The big question for Generation Y: How can we buy a home?
A third of young Hongkongers say their dream is to own a home, but that will be far from easy
Buying a home seems to be the biggest dream of young Hongkongers.
A recent survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong at the behest of financial services company MassMutual interviewed 500 young people born in the 1980s and 1990s - known colloquially as Generation Y.
A third said their biggest ambition was to own their own home, while just less than one in five said they dreamed of owning a business or landing a dream job and one in eight said their main wish was to have more money. Only one in nine young people said their dream was to travel around the world.
The home ownership ambition will be a difficult one for young people to achieve, however. My friend lives with her parents in a public housing estate. Buying a flat in a private housing estate has been a dream of hers for many years.
Finding alternative accommodation could also become a matter of necessity. "Only my parents are eligible to live in this public housing flat," she said. "If they pass away, I can't live in the flat any more."
My friend studied hard and went to university, but she did not earn very much in the first few years after she graduated.
However, having gained more experience, she now earns nearly HK$30,000 a month, enough to be classified as middle class, based on the definition used by Chinese University's sociology department.