Hong Kong keeps third-quarter land supply steady as focus shifts to Carrie Lam’s October 6 plan to ease city’s housing shortage

Hong Kong’s government will keep its fiscal third-quarter land sale plan the same as three months earlier, as it focuses the spotlight on the final policy address by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on October 6, when she is due to deliver a widely expected blueprint to boost land supply and alleviate the city’s housing shortage.

The government, which typically releases land from its reserves for developers to build homes, plans to sell a residential plot in Tai Po, and a parcel on South Bay Road in Repulse Bay, enough to build about 210 flats during the three months starting in October, keeping the programme unchanged from the last quarter, according to the Secretary for Development Michael Wong.

“Looking ahead, the government will continue to increase land supply through a multipronged approach to meet the housing, economic and social development needs of our community,” Wong said during a briefing on Wednesday.

Lam’s final address will set out the policy priorities of her final year as the chief executive overseeing the world’s least affordable major urban centre, a dubious honour held for more than a decade according to various surveys.

Hong Kong’s housing supply is augmented by developers, who build private housing for buyers with the budget and preference. The city’s total land supply for housing could beat a government target by 30 per cent to top 17,000 units in the financial year ending in March 2022, Wong said. In this year’s first three fiscal quarters, total supply surpassed the target by 10 per cent to top 14,430 homes.

The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and private developers are ­expected to provide a total of 7,110 flats in the three months from October. Some 750 flats in To Kwa Wan will be supplied by the URA and 6,150 by private developers.