The city’s real-estate market has been hurt by high interest rates and mainland China’s economic slowdown
3 min
Hong Kong has taken a bold step to ease a real-estate slump, scrapping a series of property taxes in an effort to turn around a market that is often seen as a proxy for the city’s beleaguered economy.
The government has removed longstanding property taxes that were imposed on nonpermanent residents, those buying a second home, or people reselling a property within two years after buying, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said in his annual budget speech on Wednesday.
The move is an attempt to revive a property market that is still one of the most expensive in the world, but that has been badly shaken by social unrest, the fallout of the government’s strict approach to containing Covid-19 and the slowdown of China’s economy . Hong Kong’s high interest rates, which track U.S. rates due to its currency peg, have increased the pressure .
The decision to ease the tax burden could encourage more buying from people in mainland China, who have been a driving force in Hong Kong’s property market for years. Chinese tycoons, squeezed by problems at home, have in some cases become forced sellers of Hong Kong real estate—dealing major damage to the luxury segment.
Hong Kong’s super luxury homes have lost more than a quarter of their value since the middle of 2022.
The additional taxes were introduced in a series of announcements starting in 2010, when the government was focused on cooling down soaring home prices that had made Hong Kong one of the world’s least affordable property markets. They are all in the form of stamp duty, a tax imposed on property sales.
“The relevant measures are no longer necessary amidst the current economic and market conditions,” Chan said.
The tax cuts will lead to more buying and support prices in the coming months, said Eddie Kwok, senior director of valuation and advisory services at CBRE Hong Kong, a property consultant. But in the longer term, the market will remain sensitive to the level of interest rates and developers may still need to lower their prices to attract demand thanks to a stockpile of new homes, he said.
Hong Kong’s authorities had already relaxed rules last year to help revive the market, allowing home buyers to pay less upfront when buying certain properties, and cutting by half the taxes for those buying a second property and for home purchases by foreigners. By the end of 2023, the price index for private homes reached a seven-year low, according to Hong Kong’s Rating and Valuation Department.
The city’s monetary authority relaxed mortgage rules further on Wednesday, allowing potential buyers to borrow more for homes valued at around $4 million.
The shares of Hong Kong’s property developers jumped after the announcement, defying a selloff in the wider market. New World Development , Sun Hung Kai Properties and Henderson Land Development were higher in afternoon trading, clawing back some of their losses from a slide in their stock prices this year.
The city’s budget deficit will widen to about $13 billion in the coming fiscal year, which starts on April 1. That is larger than expected, Chan said. Revenues from land sales and leases, an important source of government income, will fall to about $2.5 billion, about $8.4 billion lower than the original estimate and far lower than the previous year, according to Chan.
The sweeping property measures are part of broader plans by Hong Kong’s government to prop up the city amid competition from Singapore and elsewhere. Stringent pandemic controls and anxieties about Beijing’s political crackdown led to an exodus of local residents and foreigners from the Asian financial centre.
But tens of thousands of Chinese nationals have arrived in the past year, the result of Hong Kong rolling out new visa rules aimed at luring talent in 2022.
The government on Wednesday vowed to attract more talent to the city from mainland China and overseas and provide services to help them settle. It also earmarked the equivalent of more than $128 million for tourism in the coming year to lure more high-spending visitors to spend the night, the budget said.
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Unmarried home buyers say they are giving priority to a financial foundation over a legal one
4 min
The big wedding can wait. Couples are deciding they would rather take the plunge into homeownership.
In reshuffling the traditional order of adult milestones, some couples may decide not to marry at all, while others say they are willing to delay a wedding. Buying a home is as much, if not more of a commitment, they reason. It helps them build financial stability when the housing market is historically unaffordable.
In 2023, about 555,000 unmarried couples said that they had bought their home in the previous year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Census Bureau data. That is up 46% from 10 years earlier, when just under 381,000 couples did the same.
Unmarried couples amounted to more than 11% of all U.S. home sales. The percentage has climbed steadily over the past two decades—a period in which marriage rates have fallen. These couples make up triple the share of the housing market that they did in the mid-1980s, according to the National Association of Realtors.
To make it work, couples must look past the significant risk that the relationship could blow up, or something could happen to one partner. Without a marriage certificate, living situations and finances are more likely to fall into limbo, attorneys say.
