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A telephone survey was conducted from 21 to 24 November by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to study public views on the new stamp duty introduced by the government in early November and the level of property prices in Hong Kong.  720 respondents aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 38.8%.  The sampling error is + or –3.65% at a confidence level of 95%. 

Major findings are summarized as follows:

In early November, the government raised the stamp duty to 15 percent on all residential purchases, except for local first-time homebuyers.  41.7% of the respondents claimed that they supported this new “spicy” measure while 18.2% expressed the opposite;  33.9% said “in-between”.  As for the effectiveness of this new measure in curbing the rising trend of property prices, slightly over half of the respondents (52.5%) believed that it would only produce mild results and 19.6% said that they did not see any effect at all.  Only 5.1% and 19.6% of them viewed it as either very effective or quite effective. 

In terms of their views on the current level of property prices, while an overwhelming majority (90.4%) thought it as too high, only 0.3% of the respondents regarded it as too low.  4.9% said that the current level was appropriate.  A majority of the respondents (71.5%) indicated that it was not an appropriate time to buy a flat, while 8.6% said it was.   35.6% of the respondents thought that the current “spicy” measures that had been put into practice should be kept unchanged and 27.5% thought they should be strengthened further.  In contrast, only 20.0% of the respondents thought they should be loosened. 

The respondents were asked about their views on the impact of the potential increase in housing supply of about 93,000 flats in the coming three to four years on property prices.  38.8% of the respondents said it could not suppress the rise of property prices, 13.9% showed the opposite view, while 35.6% answered “in-between”. 

In the current survey, the respondents were also asked about their predictions of property prices in the coming year. About one-thirds of the 720 respondents (35.4%) thought that the price level would remain at the current level, 26.3% predicted a fall, while 25.0% expected a rise.  Among those predicting a fall (187 respondents), relatively more respondents thought the decrease would be in the ranges of 10-