Singapore’s public housing owners have one major edge over Hong Kong’s. Can Carrie Lam turn this around?
Richard Wong says that the chief executive has earned some comparisons to Singapore’s public housing scheme for her proposed reforms, but one key improvement is missing and should be made – to give Hong Kong home owners better access to the transfer value of the flat
HDB flats are sold at a discount to citizens, which are adjusted for affordability as economic conditions change. After a period of restriction, during which the flat cannot be sold, the owner can sell the flat on the open market at a market price to a citizen or permanent resident who does not already own a flat. Leasing out the flat is also permitted. Any appreciation in value accrues entirely to the owner.
This means the owner of an HDB flat buys, at a discount, 100 per cent of the user right, leasing right and transfer right to the flat.
In Hong Kong, by contrast, the buyers of HOS, TPS and GSH flats effectively receive only the user right to their flat.
At the time of purchase, the eligible buyer receives a 30 per cent discount, which is based on the market valuation of a privately owned flat. After a period of restriction, the owner can sell the subsidised flat in the future on the open market, but must pay back the unpaid 30 per cent discounted premium to the government.
The value of this discount is calculated at the time of sale, not the time of original purchase. So if the flat has appreciated, the unpaid premium will increase.
The owner also does not possess any leasing rights until the 30 per cent transfer value is paid up.
This arrangement is an inefficient use of public housing resources because the owner has no reason to move, even when it might be in the family’s interest to do so, when she gets 100 per cent of the use value but only 70 per cent of the transfer value of the flat. This also reduces the geographic mobility of the population and imposes many other costs on society and the economy.
The Singapore HDB scheme does not have these inefficiencies, but there is one right that the Singapore government has retained: HDB owners cannot redevelop their estates into private estates. When the structure becomes old, they can only allow the government to redevelop it into new HDB flats. In this way, these estates will never become foreign-owned.
Neither Hong Kong’s nor Singapore’s approach is perfect. But while Singapore could conceivably justify its limitation on nation-building grounds, what justification does Hong Kong have?
What a terrible mistake this was and what a huge price the Hong Kong public has had to pay ever since.
Property prices have since soared and housing is no longer affordable for most. Increasing the market discount from 30 per cent to 48 per cent is fine, but what if the owner’s share of the transfer value decreases accordingly to 52 per cent? It would further deaden the incentive to become geographically mobile.
If the Hong Kong government were to someday to follow Singapore’s model, we would need to create a better regime. Instead of the share tenancy arrangement, the government could adopt a fixed payment for the unpaid discount so that transfer and leasing rights would not have to be locked up. Actually, this reform is surprisingly easy to do.
The government could offer a genuine 30 per cent discount, then flat owners would owe the government only 18 per cent of the unpaid value if they decide to sell. And this 18 per cent could take the form of a deferred loan from the government, to be repaid when the property is transferred. This deferred loan would have a fixed value and could even accrue interest.
Such an arrangement would not be a sharing of the future transfer value. It would avoid all the disincentive effects and inefficiencies and even inequities of the present mutant public housing scheme.
How property rights are defined over public sales flats will have profound effects on the economy and society, and ultimately politics. The wrong path could cost us 1-2 per cent of gross domestic product and further worsen inclusiveness in our society.
Richard Wong is professor of economics and Philip Wong Kennedy Wong Professor in political economy at the School of Economics and Finance at the University of Hong Kong