A study of the impact of the tenants purchase scheme (TPS) on the Hong Kong housing markets

• Main Author: YEUNG, Fai Yip
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: Digital Commons @ Lingnan University 2001
• Subjects: Economics
• Online Access: https://commons.ln.edu.hk/econ_etd/20; https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=econ_etd

The Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS), the public housing privatization programme, which commenced in the first quarter of 1998 in Hong Kong, has received much attention from urban economists. However, few empirical studies have been carried out to examine its impact on the housing market and the entire economy. This study uses time-series regression analysis to distinguish the effect of the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) from that of the TPS on the transaction volume and the real transaction value in the second-hand HOS market (focusing on the HOS free market), the secondary property market, and the overall property market. In addition, a “Time-Shift Multi-Dimensional Housing Ladder Model” is used to estimate the effect of TPS on the HOS market using cross-sectional analysis. The empirical findings for the time-series analysis show that the TPS has affected the HOS free market much more seriously than the AFC. The effect then extends to the secondary property market and finally the overall property market. The cross-sectional analysis suggests that the HOS market will have led to a loss of more than 82,000 potential buyers over a period of 10 years as a result of the introduction of TPS. It also discovers that resource is inefficiently allocated by the large-scale survey. This dissertation also provides an analysis of the pitfalls of present TPS and discusses three alternative public housing privatization schemes. (The HKCER Model, the Wong Model and the Ho Model) It seems that the “Conditional Bidding” proposed in the Ho Model is the most appropriate policy for the change of present TPS because his model suits the criteria of economic efficiency, policy efficiency and equity best.