Housing Authority tightens Home Ownership Scheme rules, bans Hong Kong public housing tenants who already own property from buying subsidised flats
- Housing Authority’s Cleresa Wong said after meeting of subsidised housing committee that members were united over need for change
- Move puts public housing tenants and potential buyers from private sector under same restrictions for Home Ownership Scheme
Hong Kong’s Housing Authority has banned public housing tenants who already own a property from buying a subsidised flat after it revised the eligibility rules for its Home Ownership Scheme.
Cleresa Wong Pie-yue, chairwoman of the authority’s subsidised housing committee, said members were united over the need for change.
The revised eligibility criteria will make both types of prospective buyers – public flat tenants, referred to as green form applicants, and those from the private sector, usually called white form applicants – subject to the same restriction.
“All members of the committee unanimously passed the proposal to tighten the eligibility criteria, to ban green form applicants who own property from buying subsidised flats, which aligns with the restrictions on white form applicants,” Wong said.
Potential buyers under the Home Ownership Scheme, from this year, will not be eligible for the programme if they have owned a domestic property in the city inside two years of their application.
In addition, households in public rented accommodation who were asked to move out of their flat by the authority will no longer be eligible to buy those properties as green form applicants.
