Mind The Gap | Hong Kong’s developers see ever-shrinking flats as elixir to city’s housing crisis
The biggest enemy of serious property reforms are developers and government bureaucrats who will continue on their path until social and economic breakdown occurs
Hong Kong’s middle class has been economically transformed from the “sandwich class” into the “coffin class.”
Those looking for property salvation through a big crash, due to a rise in interest rates, can kiss their impossible dream goodbye.
Analysts failed to factored in how property developers – all acting in their own interests in a poorly regulated local market – would merely shrink the size of flats and extend the price run in rentals and sales.
Branding flats smaller than prison cells or parking stalls as “nano” or “micro” flats and a “new economy lifestyle” requires the kind of humour that re-labels torture as “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
Unaffordable property prices are plaguing many major cities, but in Hong Kong, the shrinking and deteriorating quality of living in flats is a sign of market failure.
Branding flats smaller than prison cells or parking stalls as “nano” or “micro” flats and a “new economy life style” requires the kind of humour that re-labels torture as “enhanced interrogation “techniques”
It is evidence that the government needs to intervene not just on land supply, but on the demand side. And the demand side means the terms and conditions and financing of flat sales.
