Every year's HOS applications are "scrambled", but the Housing Authority's new phase of more than 9,100 HOS flats (HOS 2023), under the attack of interest rate hikes and price cuts of new flats to grab customers, only about 163,000 applications were received as of 5pm yesterday, with an oversubscription of less than 17 times, which is the year with the smallest number of oversubscription times after the resumption of HOS sales in 2014.
Mr Chan Wing-kit, vice chairman and president of the residential division of Centaline Property Asia Pacific, believes that the lower-than-expected number of applications for HOS flats in this phase is due to a number of reasons, including interest rate hikes and the recent "price cuts" of a number of new flats to snatch away customers, with the opening prices of some of the new flats having dropped by 20% to 30% compared to the peak period, thus bringing the prices of private flats and subsidised flats closer together. The entry fee is only $2.9 million, which has already snatched away some of the customers who originally intended to take advantage of the new phase of HOS flats.
He also pointed out that the new property price cuts significantly to see the acceptance of the HOS subscription response is lukewarm, reflecting the public's weak confidence in home ownership for fear of falling property prices into negative equity, describing the property market is beginning to sound the alarm, and by the new round of the debt crisis in the domestic housing sector dragged down, it is expected that the property market will continue to be low in the second half of the second half of the year property prices will fall or will be completely offset by the first half of the rate of increase (6.7 per cent), called on the Government to save the market if the Government intends to must step up its efforts.
The outbreak of the Asian financial turmoil in 1997, property prices plummeted by 70%, to 2002, the Hong Kong Government launched the "Sun Nine strokes" to rescue the market, including the announcement of the indefinite shelving of the Home Ownership Scheme. In 2011, the Policy Address announced the resumption of the sale of Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) flats. The first batch of HOS flats has been on the market since 2014, and HOS 2023 is the eighth batch of new HOS flats, with more than 410,000 flats being launched so far.
The current phase of HOS provides as many as 9,154 units, the most since the resumption of HOS sale, involving six housing estates in Kai Tak, Kwun Tong, Tuen Mun and Yuen Long, with prices ranging from $1.49 million to $4.94 million, and applications were accepted from 31st of last month, and the application period was closed at 7 p.m. yesterday.
As of 5pm yesterday, the Housing Authority had received a total of about 163,000 applications, exceeding the quota by about 16.8 times, with an average of about 18 people competing for one flat. The response to HOS 2017 has been the weakest in six years after about 106,000 applications were received.
According to the information, since the resumption of HOS sale, the average oversubscription has been over 40 times, with 2014 and 2019 being the most competitive, with an oversubscription of over 60 times. 2016 was the period with the coldest response, with only 53,000 applications received during the period, with an oversubscription of nearly 19 times.
In other words, if there are less than 181,000 applications for this phase of HOS, it will be even lower than the lowest since the resumption of HOS sale, which was 18.9 times in 2016, and is expected to be the "easiest to win" phase of the new HOS in history.
Compared with the previous period, when about 251,000 applications were received, there is a 35 per cent drop in the number of HOS flats in this period. Based on the same application deadline, about 242,000, 230,000 and 296,000 applications were received for last year, 2020 and 2019 respectively.
