A MOP49m question… and I will give you the answer

THE government’s revised 1995 North Taipa Urbanization Plan has been in the headlines. When the New Macau Association brought the subject up, it launched suspicions that the speedy announcement ahead of the Urban Planning Law (effective from March 1) was made to benefit the area’s private land owners, including Chan Meng Kam and the Chief Executive’s elder brother Chui Sai Cheong, both land shareholders there.
As dutifully pointed out by a number of CE-
appointed lawmakers at the Legislative Assembly last week, it is legitimate to invest in land where a building permit for residential construction does not exist and expect that, due to the urban pressure, city planners will change their minds, opening roads for large profits. Nothing wrong with that, but problems can arise when the ones who make decisions about land usage are directly linked to the ones who benefit from those decisions.
I don’t know if that is the case with the North Taipa Urbanization Plan, but it’s clear that the MSAR badly needs an effective urban plan that provides more housing. If the authorities continue to stall projects, the consequences could be dire.
Walking past a very well located “luxury project,” I saw an estate agent holding some floor plans. I asked him what the price of a T2 was (a flat with 2 bedrooms and a living room). After resorting to a calculator, he came up with a figure: MOP49 million. MOP49 million? I immediately thought of the several incarnations that a wage-dependent family would need to come up with those savings… Only in the afterlife!
I can hear you, gentle bourgeois reader, saying that it is a high-end flat that they are selling there, and the luxury is for those who can afford it. But I ask back: What is this luxury that’s being sold to you? Is it a luxury to live in a high rise T2 (and not a “low-density project,” as stated by the publicists) that can hardly accommodate a family? That’s not my notion of luxury.
I recently interviewed Jeff Wong, head of residential sales at Jones Lang LaSalle (Macau), who says that the only way to improve the situation of the housing market in Macau is by increasing the supply. He calculates that around 7,000 units are under construction in Macau, and 30,000 others are waiting for government approval. The controversial plan of the Northern District of Taipa and Ilha Verde could add 50,000 more units. Jeff Wong says that the government now needs to “think of ways to simplify and speed up the [approval] procedures in order to increase the supply.” Otherwise, the market conditions won’t change significantly... Mr Wong may have a point.
Sustainable urban development is needed in Macau. Let’s hope that the new law will contribute to help avoid mistakes made in the past. There’s a lot to do, like renewing old neighborhoods whilst keeping the heritage features and protecting green spaces.  
The housing shortage is characteristic of territories like Macau, and there are ways to deal with that. In Hong Kong, a plan was announced last week for 152 sites, on which the HKSAR government plans to build half of the 470,000 housing units promised over the next 10 years. The plan is not exempt from controversy. According to the South China Morning Post, the “rezoning of the green belts and public sites looks set to eat up swathes of green belt and community sites in satellite towns in the New Territories.”
What the plan indicates is that the HK authorities are aware of this chronic housing shortage problem and are doing something to curb it. Macau can’t stall on this challenge, or the housing problem will cripple the region’s development.
(published in MDT)