Hong Kong’s chief executive chimes in with concerns over housing affordability as dovish interest rates rekindle prices
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Hong Kong’s head of government has chimed in with a growing chorus of concerns about the city’s housing affordability, as dovish monetary policy has rekindled a cooling property market.
“It does worry [me] because housing prices have already become very unaffordable, and they will become even more unaffordable if the reverse that we have seen since January this year is going to continue in the foreseeable future,” said the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on the sidelines of the Bloomberg Invest Asia 2019 conference in Hong Kong on Thursday.
Lam, who increased land supply for public housing and delinked the pricing of subsidised housing for sale and private residences, said a failure to effectively handle Hong Kong’s housing problem would undermine her achievements as the city’s leader.
In a reference to the Lantau Tomorrow Vision plan – revealed by Lam in a Policy Address in October and concerning the creation of islands spanning 1,000 hectares near Lantau Island – she said the current situation could add to society’s “sense of urgency and crisis” when it came to reclaiming more land from the sea.
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“The shortages of housing … [and] land are already undeniable facts that everybody can see,” she said.