With the government owning all land in Hong Kong, public land sales have been an important channel for developers to acquire land for property development, apart from private-led urban regeneration. For the colonial time before 1997, land was supplied to the market via a supply-oriented model,...

Occupancy discount is a long-accepted doctrine in literature. Search theory supports such a proposition, but empirical evidence is mixed. This study revisits this dilemma and puts forward an alternative argument that a landlord may exploit sitting tenants who have made non-redeployable...

Sale before completion (i.e. presale) is a common practice that real estate developers use to sell residential units. Since presale buyers are unable to inspect uncompleted units, developers may take advantage of asymmetric information and release information about quality to the market...

Touristification is an emerging concept used to enable the understanding of how various stakeholders interfere and transform a neighbourhood through tourist activities. This study develops a touristification rent gap theory to examine how an influx of tourists causes an increase in retail rents....

Shared equity homeownership is a housing finance model that uses public investments to subsidise families with modest incomes to purchase homes. However, the shared equity model is argued to constrain homeowners from moving because of its resale period and price restrictions. While many studies...

Hong Kong as a small city has witnessed a drastic change in the number of short-stay and same-day tourists from Mainland China ever since the relaxation of the tourism policy began in the early 2000’s. This study examines the impacts on the prices of retail space attributed to the substantial...

Buying a home for marriage is customary in many societies. Traditionally, therefore, young couples getting married is a key driver of demand for homeownership. Yet the idea of marriage-induced demand for homeownership is a relatively underexplored component of housing price change. We examine...

Providing affordable housing has become one of China’s key national policy agenda items. The shared-equity model in Hong Kong, implemented since the late 1970s, has assisted many families in owning a home in the public housing market. However, little attention has been paid to their welfare...

For centuries, many governments in the Asia-Pacific region have owned all the land resources, and government land auctions were deployed as an essential channel to supply public land. While the government-led approach to land supply is often criticized for lacking sensitivity to changing market...