More than 1,000 demonstrators marched through downtown Hong Kong yesterday demanding more public housing amid rising anger over the territory’s sky-high property market.
The noisy crowd snaked through the densely-packed territory of 7 million, with activists calling on government officials to boost their efforts to bring down soaring real-estate prices.
“Low-income people cannot afford to have their own house so we want the government to do more to help,” demonstrator Rex Lai said.
Photo: AFP
The territory should build more public housing because “prices are going up very fast,” a demonstrator named Andy Hui said.
Official crowd estimates were not immediately available, but police at the scene estimated at least 1,000 people took part in the rally.
The financial hub, famous for its sky-high rents and super-rich tycoons, has seen home prices surge on the back of record-low interest rates and a flood of wealthy buyers from mainland China.
The government has imposed new taxes and staged a series of land auctions in the past year-and-a-half to boost supply and bring down prices.
Separately, the latest housing report showed that a total of 35 used home sales was recorded at 10 private housing estates in Hong Kong on Saturday and yesterday, an increase of 40 percent from last weekend, according to Centaline Property Agency Ltd (中原地產).
The figure is the highest in three months, reflecting rebounding investor confidence after the financial markets stabilized, the agency said by e-mail yesterday in a Chinese-language statement.
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