able to choose flats priced between HK$1.87 million and HK$3.26 million - equivalent to 70 per cent of the market rate - from one of the five estates under construction in Sha Tin, Yuen Long, Tsuen Wan and Tsing Yi.
Giving a breakdown of the application statistics, Stanley Wong Yuen-fai, chairman of the authority's subsidised housing committee, said 79,100 applications (58 per cent of the total) were submitted by single people, who are given lower priority under existing HOS rules.
Because the 55,900 family applicants outnumbered the flats available, single people will have virtually no chance of being allocated a unit.
The 11,500 green form applicants - those living in public rental housing and who must vacate their existing homes once they buy an HOS flat - are competing for 1,296 units. Among them only 2,700, or 23 per cent, are single people.