Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah yesterday signalled the government is prepared to unwind steps to cool down the property market if prices continue falling. The euro-zone debt crisis and global slowdown have unnerved investors.
Tsang said housing prices were 'slowly coming down'. The trend 'will continue for a bit and hopefully we will be able to achieve a soft landing', he told Bloomberg in South Africa. 'When the environment trends downwards, we will surely take countercyclical measures.'
The city's biggest developer, Sun Hung Kai Properties, which yesterday raised its target for home sales in the year to June, called for an end to the cooling measures. 'Speculators have been eliminated by the curbs, and end-users now dominate our property sales,' it said.
Tsang was coy about the timing of the government's easing of market curbs. 'Timing is a judgment call that I will have to make nearer the time,' he said.
The comments drew a swift reaction. Lee Wing-tat, the chairman of the Legislative Council's panel on housing, said the latest cooling measures had only been in place for four months and it would be premature to lift them now. A government official later said Tsang's comments referred to tighter limits on loan-to-value ratios for mortgages imposed last year.
Earlier in the day, housing secretary Eva Cheng said the government might review earlier than scheduled special stamp duties imposed last year. They were meant to last two years. Later, a spokesman said Cheng was only restating the government's existing position.