HONG KONG - For his entire adult life, truck driver Ronnie Lo has never contemplated buying a home. At 29, he is still living with his mother and 19-year-old brother in a public rental flat in Tuen Mun.
Due to a double whammy of the city’s Covid-19 lockdown and an exodus of residents, Hong Kong’s famously unaffordable homes are hovering within reach for some of those who had remained. “I worry now that we’ve reopened, mainland investors are going to come back in and push prices up again,” he fretted.
By the third week of February, there had been 5,000 transactions in the mass market, the same number as December and January combined. Before the pandemic, mainland buyers – including investors looking to park their money in a safe haven – comprised a significant percentage of Hong Kong’s property market. This stood at 8.4 per cent in 2019, a slight dip from the 2011 peak of 11 per cent.Homes in Hong Kong are an average of 23.
Since 2022, first-time homeowners have been able to borrow up to 90 per cent of their property’s value. New measures announced on Feb 22 also mean that first-time buyers would pay up to HK$44,000 less in stamp duty.