Just Saying | Hopeless in Hong Kong: why the sordid state of housing can never be fixed in Asia’s world city
- Yonden Lhatoo struggles to understand how the government can officially admit that property prices are out of control, but its priority is the extradition bill and a completely unnecessary political crisis of its own making
Let us all lift our eyes up to the ivory towers within which our government is ensconced and give thanks to it for finally and effectively acknowledging what we the people knew already – Hong Kong’s housing situation has gone to hell.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Home prices in the world’s most expensive housing market have skyrocketed 126 per cent over the past 22 years, surpassing the obscene heights we last saw in 1997. That was just before the bubble burst, courtesy of the Asian financial crisis, which taught us a few lessons about greed that have long since been forgotten.
“Property prices are still mostly out of reach for Hongkongers,” Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po admitted recently.
Thank you, Captain Obvious, but let’s give him credit for officially putting it on the record now.