CUHK
News Centre

A recent telephone survey conducted by The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies has found that 69.9% of the respondents considered the current level of residential property prices in Hong Kong too high and 42.1% believed property prices would fall in the coming year.

The survey, conducted from 26 February to 11 March 2025, asked respondents about their views on current residential property prices and their predictions for the coming year. A total of 69.9% of respondents considered the current level of residential property prices in Hong Kong too high, another 22.3% said it was reasonable, and only 2.8% felt it was too low. Compared with last year’s survey, the proportion of respondents who thought the property price level was too high had decreased by 10.3 percentage points. The Chi-square test showed a statistically significant difference in the distribution of percentages between the two surveys.

Regarding predictions of residential property price trends in the coming year, 45.6% of the respondents estimated that they would remain at the current level; 42.1% believed they would fall, an increase of 11.4 percentage points compared with last year; only 6.6% expected them to rise, a decrease of 10.9 percentage points from last year’s survey; the Chi-square test showed that the difference in the distribution of percentages between the two surveys was statistically significant. Of those predicting a fall in residential property prices, the largest numbers of people thought the decrease would be in the range of 5% to less than 10% (45.3%) or 10% to less than 20% (22.0%). Among those who expected prices to rise, the largest numbers of people thought the increase would be in the range of 5% to less than 10% (40.0%) or 10% to less than 20% (30.1%).

The survey also found that 63.4% of the respondents believed that it was not an opportune time to buy a property and only 24.1% thought it was the right time; these proportions were similar to last year (63.5% and 22.9% respectively). The Chi-square test showed that the difference in the percentage distributions between the two surveys was not statistically significant.

The survey results showed that 60.5% of the respondents said the burden of housing expenses, including mortgage payments, rent, rates, management fees and maintenance costs, was quite heavy (42.3%) or very heavy (18.2%), while 30.3% and 6.7% 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 quite heavy or very heavy increased by 8.6 percentage points in total (increases of 7.7 and 0.9 percentage points respectively); while the proportion of those who said the burden was not too heavy or not heavy at all decreased by 7.9 percentage points in total (decreases of 3.6 and 4.3 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 75% of the respondents believed that it was quite important (39.7%) or very important (35.3%) to have their own residential property, while only 19.6% said it was not so important (15.9%) or very unimportant (3.7%). Compared to last year’s survey, the proportion of respondents who thought having their own residential property was quite important or very important had decreased by 5.2 percentage points in total (decreases of 1.3 and 3.9 percentage points respectively); while the proportion of those who thought it not so important or very unimportant had increased by 1.6 percentage points in total (an increase of 3.5 percentage points and a decrease of 1.9 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 711 respondents aged 18 or above (landline: 175; mobile: 536) were successfully interviewed in this survey, with a response rate of 61.0% (landline: 57.8%; mobile: 62.0%). The sampling error is estimated at plus or minus 3.68 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 before analysis.