Relationship between the land-use planning system, land supply and housing prices in Hong Kong

Hong Kong has been faced with property market ups and downs for many reasons over the past ten years or so. It once experienced shortages of housing supply, leading to prolonged escalating prices. This was followed by a downturn of housing prices since the end of 1997 and in the wake of the financial turmoil in Asia. Hong Kong people have been very concerned with the housing market situation, particularly housing prices, and consider that the problem needs to be addressed to prevent its recurrence in the future. To address the problems arising from “market failure”, the Hong Kong government uses its land-use planning system to impose constraints on land supply and development. Such system includes: Town Planning and Buildings legislation and government land lease conditions. On the other hand, it controls land supply through various means, such as by altering the volume of land auction and tender, lease modifications and land exchange. All this fundamentally has a strong bearing on housing prices.||This research investigates the relationship between the land-use planning system, land supply and housing prices in Hong Kong; how the “land-use planning system and constraints” influence land supply in general and the residential property market in particular and whether it is justifiable to amend, relax, or revamp some or all of constraints and the “how” in the context of Hong Kong in order to address this dilemma. Lessons from this study should also be applicable to other places in the world, for example Singapore and Mainland China.