The impact of different land-supplying channels on the supply of housing

As Hong Kong's property prices have been skyrocketing particularly in the last several years, housing has become even less affordable than it was prior to the Asian Financial Crisis, compromising Hong Kong residents’ living standards. The general public mostly blames the supply-side actors (i.e. property developers and/or the government) for such a predicament, and vociferously demands for higher supply of residential flats both in the private and public sectors. The government, in response, proposes the supply of more residential land, among other measures, in addressing the public's demands, with the notion of “higher land supply results in higher housing supply”. Nonetheless, there are other channels, other than land sale, which provide land for housing construction, such as land exchange, which are usually overlooked in public debates. In the light of this, this paper aims to investigate the respective impact of land sale and land exchange on Hong Kong's housing supply. The findings, interestingly, show that land exchange has a much larger long-run impact on housing supply than land sale does; that housing supply responds to short-run fluctuations in property price; and that best lending rate has neither a short- nor long-run relationship with the supply of housing. The reason behind the finding regarding land sale and land exchange is that, the former is initiated by the government which overlooks property developers’ profit incentives and development strategies, while the latter essentially reflects that a particular land site is ripe for development (i.e. profitable) from the developers’ standpoint. Some implications relating to the recently announced government land policy measures are also discussed.