the development of new land sold by the Crown and on the redevelop- ment of land occupied by old three or four storey buildings. Owing to the pressure of population, the rising standard of living, the steadily increasing cost of land, and the fear of rent increases, there is an apparently insatiable demand for more flats. So great is this demand that many people are prepared to pay all or most of the price of a flat before work has even begun on the building. Indeed, people were prepared to do this even when the lot was held under Conditions of Sale, which invariably prohibit the owner from agreeing to sell any portion of the premises prior to the completion of a building covenant. The result was that a great many people paid for flats literally in the air, and did not even have the protection which registration of the agreements for sale in the Land Office would give. The dangers inherent in the situation were obvious, and on 20th December 1961 Government announced its decision to permit the sale of flats in uncompleted multi- storey buildings held under Conditions of Sale provided the Land Officer's consent was first obtained. At the same time it was announced that the Land Officer's consent for the sale of such flats would normally be given if he was satisfied that the developer was able to finance the project and was investing a substantial sum of his own money in it, and if the proposed agreement provided:
(a) for the sale of the flat by reference to a plan which had already been approved by the Building Authority, and for the completion of the building by a specified date;
(b) that the sums paid by the flat buyer should be held by the vendor's Solicitors and applied solely towards the cost of con- struction as this proceeded against architect's certificates as to the amounts spent;
(c) that the agreement would be registered in the Land Office; and (d) that the assignment itself would not be executed until the
building had been completed.
Since the majority of new blocks of flats are erected on sites of premises in respect of which Exclusion Orders have been made under the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (Cap. 255), similar restrictions on the sale of flats in new buildings on such sites were imposed in all Exclusion Orders made after the date of the announcement. By the end of the year nineteen applications had been made for the Land Officer's consent to agreements for sale, of which nine were approved, and ten were pending.
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