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Housing

General applicants are allocated PRH according to the order of their registrations, family size and choice of districts. For non-elderly one-person applicants, priority under the QPS is determined by age, waiting time and whether the person has been residing in PRH. All applicants must meet the Housing Authority's residence requirements and pass detailed income and asset vetting and the Domestic Property Test.

Eligible applicants may be allocated PRH earlier by opting for less popular flats under the Express Flat Allocation Scheme. About 780 households benefited from this scheme in 2017.

Home Ownership

Subsidised sale flats

The

government provides subsidised sale flats in response to the home ownership aspirations. of low- to middle-income families. The third batch of 2,057 new HOS flats was put up for

pre- sale in March. All the flats were sold by October 2017 and are due to be completed in 2018-19.

In October, the Housing Society offered its third batch of 620 subsidised sale flats for pre-sale.

The Housing Authority's Interim Scheme to Extend the HOS Secondary Market to White Form Buyers' has helped about 4,000 applicants achieve home ownership on the secondary market and promoted the circulation of subsidised sale flats. The Housing Authority has conducted a review and the interim scheme was regularised as the White Form Secondary Market Scheme, which will be launched with an annual quota of 2,500 in the first quarter of 2018 together with the Sale of HOS Flats 2018.

Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Pilot Scheme

King Tai Court, the PRH project in San Po Kong selected by the Housing Authority in 2016 for sale to Green Form applicants under the Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Pilot Scheme (GSH), was nearly 18 times oversubscribed. All the 857 flats were sold. In the October 2017 Policy Address, the government proposed providing more GSH flats among newly built public housing. The Housing Authority expects to complete reviewing the effectiveness of the pilot project in early 2018.

'Starter Homes' Pilot Scheme for Hong Kong Residents

As announced in the October 2017 Policy Address, the government plans to introduce, on the premise that public housing supply will not be affected, the 'Starter Homes' Pilot Scheme for Hong Kong Residents as a new form of subsidised home ownership, to reignite the hopes of middle-class families to own a home in the face of rising property prices.

The government's initial thinking is to add provisions to the land lease requiring developers to pursue mixed developments on sites owned by themselves or bought from the government,

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White Form applicants are households that are not PRH tenants and meet the eligibility criteria for buying subsidised sale flats.

Green Form applicants are mainly PRH tenants and PRH applicants who have passed the detailed eligibility vetting and obtained a Green Form Certificate.

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