Public Eye | Message from developers is clear: more profits

What we saw a day after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's policy speech was the sickening face of unrestrained greed. Property developers and home-sellers gleefully rubbed their hands as Leung's speech landed with a hollow thud, empty of the cooling measures they had feared. Home-sellers jacked up prices immediately. The greedier ones took their flats off the market. As for our tycoon developers, Public Eye has repeatedly said their greed knows no boundaries. Leung's speech had a clear message - he wants to make homes affordable for Hongkongers. But the message from the developers was equally clear - stuff affordable homes, we want to squeeze every cent from the people. These same developers always portray themselves as saints. They finance a few schools or hospitals with their names emblazoned across the buildings to boast their charitable work. And they insist they have Hong Kong's interest at heart. How can it be in Hong Kong's interest if they sabotage government efforts by jacking up home prices? By doing that they are forcing yet more Hongkongers into squalid subdivided flats. Public Eye has often wondered how these tycoons sleep at night. They are no saints, they're vultures.

Every time the government tries to cool the market our property developers angrily cry foul - denouncing it as interfering with the free market. What free market? A handful of tycoons control our property market. That's more a monopoly than a free market. The vultures are crying foul again. All it took this time was a vague warning from C.Y. Leung of a tax on vacant flats if developers hoarded them to force up prices. Reports say there are thousands of vacant flats even though the vacancy rate is a normal 4 per cent. But in Hong Kong's preposterously absurd market, every flat helps. We can't afford thousands of vacant ones. There is now talk that developers won't build if there is a vacancy tax or further cooling measures. Let's call their bluff. If they won't build, the government or the smaller developers who have been shut out of the market can. But we bet the vultures won't stop building. There are too many billions to be made. How else can they stay on the rich list? So let's impose a tax now on flats left vacant by developers and other property owners. And let's impose a tax on land left idle. The money raised can go towards rehousing families in caged homes and subdivided flats.