The Housing Authority's Subsidised Housing Committee today approved the new arrangements for the sale of recovered Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) flats and additional incentives to encourage sitting tenants to purchase the flats they reside in.

The recovered TPS flats will be put up for sale in the annual Home Ownership Scheme and Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme sale exercises twice a year to eligible Green Form applicants under the existing TPS pricing mechanism and alienation restrictions.

The authority said that during the sale exercise, prices of recovered TPS flats put up for sale will not be revised in accordance with the usual biennial price review, but will remain the same throughout that particular sale exercise.

Those flats which remain unsold at the end of each exercise will be carried over to the next immediate exercise, it added.

Currently, sitting tenants of the 39 TPS estates may still opt to purchase the flats they reside in and will enjoy a special credit during the first two years of their tenancies.

To encourage sitting TPS tenants to buy the flats, the committee approved an additional discount of 17.5% for one year from September 1 to sitting TPS tenants who no longer enjoy any special credit.

For sitting tenants whose TPS flat transactions are in progress when the additional discount is introduced, they are allowed to rescind the transactions without forfeiting the $2,500 intention money they have paid to the Housing Authority if they wish to enjoy the newly introduced discount.

After the Home Ownership Scheme and the Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme sale exercises, the sale of recovered TPS flats will be reviewed to consider necessary improvements to expedite the sale of the remaining rental flats from TPS estates.

As at end-June, for the around 41,000 flats of the approximately 184,000 TPS flats remaining unsold, close to 450 recovered TPS flats can be put up for sale.

The average list prices of TPS flats range from $11,000 to $22,000 per sq m, representing around 15 to 18% of the assessed market value.