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Letters | Just cap Hong Kong housing prices: it’s the only way to cool the market
- Inducement measures, such as the taxes that both Hong Kong and Canada have put in place, are not enough. Only positive control measures, such as capping the selling price, will do
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I refer to Albert Cheng King-hon’s “Follow Canada model to rein in property prices” (May 3).
The Canadian measures Mr Cheng cites are but inducement measures, like Hong Kong’s – the difference being that the former are based on “sale valuation” whereas the latter are based on “rent valuation” of the property.
The developers can easily circumvent the Canadian measures by factoring them in with the selling price, which the market (buyers) will happily continue to bear, as they have done in both Canada and Hong Kong.
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What we need are positive control measures, such as capping the selling price at cost price plus a reasonable percentage. Housing being one of the essentials of livelihood, as public transport and electricity are, there is no reason why it is not subjected to positive control.
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Of course this will substantially diminish the huge tax revenue collected by the government (“City rakes in a record HK$341.4 billion in tax revenue”, May 3), but it has to be done – because property prices have gone way out of hand. The government owes it to the public to set a minimum standard of housing and make it affordable.
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