Page 66 - ENGLISH_Land

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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