Hong Kong’s property prices are high, the younger generation has no hope of buying a home, and there has been a lot of grievances in the society
Some people regard this as a deep contradiction leading to recent social unrest; even Beijing’s official media also use real estate hegemony to blame the real estate developers. I think this is not fair. In a capitalist society, the vocation of a businessman is profitable. Not only real estate developers, but also other industries. A businessman who does not manage to make a profit as much as possible cannot compete with a businessman who earns more than him. The merchants who survived the mall are all highly profitable businessmen.
The capitalist society does not worry about the profit-seeking of businessmen, because if a businessman wants to make a profit, he must be able to provide consumers with more cheap goods and services. Competition in the business world will naturally benefit consumers.
After the end of World War II, Hong Kong’s population has expanded rapidly
Hong Kong can quickly rebuild on the ruins. It relies mainly on real estate developers. If the government has to wait for the government to solve the problem, it will be much slower and much worse. Most of the houses currently occupied by Hong Kong people are provided by private developers. It is a pity that there has been a trend of thought in the society recently, blaming the problems that arise in society on the profit-seeking of businessmen. It advocates reducing the need to use business models to solve the needs of society, so as not to give businessmen profit.
If Hong Kong really takes the route of merchants’ participation in the future, Hong Kong’s housing problem will only be more difficult to solve because there is no cure for it at all. The main reason for the high property prices in Hong Kong is the insufficient supply of land. If there is a large supply of land, real estate developers will fight the speed of building houses and the price/performance ratio of products. By then, Hong Kong people will not have to worry about the lack of flat supply.
The official media criticized the real estate developers for hoarding land, and they did not understand the reality of Hong Kong
The land available for development in Hong Kong basically has a time limit for completion of development, and the land can be confiscated by the government. At present, there are so many undeveloped land in the hands of developers because most of these land are planned for farming purposes. Developers who want to build flats are not allowed. Therefore, the phenomenon of developer squatting is caused by improper government planning and should not be borne solely to developers.
Since the 1970s, agriculture has been declining in Hong Kong. However, the government prefers to let a large number of agricultural land be abandoned, and does not take the initiative to re-plan these land to meet the needs of population growth and economic development.
Why did the government choose to do this? Some people suspect that this will suddenly increase the supply of land available for construction, which will have a serious impact on property prices (the total amount of farmland is greater than the total amount of residential land), which will not only have a negative impact on the revenue of the warehouse, but also Will affect the financial system, leading to deflation and suffering all Hong Kong people.
Therefore, I am not in favor of turning all agricultural land into a developmental use at one time. However, in today’s high property prices, the Government has no reason not to speed up the work of land re-planning to rapidly increase the supply of development land.
In fact, as long as the Planning Department is willing to allocate some of the development land for the New Territories for urban development, it can greatly increase the floor area ratio of the land. It can also increase the area of the building without any reclamation, so that the supply of housing can be increased rapidly. There are many other things that can be done by the government. There is no detailed explanation here. What I mainly want to say is that the responsibility for insufficient housing supply should be borne by the government. There is no reason to push the responsibility to the real estate developers.