There are 39 Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) estates in Hong Kong for tenants to buy the public housing units they are living in, and if they do not intend to buy back and move out, the units will be recovered. In the past, the Housing Authority has twice sold these recovered flats to eligible Green Form (PRH) applicants and the sales response was satisfactory.

It is reported that the Housing Authority's subsidized housing team met today to discuss the sale of these recovered flats on a permanent basis. The Housing Authority intends to continue with the existing pricing mechanism and resale restrictions, and to sell them together with the HOS, Green Form and Express Flat Allocation Scheme.

Taking the last price list as an example, these public housing units are available for sale for as low as $300,000, which is expected to fulfill the "dream" of many eligible public housing tenants.

The TPS was launched in early 1998 to allow tenants of selected estates to purchase the public housing units they were living in. The scheme ended in August 2005, and in 2021 the Housing Authority first included more than 800 flats recovered from 39 TPS estates in the then Green Home Purchase Scheme for purchase by public housing tenants, followed by the sale of another batch of recovered flats.

It is understood that due to the satisfactory sales response to the two sales promotions, the Housing Authority plans to sell the flats on a regular basis, targeting Green Form applicants and eligible applicants under the Express Flat Allocation Scheme.

The source explained that if the flats are sold to "White Form" (private sector) buyers, there will be fewer PRH flats available for allocation, so the Authority will not open the flats for sale to "White Form" buyers at this stage.

As for the prices of these flats, the Authority intends to follow the existing pricing mechanism of the TPS and the existing restrictions on transfer of the same type of flats. A review of the pricing of the last TPS units shows that many of them were priced as low as $300,000, which is expected to be affordable to many eligible public housing tenants.

In terms of transfer restrictions, according to the Housing Authority, within two years from the date of the first sale of a TPS unit, if the owner wishes to transfer the unit, the unit must be sold back to the Housing Authority at the original price, and the actual amount of the special discount obtained at the time of purchase must also be refunded at the same time. In addition to reselling the flat to eligible persons in the HOS Secondary Market, owners can also pay the premium to the Housing Authority and then sell, rent or otherwise transfer the flat in the open market.

In addition, there is information that the estimated allocation of public housing in 2023/24 will be 24,100 units, of which about 18,000 units will come from public housing applications, another 16,200 units from "general applicants" and 1,800 units from non-elderly one-person applicants under the "Quota and Points System", followed by "various types of transfers", which are expected to account for about 3,700 units. However, after a formal headcount, the actual allocation for 2022/23 is about 30,900 units, which is more than 10% higher than the original estimate.

In other words, the actual number of units to be allocated in 2022/23 has been exceeded. The Housing Authority's Subsidized Housing Committee will also discuss the estimated number of public housing units to be allocated in 2023/24 at its meeting today.