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ii. The annual private residential supply target has consequently been reduced from 18,000 to 13,500 units and this
lowered target has started to feed through into future supply. We expect that the average annual private residential
completions in the next five years for 2019 - 2023 would be around 18,500 units, which is 11% lower than our previous
rolling five-year forecast for 2018 - 2022 of 20,800 units. This decline is evidenced by the obvious drop in the number of
commencements of superstructure works, which is a leading indicator of future completions.
iii. Although we forecast an increasing trend for completions for 2019 - 2022, in 2023 the trend will see a sharp turn, as
only 13,300 units are expected for that year. This is due to the dramatic reduction in the amount of spade-ready land for
private housing development last year, which in turn would precipitate a sharp reduction in the private housing supply
five years from now.
iv. Private housing units completed recently and in the near future would barely reach the Government’s previous annual
supply targets (i.e. 18,000 units), but such supply still does not catch up with the previous shortfall. Perhaps the new
target of 13,500 units is more attainable because it is much lower, but so are the living conditions of people in Hong
Kong.
3. Public Housing Supply:

i. Despite a higher LTHS supply target, increasing from 28,000 units to 31,500 units annually, the actual supply forecast
shows that there would be even fewer completions in the immediate future.
ii. For the next four years (2019/20 - 2022/23), public housing supply is forecasted to be 18,300 units per annum, which
is 10% lower compared to the previous rolling four years (2018/19 - 2021/22). In particular, completions are expected to
drop significantly to only about 14,500 units in 2022/23. The updated forecast will miss the LTHS target of 31,500 units
per year by a large shortfall of 42%. Over a 10-year horizon (2019/20 - 2028/29), we expect a cumulative shortfall of at
least 85,000 public housing units.

iii. We also estimate that the average waiting time for Public Rental Housing will increase from the current 5.5 years to over
6 years in the next three years, deepening the housing crisis.

iv. In the past five years, delays in public housing completions have intensified. Upon examination, we found that around
75% of such delays were rezoned sites. However, in the immediate future, about 73% of public housing units are
scheduled to come from rezoning. Therefore, we expect to see more unexpected delays in public housing completions.

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