Promotional green home furnishings can only treat the symptoms but not the root cause

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced on Thursday (30th) several measures to promote home ownership. One of them is to allow people who have been waiting for public housing for more than a year to purchase green homes at the end of the period.

This measure ostensibly aims to make good use of housing resources, but it does not address the unsalable cause of small units, let alone review the entire green housing policy.

The main target of the current green home ownership is the existing public housing tenants. The original intention is to give the current public housing residents a lower cost to buy a home. The government's home ownership ladder is between public housing and home ownership, and at the same time, the circulation of public housing is encouraged, especially For the wealthy public housing tenants.

However, nearly 500 units of Die Cuiyuan and Qingfuyuan green homes are still unsalable after a round of sales due to their small size.

Lam Cheng pointed out that the new measures will allow applicants to purchase green housing units directly after winning the lottery, eliminating the need to wait for public housing.

This approach can reduce the number of vacant flats. The original intention is understandable. However, it will also create various policy contradictions for those who have been waiting for public housing for more than a year to apply for green homes.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said that next year’s key tasks will speed up the construction of houses and help the public to buy homes, and put forward a pilot plan to open the “green home” cargo units sold in this phase to those who have applied for public housing for more than one year. .

(Photo by Yu Junliang)

Suspicious affordability failed to address the fundamentals of slow sales

First of all, even if mini green homes are cheap, residents always have to pay the down payment and monthly repayment, and "getting on the car" at the grassroots level may not be in line with their well-being.

The mortgage qualifications for green homes are more relaxed than those for HOS and private housing. They do not need to undergo a stress test, nor do they require mortgage insurance premiums. It also means that banks only rely on buyers to report their household income levels.

Under this circumstance, it is difficult to keep the applicant overestimating the ability to repay the loan in the future.

Therefore, those on the waiting list for public housing must especially consider their personal and family financial conditions. It is not advisable to apply when the property prices are cheap. Banks are also responsible for assessing the financial conditions of the applicants.

Tsing Fu Court is located on Tsing Yi Road. There are 2,868 units divided into Block A and Block B. The unit area is 187 to 471 square feet, and the price ranges from 810,000 to 2.72 million.

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Housing is more important than home ownership

Lam Cheng called the new measures a pilot plan, but the pilot plan has a good chance of becoming a permanent plan, because the green homes are selected from public rental housing under construction. As long as the government continues to produce small units and the units continue to be unfavorable by public housing residents , The tail unit will inevitably appear.

This phenomenon also reflects the resistance of the public to the Nano Tower.

More fundamentally, the problem with Green Homes is not just the unsalable inventory.

Since the implementation of the plan in 2015, there have been endless criticisms, including the looting of public rental housing units in the urban area, increasing housing inequality; reducing the supply of public rental housing that can be allocated in the long-term; strengthening the leading thinking of home ownership, etc.

Even if Lam Cheng announced on the same day to extend the period of prohibition on the sale of Green Homes in the secondary market and outflow from the free market, it has not been completely separated from the private market and has not been able to get rid of the influence of the trend of private housing.

Units that are too small and slow to sell are just one of the bitter consequences of the wrong policy.

Of course, the green home furnishing units have to be resolved, but the government should not invest in arbitrary ways.

More importantly, the most urgent need of the public is not to buy a home but to settle down. The government must comprehensively review the concept of the home ownership ladder. The first task is to build public housing and improve the area and quality of public housing.

The government announced for the first time that it has set a minimum residential area for a piece of private residential land. In fact, no matter what class you are in, it is worth living in a larger area.

To curb speculation in HOS flats, we cannot rely solely on the ban on the sale of extended subsidized housing, we must strictly adhere to the principle of "live only, not speculate". Although the size limit is desirable, it is not enough for the public to live in peace and to build more houses.