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7. Conclusion






                                                    This research started with the publication of the first set of publicly
                                             available and transparent statistics on the supply of housing on the
                                             primary residential property market over the next five years and concluded
                                             that whilst the current-term government’s effort in stepping up land supply
                                             has seemingly started to bear fruit in terms of private housing supply, the
                                             supply situation of public housing, especially in the medium- to long-term,
                                             still warrants great concerns. Any hiccups in the attempts of change of
                                             land use and / or implementation of the NDA projects in the New Territories
                                             might result in significant delay of housing completions both in the public
                                             and private sectors in the medium term.


                                                    We then reviewed in-depth the demand and supply situation
                                             of different property sectors over the past year and have established
                                             that instead of showing signs of alleviation, the acute shortage of space
                                             across all categories of “hardware”, has generally remained severe or even
                                             worsened. More worryingly, such shortage does not only exhibit itself in
                                             the residential aspect through sky-rocketing domestic rents and home
                                             prices, but also exuberant commercial rents, which seriously hinders Hong
                                             Kong’s competitiveness. On top of these, a rapidly ageing population
                                             also necessitates ample land resources to support aged-related facilities
                                             including hospitals and elderly community centres, whilst the latest
                                             planned capacity increase of which is apparently insufficient.

                                                    It is against this backdrop that we explored the intricacies and
                                             practical issues surrounding land supply strategy, and have argued that
                                             while any optimisation or increase in land resources utilisation efficiency
                                             should be supported, including brownfield sites, we are not in favour of any
                                             land supply policy that prioritise any particular land supply avenue over
                                             others, as all methods of land supply would face their own challenges and
                                             difficulties and take a varying length of time to deliver developable land.
                                             Hence, we hold that land supply strategy should follow a multi-pronged
                                             approach, encompassing short-, medium- and long-term land supply
                                             avenues.


                                                    After all, the current predicament of space shortage that
                                             transcends different sectors of the society originated from the absence
                                             of large-scale land development projects over the past decade or so.
                                             This is the result of a crashing property market during 1998 to 2003, which
                                             triggered the government to halt on-going land supply initiatives and
                                             housing production back then. Our analysis showed that the major land


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