ng Hin Li

Benchmark pricing behaviour of land in China's reforms

Summary Following open door policy, China is allowing a major and valuable national resource, namely land, to be privatized in the market. Land has not been allocated according to the market since the Communist party took power in 1949. Without extensive market activities it has become imperative for both central and local government to devise guidelines when selling land to developers who have found great potential in this market. After initial pilot studies in some cities, a benchmark pricing model was finally devised to provide guideline land prices. In theory, this model has the role of leading the existing land allocation system into a price mechanism similar to a market economy. However, the legacy of the socialist ideology concerning the assessment of value exerts a strong effect on the benchmark pricing model which makes the behaviour of the benchmark prices inconsistent with market prices. An examination of the benchmark pricing of land in various Chinese cities has revealed that China is still f...

Reinventing Government? Explaining Management Reform at the Hong Kong Housing Authority

In this paper we explain why the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) is embarking upon a substantial programme of management reform to outsource the management and maintenance of 600 000 units of public rental housing. An international management-reform analytical framework is developed which classifies reforms under the headings of finance, management, ownership, and performance. The application of this framework to reform at the HKHA indicates that the emphasis is upon market-led approaches. The management-reform framework is able to explain aspects of the HKHA approach in relation to searches for reduced costs, downsizing, clearer standards, higher quality, and more customer-responsive services. Alone, however, it is unable to explain fully the reform programme. The housing-policy reforms and the governments aim to increase levels of home-ownership are shown to be major contributory factors to the direction adopted by the HKHA. These case-study findings assert the importance of policy processes for the explanation of management reforms and have implications for the analysis of management reforms in many settings.

Land price changes in the evolving land market in Beijing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine land price changes in Beijing 1993‐2004. Examination of attributes of land price changes seeks to illustrate whether this market is overshadowed by government regulations and controls leading to immature development and uncertainties.Design/methodology/approach – Land price changes in Beijing within the study period are examined by statistical analyses as well as spatial observations using a GIS platform.Findings – Land prices in Beijing are influenced by common market indicators such as GDP growth and investment, although market transactions of land in this city are not entirely open and the so‐called market prices are largely price levels agreed between the private developer and the authority under private treaty grant, instead of open auction or tender.Research limitations/implications – The analyses of market land prices in Beijing in this paper show, however, that land prices do follow generally market principles and the highest and best use principle...

Convergence of the land tenure systems of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan?

The combined economies of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, referred to collectively as Greater China, are forecast to equal that of the USA by 2002. Land development has played a significant part in this growth in Hong Kong and Taiwan and is doing so increasingly in China as opportunities are taken as a result of land reform. As they continue to converge both economically and politically, the apparent disparity of their land tenure systems may inhibit this process. This paper examines the common roots of their land tenure systems and the divergences which have occurred during the last two centuries. In tracing these roots it focuses on the major evolution during this century when the communists and nationalists split to form the Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of China respectively whilst Hong Kong continued to be administered by Britain. It identifies the major land tenure reforms which have occurred and argues that the apparent differences in land tenure systems are not substantive due to all three systems being founded on a common history and with philosophical developments which are compatible but one in which Britains position seems somewhat ironic.

Land supply and housing prices in Hong Kong: The political economy of urban land policy

Urban land and housing market is a political arena where the government is usually expected by the general public to intervene for the benefit of the society. With the government owning all land in Hong Kong, public land auctions have been an important channel for developers to acquire land for property development, apart from private-led urban regeneration. For a long time before 1997, the government of Hong Kong supplied land to the market via a supply-oriented model which was entirely dependent on the willingness of government to sell. The situation changed in 1997 when the administration found that they were being unresponsive, and switched to a demand-oriented supply model, the Application List System. In any case, there is a general expectation in the society that government urban land policy in supplying land should have a major bearing on the housing market, especially in making housing more affordable by the general working class. By applying a Granger causality framework, we find this expectation unrealistic as there is no evidence supporting the claim that changing land supply via government land sale programme would impact on housing prices. However, it is found that housing prices do Granger-cause land supply under the Application List System which implies that private sector is more responsive to market changes than the government, which is ironic as the government decided to abandon this model and revert back to the old supply-oriented model in 2013. We conclude that the political economy of the urban land market has made the land supply model too subjective and dependent on government agenda, which is not a health development towards a more optimal urban land policy.

State or market: the role of the government in urban village regeneration in China

Urban regeneration is a natural response of recycling resources in our urban development strategy to the problem of urban decay. Since urban regeneration invariably involves property rights as well as wealth redistribution, it usually lends itself to a tight scrutiny by the society even though some actors in the process may claim that renewal of old and obsolete physical structures is merely a normal economic activity that can be accommodated effectively within the market mechanism. Urban regeneration therefore becomes a complex process that involves intriguing interaction among various stakeholders in dealing with spatial reorganization due to urban physical and economic decay. In this paper, we will first examine the literature on the state–market dynamics, followed by a general discussion of urban regeneration against the backdrop of the interaction between the state and the market. Finally, the discussion of such state–market interaction will be channelled to a more focused spatial context of regenerating urban villages in China. In doing so, we hope to contribute to the current literature on how the state, stakeholders and the market interact during this complex process of regeneration.

