Here's what everyone can expect from the upcoming 2015 Policy Address

Housing still a key focus.

The 2015 Policy Address will be delivered on 14 January 2015, and in keeping with the past two years, it is believed that housing will remain a key focus but the message should still be one of increasing Hong Kong’s long-term housing supply and improving affordability.

According to a research note from Barclays, in addition to reiterating its commitment to supply 480,000 housing units over the next 10 years, some new initiatives could be included.

Barclays noted that these could be: establishing a new “sandwich class” subsidized housing sale scheme; making use of Hong Kong’s country parks for housing development; and a bigger role for the Housing Authority in meeting public housing supply needs.

While Barclays does not expect any new property cooling measures, with home prices up 11.2% in 2014, it believes the Government’s tone on housing will be more hawkish with perhaps a reference to “some signs of overheating”.

Here's more from Barclays:

The 2015 Policy Address will be delivered on 14 January 2015. In keeping with the past two years, we believe housing will remain a key focus but the message should still be one of increasing Hong Kong’s long-term housing supply and affordability.

That said, in terms of potential new initiatives, we believe the Government had already floated several ideas to gauge market reaction.

Some of these are likely to include:
(1) Introduction of a new subsidised housing for sale scheme that targets the sandwich class between public rental housing tenants and the Home Ownership Scheme. Currently for a three person family, the income ceiling for public rental housing is HK$19,820/month and for HOS units it is HK$46,000/month. In order to restore the
trade-up ladder for public housing, the Hong Kong Government may introduce a new “sandwich class” to provide an intermediate step to enable public rental housing tenants to transition to home ownership.

(2) Making use of Hong Kong’s country parks to help address the land supply shortage. The idea of using Hong Kong’s country parks to help meet Hong Kong’s housing needs was first floated in September 2013. The Secretary for Development has floated this idea again in December 2014, pointing out that Hong Kong currently only uses 76 sq km for residential development while Hong Kong’s 24 country parks cover a site area of 435 sq km. Given strong public resistance to the original idea back in September 2013, for the Development Secretary to revisit it again points to a stronger likelihood of more concrete measures on this front.

(3) A bigger role for the Housing Authority to address public housing needs. On 18 December, two days after the Government had updated its Long Term Housing Strategy, the Hong Kong Government announced that it will inject the first instalment of HK$27bn into a reserve for the Housing Authority to help meet the public side of its 10 year goal of supplying 480,000 housing units.