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Executive Summaryxecutive Summary
E

A housing supply cliff in Hong Kong has now arrived at our doorstep. The city’s landbank is depleting, while creating land is
becoming harder. Both private and public housing supplies have plunged with no signs of rebound. We are deeply concerned
about the present housing crisis, which has continued to manifest itself and escalate, following a year of almost fruitless
efforts in land development by the Government.

The Government might have also given Hong Kong people the false hope that public housing supply could be boosted
with a cut in private supply target. The development of private housing has indeed been hampered by the administrative
red tape. Yet the rate of public housing supply remains slow due to the diminutive progress that the Government has made.
Some rezoned land sites, for instance, had been delayed for a long time as they faced constraints from various cumbersome
government procedures along their development cycles.

The supply cliff will severely weigh on the city’s liveability and people’s quality of life. The unaffordability of our housing and
the decreasing trend in living space per capita are particularly alarming, as they will cast a disrupting effect on household
formation and affect people’s life decisions, such as marriage and child birth. We urge the Government to prioritise all work for
land development. On the other hand, reviewing and evaluating the existing administrative procedures on land and housing
development is also pivotal.

Part I: Private Housing Supply

1. A housing supply cliff already arrived in 2019. Only 14,093 adjusted private residential units were completed in 2019—the
1
number was down by 33% year-on-year and missed the Government’s own estimate by a wide margin of 30%. The shortfall
in housing completion in 2019 was attributed to a continued slowdown in construction activities.

1 Starter Homes units included

2 2