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Following is a transcript of remarks (English portion) by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Ms Eva Cheng, at a media session at Central Government Offices, Tamar this afternoon (March 13) on the Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Bill:
I am very pleased to announce that the Executive Council this morning just approved introduction of the Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Bill to the Legislative Council. We will be gazetting the Bill this Friday for introduction next Wednesday on the 21st of March.
The Bill covers the sale of all first-hand residential flats. It is a fair, balanced, practical and effective package. It helps achieve price transparency and introduce uniformed standard. There will be detailed requirements on sales brochure, price list, show flat, and sales arrangement. The use of "saleable area" will be the only basis for quoting property size and property price per square foot or metre for all first-hand sales of (residential) flats. We also stipulate that accurate information has to be provided and there will be timely disclosure, e.g. 24 hours after the signing of the Preliminary Agreement for Sale and Purchase, transaction information needs to be disclosed. We will be introducing criminal sanctions for contraventions, e.g. involving acts of misrepresentation and disseminating false or misleading information, making them offences. We will be setting penalty at a fine of five million dollars and an imprisonment of up to seven years. We believe the regulatory regime, on the whole, will protect consumer rights of our home buyers and create a level-playing field for the trade. As to the 900-plus submissions we had received, we have compiled them into a compendium and we are also launching them on our website today. We have also provided comments on those submissions.
This Bill is the top priority of the work of the Transport and Housing Bureau and our colleagues and I will be doing our very best to facilitate the LegCo as they examine the Bill.
Reporter: Secretary, how would you assume the passage of the Bill? That's the number one. How would a prospective buyer be better off after the passage of the legislation than currently?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: I hope the Bill will be passed and am quite confident about that. The buyer is much better off in the sense that I've described. There will be very detailed stipulations on the information to be provided in sales brochures, price lists, show flats and the sales arrangements. There will be accurate information as well as timely disclosure. As I said, certain transaction information will be available 24 hours instead of five days at the moment, so, timely disclosure. I think overall speaking, because we've introduced criminal sanctions, the trade now understands it is very important that they comply with the provisions, particularly over misleading or dissemination of false information. Otherwise, they will be caught with criminal sanction. I think these are very clear and important messages, and thus restore certain balance between buyers and sellers. At the moment, we are depending on administrative and self-regulatory regime instead of regulation through the law.
Reporter: Secretary, we're going to have a new law. Will this be triggered by complaints or the government will do anything proactively to see these rules or regulations will actually be adopted?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: We will be doing both. We are going to set up an enforcement agency and hopefully it will be up and running in about 12 months time from the enactment of the law. We're proposing that the enforcement agency in the first instance be housed under the Transport and Housing Bureau so that we do have a team of staff, must be multi-disciplinary staff to start with. We need lawyers, we need surveyors and we need administrators. In the longer term, it may turn into a statutory body. But because I think the community would like us to start work on enforcement as soon as possible, so placing it under the Bureau is a very expeditious way of setting up an enforcement agency.
Reporter: Do you have the cost estimate for it?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: Not yet.
Reporter: Why are you confident of the passage of the Bill?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: It is because the legislators all tell me that they support both the spirit and letter of the legislation that we are going to propose, and the main stream view in the community is that the sale of first hand flats ought to be regulated by law.
Ends/Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Issued at HKT 21:57
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