The Housing Authority will implement the second round of the Interim Scheme to Extend the Home Ownership Scheme Secondary Market to White Form Buyers in mid-2015, but the quota will be trimmed from 5,000 to 2,500 to address concerns about the possible impact on flat prices.
Since it was launched early last year, more than 2,100 households as at the end of September have entered the market through the scheme.
The authority today said the scheme has successfully helped lower-to-middle-income people own homes, and improved the circulation of the HOS Secondary Market.
The first batch of new HOS flats will not be completed until 2016-17, so the scheme can serve as an additional channel for White Form buyers to purchase subsidised flats in the interim period.
For this round of the scheme there will be some new measures to streamline the procedures. These include issuing one more round of Approval Letters to other applicants if successful applicants do not collect the Certificates of Eligibility to Purchase within the prescribed period of six weeks; lengthening the validity period of the certificate to 12 months; successful applicants can collect the certificate directly after paying fees; and, omitting the checking on income and asset limits previously conducted at the Letter of Nomination stage.
