Hong Kong housing

During the Lunar New Year, Hong Kong resident Guo Yongfeng returned to the Chinese mainland to visit his hometown of Harbin, the capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. But the outbreak of Covid-19 on the mainland meant that he was required to spend 14 days in self-quarantine upon his return to Hong Kong. But Guo lives in a cubicle in a subdivided housing unit known as a “cage home,” and found it impossible to completely isolate himself until he managed to get a bed in a government quarantine facility.

Hong Kong has been ranked yet again as the world’s least affordable housing market with social unrest failing to make any meaningful dent on home prices for most of 2019. It is the 10th straight year the city has held that dubious honor and is unlikely to be toppled in the near future. A family in the city would need to save up for 20.8 years to afford a home in the city, according to the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Study, which ranks 92 major markets across the world based on median affordability scores. That has barely changed from 20.9 years in 2018. Vancouver came in a distant second at 11.9 while Sydney took third place at 11. Melbourne at 9.5 and Los Angeles

As weekly protests have continued to rock Hong Kong, the city’s authorities have pinned down one thing more than any other as the economic cause of the unrest: unaffordable housing. Across the border from the semi-autonomous city, the southern tech hub of Shenzhen in mainland China is trying to avoid its neighbor’s woes. Hong Kong has the world's most unaffordable property prices. Shenzhen is eschewing Hong Kong's housing model in favor of a system that focuses on affordable public housing. As part of its latest housing reform, the municipal government this week published a rule setting a benchmark land price across the city and stipulating that land sold for subsidized housing should be pri

Lam Chi-ngai, 76, call himself the last resident of Sunshine Island. The tiny island is located in Hong Kong. It’s been abandoned for years, but Lam regularly visits for days at a time. He first fell in love with the place after going there to recover from surgery in 1978, and he strongly objects to the government’s controversial plan to build artificial islands nearby, which he says will ruin the ecosystem. Watch the video, above, to see why the island means so much to Lam.

Thousands of Hongkongers have taken to the streets to protest against a controversial proposal to spend up to $64 billion to build an artificial chain of islands in the middle of the sea. At the peak of the Sunday rally, police estimated that 5,800 demonstrators took part. Some held signs and banners in the shape of white elephants, which is what they believe the project will be, while others dismissed the proposal as “outright robbery”. The scheme was proposed by Hong Kong’s top leader, Carrie Lam, during her annual policy address last week. At that price, the project would be much more pricier than the Palm Jumeirah, an artificial archipelago in Dubai that reportedly cost an estimated $12

On Sunday, members of a government task force aiming to find a solution to Hong Kong’s housing crisis visited families living in subdivided apartments in the working-class Sham Shui Po neighborhood of Hong Kong. In a public forum afterwards, a woman showed them a plastic bottle she used to collect bed bugs. She’d found 200 in a week. The woman said she lives in a 30-sq-ft space in a subdivided apartment, which costs her HK$1,900 ($245) a month to rent. She lives in what’s often known as “coffin” homes, subdivided apartments that derive their name from their cramped quarters. The typical living area for each tenant is 45 square feet – about the size of a ping-pong table – according to the Sub

Hong Kong has the most expensive residential property in the world, according to US property think tank Demographia. With limited supply and increasing demand, property prices have shot through the roof in the last two decades. The average apartment in the city costs $700,000 and is tiny by mainstream (non-Hong Kong) standards. The city government has long followed a policy to sell land to the highest bidder. But with prices – and discontent – so high, is it time for a change?

Got one million dollars? Then you can afford a 209-sq ft apartment in Hong Kong. That’s smaller than the area you’d get if you combined two parking spaces. An apartment in the city’s upscale Pok Fu Lam neighborhood sold for $1 million this week, according to its developer. That price translates into $4,800 per sq ft – a record price for Hong Kong’s so-called micro-apartments.  The studio flat consists of an open area that serves as living room, bedroom and dining hall, plus a corner bathroom.  Another 310-sq ft apartment in the same building, constructed by Kowloon Development, was recently sold for $1.4 million. Hong Kong has been the world’s least affordable property market for eight year

I survived a night inside a water pipe. Well, it isn’t as dramatic as it sounds. I volunteered myself as tribute to be the first overnight guest of the OPod, a renovated water pipe which has been hailed as a solution to Hong Kong’s ever-worsening housing crisis. Hong Kong has been crowned the priciest home market in the world for eight years straight. The city’s housing prices have more than quadrupled since 2003. Many families struggle to find affordable housing, and a lot of them have no choice but to live in “coffin homes” – subdivided flats that are often smaller than a prison cell. Local architect James Law, who designed the OPod, believes that his micro-flat can help ease the city's ho