A study of the Hong Kong property market: housing price expectations

The size and direction of correlation between housing price movements and expectations differ between housing actors and change over time in Hong Kong. A cross-sectional market outlook survey was conducted in November 2000 to measure housing price expectations and their formation. The study challenges the traditional adaptive expectations theory and finds that the pessimistic mindset of market actors in a deflationary period was due to a lack of economic confidence - the root cause for weak expectations. It also suggests that there exist differential price expectations between different actors. Homebuyers and investors tend to be unrealistically overconfident in the long-term performance of the real estate market. Evidently, the determination of house sale prices is predominantly forward-looking, based more upon macroeconomic fundamentals than the past price trend.