The Housing Authority's Subsidised Housing Committee today approved a series of measures to encourage upward mobility via the housing ladder, including increasing the allocation of homes under the White Form Secondary Market Scheme (WSM).

Starting from the next WSM exercise, the authority will increase the allocation by 1,000, to 7,000. Half of the additional allocation will be reserved for young families and one-person applicants aged below 40 under the Youth Scheme (WSM). The remaining 500 will be ordinary allocations.

The authority highlighted that in response to keen market demand, under WSM 2024, it increased the allocation by 1,500 homes, with all of these going to young families and one-person applicants aged below 40. It said that WSM 2024 was about five times over-subscribed.

Stressing that more than 80% of the applications received came from young applicants under the Youth Scheme (WSM), it added that this shows the scheme is valued by young people.

Regarding operational arrangements, the committee said that in recent WSM exercises an average of about 15% to 20% of applicants allocated a home failed to apply for a Certificate of Eligibility to Purchase (CEP) within the specified period.

To avoid wastage of allocations, the committee said that starting from the next WSM exercise the number of approval letters issued by the authority will be higher than the total WSM allocation. Details of the over-issuance will be announced prior to each application period.

The committee added that starting from the WSM 2024, any unused allocations will be given to one-person applicants, consistent with the practice adopted in the sale of primary subsidised sale flats (SSF).

Moreover, to ensure full utilisation of the WSM 2024 allocation, the authority will issue an additional batch of approval letters corresponding to the ballot order.

The authority will also increase the ratio Green Form to White Form allocations from 40:60 to 50:50 starting from the next Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) sale exercise, and at the same time increase the ratio of larger units in HOS and Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme (GSH) projects to encourage more Public Rental Housing tenants to purchase SSFs.

Taking into account the fact that HOS and GSH flat transactions on the open market have been declining, and to encourage upward mobility via the housing ladder, the committee decided today to shorten the alienation restriction period for new SSFs offered for sale on the open market from 15 years to 10 years from the date of the first assignment, starting from the next HOS and GSH sale exercises.