政府重增居屋折扣 再次好心做壞事 Govt hiking HOS discounts raises moral hazard

上週政府終於抵受不了引誘，公布一系列公營房屋政策，包括進一步將居屋折扣率調高至五折、引入空置稅等等。

然而市場普遍對新政策不存奢望，如：獅子山學會評論指出若將居屋大平賣，勢必吸引大量公屋綠表戶申請，市民定會抱著「不執輸」的心態，先交資助房屋申請，令資助房屋需求人為推高但真正有需要的市民更難受惠。當樓市逆轉後，受資助房屋戶主更會首當其衝，跌入補地價的無底深潭。港府另一新政——引入空置稅亦不討好，市場學界已諸多批判之辭！而信報專欄《經濟3.0》更一矢中的，貶此舉為「既不治標也不治本，只為宣洩一下市民的怨憤而已。」

其實早於2014年7月 《居屋政策 好心做壞事》一文中，筆者已作出深入分析，證明每當樓價高漲，政府面對政治壓力就會增加居屋折扣；可惜居屋折扣被增大時，往往亦是樓價見頂之刻！可憐本來在私人市場能力最弱的市民，卻因政府的煽動而在市頂購入居屋，再之後的跌市最有可能淪為負資產一族。

稍後將為數據作一更新，把上文圖表再行發布，希望官僚及福利政客能懸崖勒馬，勿將本港樓市變成計劃經濟的另一失敗例證。

Last week, Hong Kong government has finally yielded to temptation, announcing a set of public housing policies including a higher subsidized discount on the price of home ownership scheme purchases and the introduction of the city’s first vacancy tax. 

The market commentaries that followed are far less optimistic of the effect of the new policy, for example, The Lion Rock Institution wrote in the Hong Kong Economic Journal that “such measures would make it harder for the needy to buy their homes as the perceived cheaper entry prices would attract way more applicants than normal, and create a false sense of demand… in the end, the beneficiaries of the policy may become victims trapped in a home when the market turns down. In addition, the proposed new vacancy tax has also been widely criticized for its ineffectiveness, and none has summed it up as succinctly as the HKEJ article as “this tax neither treats the disease nor its symptoms, and is launched purely to vent the discontent among the masses”.

Your author has written way back in July 2014 about this phenomenon in this article: 《居屋政策 好心做壞事》, showing that every time home price reached a peak, the government widened the discount levels of HOS. The immediate sad outcome of this policy is that the public with the least ability to afford a home would be incentivized by the government policy into buying a property right at the peak – also the time they ought to avoid entering the market.

Updated graphs and charts from the article above are being refreshed and will be posted here. It really is time to stop interfering in housing even more, and reverse course before the Hong Kong property market becomes another victim of planned economy dogma.