Prominent Macau realtor William Kuan Vai Lam has welcomed Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng's recent announcement that the government plans to resume land auctions by the end of the year or early next year, Hong Kong's The Standard reports today.
The English-language daily quoted Kuan, who heads the Association of Property Agents and Reality Developers of Macau, as saying that the announced resumption of land auctions would not raise property prices but result in "more transparency" for the real-estate market.
Macau has not held land auctions since 2008, The Standard pointed out.
Ho announced the relaunch of land auctions in a Q&A session in the Macau Legislative Assembly (AL) last Wednesday, a day after delivering his 2022 Policy Address in the legislature's hemicycle.
Ho said the aim of the upcoming land auctions was, among other things, to raise public revenue and tackle budget deficits incurred over two years in a row due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the local economy.
However, Ho cautioned that the land auctions would depend on market demand and needed to be in line with the needs of residential property market and the government's public housing projects.
Ho warned that there are thousands of vacant flats in the market as local residents can't afford them because of their high price and large size. He hinted that many potential homebuyers were looking for smaller and therefore cheaper flats.
Since the establishment of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) in December 1999 only three plots of land have been awarded to the private sector through land auctions, the report noted. Most plots were directly granted to enterprises and organisations over the past two decades, such as for casino-hotel operators.
In 2014, Macau promulgated a law according to which all future land concessions shall be awarded by auction except when public interest is involved.
Macau's land area amounts to just 33 square kilometres, just 3.1 percent of Hong Kong's.
