〈Taipei Times, December 30, 2017〉Hong Kong’s private home prices broke historic records for the 13th straight month last month, with the ascent showing no immediate signs of ending and analysts expecting the rise to continue into next year.

Private home prices rose 1.08 percent last month, marking the fastest pace of growth in six months, data compiled by the Rating and Valuation Department and released yesterday showed.

The index, which began its climb in April 2016, surged 13.1 percent year-on-year, the data showed.The territory’s flats are ranked the second-most expensive in the world after Monaco, according to data from property consultancy Knight Frank, which shows US$1 million would only buy 19m2 of prime property in Hong Kong, as opposed to 25m2 in New York or 30m2 in London.

"Property prices are high and it’s unaffordable for most ordinary people," Knight Frank senior director Thomas Lam said. "But right now, I cannot see any major factor that will drastically bring down property prices in the short run."

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) said during an interview last week that the government "has no ways to curb property prices," adding that while she would do her best to seek more land to boost supply, she has never promised to turn around the price rise.

Major property consultancies expect Hong Kong’s housing market to remain feverish in the coming year and climb a further 5 to 20 percent.

The government has tried to rein in prices with additional taxes and regulations, which came on top of eight rounds of mortgage tightening since 2009 by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the territory’s de facto central bank.

〈Asian Post, December 30, 2017〉The city's property agent regulator has issued guidelines for the sale of unfinished overseas properties by local agents following repeated complaints by buyers, a move supported by companies in the sector.

The Estate Agents Authority issued a practice circular on the sale of incomplete properties outside Hong Kong after numerous complaints about such properties and the misrepresentation of information by agents, said Horace Cheung Kwok-kwan, chairman of the Practice and Examination Committee at the authority.

The guidelines include: a requirement to confirm the existence, legal rights and capital of the seller; provision of local legal advice; warnings about the risks associated with the purchase; legal and warning documents for buyers; no use of promotional language that gives the impression that the purchase is safe with easy and high returns; and not making any assurances about mortgage terms.

"Out of 11 complaints received this year, eight were about properties in the United Kingdom. Six are still under investigation, four were found invalid and one could not be grounded by enough evidence," Cheung said.

In 2014, a property agent was reprimanded and fined HK$50,000 by the authority for selling an incomplete property in mainland China without required approval in Hong Kong.

At present, there is no regulation of the sale of overseas properties in Hong Kong - anyone can engage in such sales with or without licences issued by the authority. After the new guidelines come into effect in April, licensed agents who are found in breach of the regulations may be subject to disciplinary action by the authority.

〈The Standard, December 29, 2017〉The architects of HK are looking to use cutting-edge technology to create designs that are sustainable and easy on the eye, even as they draw from the city’s architectural heritage. Chitralekha Basu reports.

The potential of verticality remains under-utilized in Hong Kong, said the acclaimed Swiss architect Jacques Herzog recently. While Hong Kong has the most skyscrapers of all the world cities (317 at the last count), Herzog said he would like to see more creative use of height. For instance, why can’t people who live or work on, say, the 56th floor have a chance to soak in the fresh sea breeze, as opposed to staying boxed up behind the featureless chrome-and-glass facades?

When it becomes fully functional next year, H Queen’s could be the answer to what Herzog has been missing in Hong Kong’s architectural landscape. Wedged between the escalator on Pottinger Street and Queen’s Road Central, at the epicenter of downtown Hong Kong, the 24-storey building comes with transparent walls and a glass shuttle lift, allowing visitors to have a glimpse of what’s on show even before they step inside any of its various art galleries. And when the giant glass panels on each floor slide apart to receive the artworks — raised directly from the road below on a gondola — the hoisting will make for a spectacle in itself.

William Lim, the managing director of the architecture firm CL3, wanted to inject a dash of playfulness among the uninterrupted monotony of the somber tower blocks in Hong Kong’s central business district. “We gave a fresh twist to the office building — increased the height, reinforced the floor loading. At 3 meters by 1.5 meters, the glass panels are quite heavy but we used a new aromatic technology. It’s a technological innovation,” says Lim.

〈China Daily, December 28, 2017〉From time to time there have been calls for privatizing our public rental housing (PRH) units. Although I generally support the idea of a Hongkonger Starter Home scheme, I disagree with privatizing these PRH units. Despite some shortcomings, PRH has served Hong Kong well.

Arbitrarily selling our PRH units at low prices to sitting tenants, as under the Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) of 1998-2003, is not the way to create a “first step in the housing ladder” for Hong Kong residents. Paradoxically, instead of boosting the homeownership rate, the TPS had led to a slowdown in Hong Kong’s march toward higher homeownership. The figures will speak for themselves:

In 1982, Hong Kong’s homeownership rate was 28.7 percent. At the end of 1997, it had gone up to 48 percent. This represents an increase of almost 20 percentage points, and that happened in a space of just 15 years. From the end of 1997 till the end of 2017 there are 20 years. Yet the latest reading of the homeownership rate is now just 49.4 percent. The increase over the 20 years after TPS was first implemented is just a paltry 1.4 percentage points.

The homeownership rate had actually increased briefly after the introduction of the TPS. But it had peaked in the first quarter of 2004 at 54.4 percent. Since then the homeownership rate has fallen, and at the same time the queue for PRH had lengthened so that right now it takes an average 4.7 years for an applicant to be given a PRH unit.

One serious cost that we have to reckon if we sell our PRH units in the way we did is that the sold units will no longer be available for redistribution. These sold units presently fetch very high prices — some well over HK$4 million, pre-land premium. Some commentators say the PRH units are just locked up and that very few tenants would give them up. .

〈The Standard, December 27, 2017〉New rules on outbound investment designed to close loopholes used by some mainland firms to transfer capital out of the country will come into effect in March. In a directive released on Tuesday, the National Development and Reform Commission, the mainland's top economic planning body, said all foreign investment deals by mainland firms, including those involving their overseas affiliates, must be reported through a new official online information system.

Furthermore, all deals involving "sensitive" countries or industries would be subject to Beijing's approval, the NDRC said.

Sensitive countries are defined as those without diplomatic ties to Beijing or those that are engaged in civil war. Sensitive industries include weapons manufacturing and the media.

The current regulations already list telecommunications, land development and power grids as sensitive sectors.

In the case of non-sensitive deals, those valued at US$300 million or more must be registered with the NDRC. Those below that figure must be registered with local authorities.

Beijing hopes the revised regulations will strike a balance between encouraging outbound investment to support its "Belt and Road Initiative" of inter continental trade and infrastructure development, while preventing another capital flight.

Wang Jun, chief economist at Hong Kong-listed Zhongyuan Bank, said the new rules aimed to create a clear operating framework for businesses seeking overseas expansion, rather than "simply blocking some deals"as happened before.While the NDRC said that outbound business expansion should not hurt the national interest, "irrational investment has been largely curbed", Wang said.