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The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies recently conducted a telephone survey in which 43.6% of citizens showed support for the recent adjustment of demand-side management measures for residential properties, namely the cancellation of Special Stamp Duty, Buyer’s Stamp Duty and the New Residential Stamp Duty for residential property transactions. Half of the respondents thought the adjustment would be slightly useful to stabilise the residential property market.

The survey was conducted in the evenings from 29 February to 19 March 2024, after the announcement of the 2024-25 Budget on 28 February 2024. The survey results showed that 43.6% of the respondents supported the adjustment of demand-side management measures for residential properties, 16.0% said they did not support it and 33.1% answered “in-between”. Regarding the usefulness of the adjustment in stabilising the residential property market, 53.0% of the respondents thought it would be “slightly useful”, 17.0% thought it would be “quite useful” (12.7%) or “very useful” (4.3%) and 25.1% regarded it as “not useful at all”.

Respondents were also asked about their views on current residential property prices and their predictions for those prices in the coming year. About 80.2% of respondents thought the current level of residential property prices in Hong Kong was too high, 14.4% said it was reasonable and only 0.9% felt it was too low. Compared to last year’s survey, the proportion of respondents who thought the property price level was too high had increased by 4.4 percentage points. The Chi-square test also showed a statistically significant difference in the distribution of percentages between the two surveys.

Regarding predictions of the residential property price trends in the coming year, 45.1% of the respondents estimated that property prices would remain at the current level, 30.7% believed they would fall and 17.5% expected them to rise. Of those predicting a fall, relatively more people thought the decrease would be in the range of 5% to less than 10% (40.5%) or 10% to less than 20% (27.4%). Among those who expected property prices to rise, relatively more people thought the increase would be in the range of 5% to less than 10% (34.3%) or 10% to less than 20% (30.0%).

The survey also found that 22.9% of the respondents believed that it was an opportune time to buy a property and 63.5% of the respondents thought it was not the right time. The Chi-square test also showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the percentage distributions between the two surveys. The proportion of respondents who regarded it as not the right time to buy a property increased by 7.4 percentage points from last year’s survey.

The survey results showed that 51.9% of the respondents said the burden of housing expenses, including mortgage payments, rent, rates, management fees and maintenance costs, was quite heavy (34.6%) or very heavy (17.3%), while 33.9% and 11.0% thought it was not too heavy and not heavy at all respectively. Compared to a similar survey conducted last year, the proportion of respondents who considered the burden to be not too heavy or not at all heavy increased by 5.7 percentage points in total (2.0 and 3.7 percentage points respectively). The Chi-square test showed that the percentage distributions of the two surveys were statistically significantly different.

In addition, the survey also found that about four-fifths (80.2%) of the respondents believed that it was quite important (41.0%) or very important (39.2%) to have their own residential property, while only 18.0% said it was not so important (12.4%) or very unimportant (5.6%). Compared to last year’s survey, the proportion of respondents who thought having their own residential property was very important or very unimportant had increased by 5.5 and 4.2 percentage points respectively, while those who thought it quite important or not so important had decreased by 5.5 and 1.1 percentage points respectively. The Chi-square test also showed a statistically significant difference in the distribution of percentages between the two surveys.

A total of 701 respondents aged 18 or above (landline: 160; mobile: 541) were successfully interviewed in this survey, and the response rates of the landline and mobile samples were 40.9% and 45.2% respectively. The sampling error for a sample size of 701 is estimated at plus or minus 3.70 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Furthermore, the data in this survey was weighted based on the probability of the respondents being selected via a dual-frame sampling design and the relevant age-sex distribution of the population published by the Census and Statistics Department.