Institutional Reform in the Provision of Public Services in Hong Kong: An Efficiency Evaluation

Although efficiency theories have been adopted by governments around the world to improve public services, Hong Kong escaped their prescriptions until recently. In order to evaluate why such policies have been adopted, the authors develop a theory-led evaluation in which public choice theory and transaction-costs economics are synthesised to present a contingent efficiency framework. The study is focused upon the housing, planning, and lands arena, and includes analysis of policy documents and interviews with a range of civil servant, politicians, professional bodies, and private sector providers. The findings indicate that efficiency theories now explain institutional reform in Hong Kong—the variables of competition, size, asset specificity, monopoly, and change in public officials, together with the context within which public organisations in Hong Kong work, explain why such policies have now been pursued.

Research on the Housing Affordability of University Graduates in Guangzhou

For a long time, the housing affordability of urban residents is a focus of the real estate research. Analysing the residents’ housing affordability is the premise to make appropriate housing policies, release the housing needs of low-income groups continuously, and promote economic growth. Housing security policy often ignored new university graduates, an urban sandwich generation, who could not afford the housing by their slender incomes. In this paper, university graduates’ housing affordability is evaluated by two indices: one is the Residual Income Affordability (RIA), a common tool to estimate the housing affordability; the other is Housing Affordability Time (HAT), an original evaluation index established in this study. Sensitivity analysis is applied to housing price, graduates’ salary, loan interest rate, purchase tax, and first payment proportion to find out the important impact factors for graduates’ housing affordability. This study finds that university graduates, the dominant force of urban development, have weak housing affordability and should be paid more attention by the society. According to the characteristics of university graduates, suggestions of housing security and financial policies are proposed in this paper.

The impacts of cross-border tourists on local retail property market: an empirical analysis of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Hong Kong as a small city has witnessed a drastic change in the number of short-stay and same-day tourists from Mainland China ever since the relaxation of the tourism policy began in the early 2000’s. This study examines the impacts on the prices of retail space attributed to the substantial increase of cross-border shoppers. Based on a comprehensive retail property transaction records in Hong Kong and a semi-log regression model, our study confirms a positive impact of the number of cross-border shoppers on retail property prices, especially on the value of newer and larger-sized street-level retail shops. Moreover, we find that the effects brought on the retail property market are city-wide and not limited to specific districts which are relatively closer to the border with Shenzhen and with a higher degree of accessibility by these cross-border shoppers. This paper is limited by a number of assumptions including travel distance of the shoppers from Shenzhen. Nevertheless, with an increase in personal travels by the affluent Mainland Chinese citizens who usually spend a lot on shopping outside China, future studies can be made in other North American or European cities for comparison.

Creating a visual-collaborative learning environment for real estate education – an experiment on a cross-city and inter-disciplinary interactive discussion platform for real estate students in Hong Kong

Real estate education is a multi-disciplinary subject that requires students to have an all-round training and knowledge in such core areas as economic and finance, urban planning and urbanization studies, public policy, law as well as construction technology. These subject areas are dynamic in the sense that they keep evolving with changes in socio-economic as well as technological variables in the society. In addition, while real estate development itself is a geographically fixed commodity which implies local knowledge and regulations dominate the outcome, real estate analysis can be a much more global issue when local developers and investors desire to make an oversea investment decision to diversify investment risk. In such case, the ability for students to understand the intertwined relationship between the general principles of real estate development as well as actual market structures in other places becomes imperative. This problem-based learning ability can be enhanced with a pedagogical approach that injects training in self-initiated research, skillful communication technique and the ability to understand and analyse different socio-economic environments. In this paper, we will illustrate how an online discussion platform for students helps create a visual collaborative learning environment that enhances the learning outcomes of real estate education in a studio-discussion format, which transcends the physical constraints of arranging face-to-face meetings among students from different but related programmes. More importantly, real estate education that can prepare students with a more inter-disciplinary and internationalized basis of knowledge will be able to attract good students who aim at increasing their competitiveness in the global job market. By using the discussion forum based on the interactive environment created by Realtimeboard.com, this paper shows that students from different disciplines and cities can carry out real-time discussions on issues pertaining to urban development without the need to physically meet. The outcomes of our experiment shows that online collaborative learning platform can serve to underpin the pedagogical outcomes of real estate education in a cost-effective manner that both students and teaching staff benefit.