The Housing Authority's Subsidised Housing Committee today endorsed the regularisation of the sale of recovered Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) flats.

The authority said that when recovered TPS flats are put up for sale in future, the target buyers will be those with Green Form status and eligible applicants under the Express Flat Allocation Scheme.

Noting that recovered TPS flats will continue to be sold in the Home Ownership Scheme or Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme sale exercises, the authority said any TPS flat which remains unsold at the end of the sale exercise of these two schemes will be put up for sale in the Express Flat Allocation Scheme exercise which immediately follows.

Having regard to the cost-effectiveness of mounting a sale exercise, the authority will put up recovered TPS flats for sale in the exercise of the two schemes only after a reasonable number of TPS flats have been recovered.

It will adopt the existing TPS pricing mechanism and alienation restrictions, adding that the arrangements in the two previous exercises will be followed, whereby the prices of the TPS flats would be frozen throughout that particular sale exercise instead of being adjusted according to the routine list price review every two years.

A new batch of recovered TPS flats will be put up for sale in the sale of Home Ownership scheme flats 2023, the application of which will tentatively commence in mid-2023. The Housing Department will then make arrangements with relevant stakeholders to facilitate the inspection of the recovered flats as far as practicable.

The first batch of about 800 recovered TPS flats was put up for sale under the Sale of Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme flats 2020/21, and all of them were sold.

The second batch of about 500 recovered TPS flats was put up for sale under the Sale of Home Ownership Scheme flats 2022, with the sale rate standing at around 99%.

Around 17% of around 184,000 TPS flats remain unsold. The average selling price of a TPS flat is about $500,000, ranging from $140,000 to $1,230,000.