A telephone survey was conducted from 16 to 22 January 2019 by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, to gauge public views on the residential property market policy. A total of 41.6% of the respondents said that the current ‘spicy’ measures of stamp duty should be kept unchanged, while 41.8% thought the maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratio for residential properties should be higher.<\/p>
Major findings are summarised as follows<\/strong> <\/p> ‘<\/strong>Spicy’ Measures of Stamp duty and Maximum Loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. <\/strong>In recent years, the government has introduced a series of ‘spicy’ measures of stamp duty, including Double Stamp Duty (DSD), Special Stamp Duty (SSD) and Buyer’s Stamp Duty (BSD). Of the respondents, 41.6% thought that the current ‘spicy’ measures of stamp duty should be kept unchanged, 20.4% thought that they should be strengthened, while 18.4% thought they should be loosened. A total of 41.8% of the respondents indicated that the maximum LTV ratio for residential properties should be higher, 36.1% said that it should be kept unchanged and only 4.2% claimed that it should be lower. <\/p> Timing of Loosening ‘Spicy’ Measures and Increasing Maximum LTV ratio. <\/strong>The respondents were also asked about their views on when the ‘spicy’ measures of stamp duty should be loosened. Only 21.8% answered that the measures should be loosened when the level of property prices ‘decreases by 20% to less than 30%’, 18.1% answered ‘decreases by 30% to less than 50%’ and 15.5% answered ‘decreases by 10% to less than 20%’. Regarding the maximum LTV ratio, 23.1% of the respondents thought that the ratio should increase when the level of property prices ‘decreases by 20% to less than 30%’, 17.5% answered ‘decreases by 10% to less than 20%’ and 13.9% answered ‘decreases by 30% to less than 50%’. <\/p> Prediction of Property Prices. <\/strong>When the respondents were asked about their prediction of property prices in the coming year, 38.7% thought that the price level would remain at the current level, 30.0% predicted a fall, while 18.7% expected a rise. Of those predicting a fall, relatively more respondents thought the decrease would be in the range of ‘5% to less than 10%’ (31.5%) and ‘10% to less than 20%’ (25.8%). Of those expecting a rise, a relatively larger portion believed that the property prices would increase by ‘5% to less than 10%’ (37.6%) and ‘10% to less than 20%’ (28.6%).<\/p> Opportune Time to Buy a Property. <\/strong>When asked about the opportune time to buy property, 68.5% of the respondents did not think it was an opportune time right now, while only 12.2% thought otherwise. <\/p> Probability of Buying a Residential Property<\/strong>. When asked about the probability of buying a residential property in the coming year, 87.1% of the respondents said that it was ‘low’ (24.3%) or ‘very low’ (62.8%), 6.8% answered ‘fifty-fifty chance’, and only 2.1% said that it was ‘high’ (1.8%) or ‘very high’ (0.3%). <\/p> Importance of Owning a Residential Property. <\/strong>To 68.8% of the respondents, it was important (37.6%) or very important (31.2%) to have their own residential property. 20.1% answered ‘neutral’ and only 7.1% believed it was unimportant (6.5%) or very unimportant (0.6%). <\/p> In this survey, a total of 711 respondents aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 38.5%. The sampling error is estimated at plus or minus 3.68 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.<\/p>","show_as_achievement":false,"achievement_category":[],"show_as_clarification":false,"show_as_announcement":false,"photos":null,"attachments":null,"video_source":null,"video_file":null,"add_play_button":false,"video_caption":"","show_migration":false,"original_id":"2970","photos_original":null,"attachments_original":[{"link":"5c53e8c247979.pdf","text":"Attachment (Chinese version only)"}]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press\/49937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/press"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press\/49937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}