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Buy or rent? Hong Kong homebuyers face an age-old housing dilemma
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Chris TsangPublished: 2:00pm, 16 Aug 2026Updated: 2:12pm, 16 Aug 2026Trapped between rising residential rents and the looming shadow of interest rate increases, Hong Kong homebuyers are revisiting that age-old dilemma when making decisions about housing: buy or rent?
The Centa-City Rental Index (CRI), which reflects the rent of second-hand private residential properties in Hong Kong, has been rising throughout the year to 136.34 in July from 129.57 at the beginning of 2026, a cumulative increase of 5.2 per cent.
“The rent is too high,” said Jimmy Lau, who works in the IT industry and spent HK$4.68 million at the end of last month to buy a 474 sq ft low-floor unit in Telford Gardens in Kowloon Bay, with a price tag of HK$9,873 per square foot.
“I had been renting before, and the lease was about to expire towards the end of the first half of the year,” he said. “But now that rents have risen a lot, my family suggested that it would be better to simply buy a home.”
He paid 30 per cent of the down payment to purchase his current unit and borrowed a 70 per cent mortgage with a 30-year repayment period. The current monthly mortgage payment is about HK$14,300.
“Currently the monthly rent for a similar unit is about HK$15,500 – but as the property price has dropped, and I made a relatively large down payment, the mortgage payment expense is now less than the rent,” he said.
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