With the government owning all land in Hong Kong, public land sales have been an important channel for developers to acquire land for property development, apart from private-led urban regeneration. For the colonial time before 1997, land was supplied to the market via a supply-oriented model,...

Shared equity homeownership is a form of subsidised, resale-restricted housing through which lower-income households can sustain their affordability. This paper aims to distinguish two types of affordability within shared equity homeownership: “entry affordability” indicates how affordable...

Different institutional features have been found to affect capital structure decisions, but their connections to corporate finance theories are not always clear. This study aims to assess the predictive power of the agency and pecking order theories in two distinct information environments. The...

This study examines the effect of housing wealth on household consumption when there are resale (including refinancing) constraints that prevent housing assets from being cashed out. Based on household-level expenditure data in Hong Kong, two resale constraints are found to have weakened the...

Real estate flippers earn higher returns than average traders in the market. By intensively searching for dumb buyers or sellers, they buy-low and sell-high to earn a monthly return that is 6.0% higher over the market returns. Their excess returns are dictated by the spread of investors'...

Indirect real estate (IRE) returns are often shown to lead direct real estate (DRE) returns. Apart from differences in liquidity, transaction costs, and management skills, the DRE market is also less complete than the IRE market — when negative shocks arrive, one can only short IRE (e.g., real...

Purpose: Shared equity homeownership is a form of subsidised, resale-restricted housing through which lower-income households can sustain their affordability. This paper aims to distinguish two types of affordability within shared equity homeownership: “entry affordability” indicates how...

Providing affordable housing has become one of China’s key national policy agenda items. The shared-equity model in Hong Kong, implemented since the late 1970s, has assisted many families in owning a home in the public housing market. However, little attention has been paid to their welfare...