Page 12 - ENGLISH_Housing

Figure 1. Premium settled in HOS and TPS units

Note : All data pertain to 2012.
Sources: Legislative Council, and Census and Statistics Department.

To provide another illustrative example, Table 3 displays the
average sales price of two of the earliest HOS units: Sui Wo Court Phase I in
Sha Tin, completed in 1980, and Chun Man Court in Ho Man Tin, completed in
1981. The original sales price had a 30%-discount over the estimated market
value. Therefore, the true market price per square feet (psf) for these two
developments would have been about $320 and $317 at the time of their
completion. In 2011, the open market prices of transacted units in these two
developments were $4,066 and $5,685 psf. This represents an appreciation
of 12.7 times and 17.9 times over a 30-year period. It outpaced by a wide
margin the increase in consumer prices of four times over the same period.
Under the current mechansim, these HOS owners would have been highly
unlikely to be able to sell the property on the open market because, after
returning the land premium to the government, he or she may not be able
to afford the purchase of another unit on the market.

Table 3. Original sales price and 2011 market price for HOS units (psf)

Source: Wong (2015a).

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