Mark White, 59 years old, and Sheila Davidson, 62, bought a lakeside townhouse together in Newport News, Va., in 2021. But only her name is on the deed. He sometimes worries about what would happen to the house if something happened to her. They have told their children that he should inherit the property, but don’t have formal documentation.
“We need to get him on the deed at some point,” Davidson said.
White and Davidson both had previous marriages, and decided they don’t want to do it again. They also believe tying the knot would affect their retirement benefits and tax brackets.
Couples that forgo or postpone marriage say they are giving priority to a financial foundation over a legal one. The median homeowner had nearly $400,000 in wealth in 2022, compared with roughly $10,000 for renters, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
Even couples that get married first are often focused on the house. Many engaged couples ask for down-payment help in lieu of traditional wedding gifts.
“A mortgage feels like a more concrete step toward their future together than a wedding,” said Emily Luk, co-founder of Plenty, a financial website for couples.
Elise Dixon and Nick Blue, both 29, watched last year as the Fed lifted rates, ostensibly pushing up the monthly costs on a mortgage. The couple, together for four years, decided to use $80,000 of their combined savings, including an unexpected inheritance she received from her grandfather, to buy a split-level condo in Washington, D.C.
“Buying a house is actually a bigger commitment than an engagement,” Dixon said.
They did that, too, getting engaged eight months after their April 2023 closing date. They are planning a small ceremony on the Maryland waterfront next year with around 75 guests, which they expect to cost less than they spent on the home’s down payment and closing costs.
The ages at which people buy homes and enter marriages have both been trending upward. The median age of first marriage for men is 30.2, and for women, 28.6, according to the Census Bureau. That is up from 29.3 and 27.0 a decade earlier. The National Association of Realtors reported this year that the median age of first-time buyers was 38, up from 31 in 2014.
Family lawyers—and parents—sometimes suggest protections in case the unmarried couple breaks up. A prenup-like cohabitation agreement spells out who keeps the house, and how to divide the financial obligations. Without the divorce process, a split can be even messier, legal advisers say.
Family law attorneys say more unmarried people are calling for legal advice, but often balk at planning for a potential split, along with the cost of drawing up such agreements, which can range from $1,000 to $3,000, according to attorney-matching service Legal Match.
Dixon, the Washington condo buyer, said she brushed off her mother’s suggestion that she draft an agreement with Blue detailing how much she invested, figuring that their mutual trust and equal contributions made it unnecessary. (They are planning to get a prenup when they wed, she said.)
There are a lot of questions couples don’t often think about, such as whether one owner has the option to buy the other out, and how quickly they need to identify a real-estate agent if they decide to sell, said Ryan Malet, a real-estate lawyer in the D.C. region.
The legal risks often don’t deter young home buyers.
Peyton Kolb, 26, and her fiancé figured that a 150-person wedding would cost $200,000 or more. Instead, they bought a three-bedroom near Tampa with a down payment of less than $50,000.
“We could spend it all on one day, or we could invest in something that would build equity and give us space to grow,” said Kolb, who works in new-home sales.
Owning a place where guests could sleep in an extra bedroom, instead of on the couch in their old rental, “really solidified us starting our lives together,” Kolb said. Their wedding is set for next May.
Homes and weddings have both gotten more expensive, but there are signs that home prices are rising faster. From 2019 to 2023, the median sales price for existing single-family homes rose by 44%, according to the National Association of Realtors. The average cost of a wedding increased 25% over that time, according to annual survey data from The Knot.
Roughly three quarters of couples move in together before marriage, and may already be considering the trade-offs between buying and renting. The cost of both has risen sharply over the past few years, but rent rises regularly while buying with a fixed-rate mortgage caps at least some of the costs.
An $800 rent hike prompted Sonali Prabhu and Ryan Willis, both 27, to look at buying. They were already paying $3,200 in monthly rent on their two-bedroom Austin, Texas, apartment, and felt they had outgrown it while working from home.
In October, they closed on a $425,000 three-bed, three-bath house. Their mortgage payment is $200 more than their rent would have been, but they have more space. They split the down payment and she paid about $50,000 for some renovations.
Her dad’s one request was that the house face east for good fortune, she said. Both parents are eagerly awaiting an engagement.
“We’re very solid right now,” said Prabhu, who plans to get married in 2026. “The marriage will come when it comes.”
