The Chief Executive's Interactive Exchange Question and Answer Session is held on Jan 25, 2024, at the Hong Kong Legislative Council Complex, in Central, Hong Kong. (EDMOND TANG / CHINA DAILY)

HONG KONG – The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government will introduce a bill on Wednesday at the Legislative Council to enact into law the scrapping of all curbs to cool the residential property market that was announced in the 2024-25 Budget.

The HKSAR government said in a statement that it will introduce the Stamp Duty (Amendment) Bill 2024 for first reading at the LegCo.

The bill will amend the Stamp Duty Ordinance after the government announced on Feb 28 that the Special Stamp Duty, the Buyer's Stamp Duty and the New Residential Stamp Duty will no longer be charged on all residential property transactions.

The HKSAR government cancelled the curbs after noting that while the number of residential property transactions increased for three consecutive months from October to December, the figure in January 2024 was still below the monthly average of 4,370 cases in the first half of 2023

“An amendment bill is required for necessary amendments to the respective stamp duty rates in the First Schedule to the (Ordinance),” the government said in a Legislative Council brief on the bill.

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The government said it will retain the framework and relevant provisions for SSD, BSD and NRSD embedded in the Ordinance instead of repealing them.

“This will enable the government to, as and when necessary in future, reinstate the SSD/BSD/NRSD more readily by adjusting the relevant rates, having regard to the market situation,” it added.

The government cancelled the curbs after noting that while the number of residential property transactions increased for three consecutive months from October to December, the figure in January 2024 was still below the monthly average of 4,370 cases in the first half of 2023.

“As for prices, overall residential property prices continued to adjust downward in recent months. The statistics in January 2024 were 1.6 percent lower than the previous month, and were 23 percent lower than the historical peak in September 2021,” the government brief reads.

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It noted that the number of short-term resale transactions (including confirmor transactions and resale within 24 months) accounted for 0.9 percent of the total transactions in 2023, which was substantially lower than the 20 percent before the introduction of SSD.

The number of residential property transactions involving non-local individuals and non-local companies in 2023 also stayed low at 0.8 percent of the total transactions, which was much lower than the 4.5 percent before the BSD was introduced.

Meanwhile, among residential property transactions where buyers were Hong Kong permanent residents, 97 percent of the cases in 2023 involved buyers who did not own any other residential property in the city at the time of acquisition, which was significantly higher than the 75 percent before the introduction of NRSD.

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On the supply side, with the HKSAR government’s sustained efforts to increase the supply of land and housing units, the latest projected supply in the primary private residential property market in the coming three to four years stays high at about 109,000 units as of December 2023, reflecting a stable supply in the private residential property market.