
BofAML predicts housing rules won't get spotlight in policy address
What will be the priority, then?
According to BofAML, Hong Kong’s chief executive, CY Leung, will deliver his second policy address on 15 January. They believe the principal concerns of last year still top the government’s agenda in 2014.
However, they expect the address to place more emphasis on alleviating poverty than housing and land supply issues.
Here's more from BofAML:
Tackling population aging and fostering economic development will be the two other key areas of policy focus, in our view.
In our view, housing policies are likely less of a focus this year as physical prices have shown signs of stabilization since the implementation of double stamp duty (DSD).
Similar to the Policy Address last year, the housing policies potentially proposed would likely focus on increasing supply.
In our view, the government has demonstrated improved efforts to increase supply recently, as indicated by the simplified tender procedure for MTR’s Tin Wing station site and proposing plans to rezone eight sites in Tai Po which can provide 9.6-10.0k private/public housing units.