Why Should HK Property Prices be Lower than 1997 Levels?

This was the question asked by a Hong Kong property executive. A very innocent question by the looks of it and quite normal for a person selling real estate. What could be better for him and his company? Higher prices and bigger profits of course. Add to that a wish for prices never coming down ever!

Going back the question, if you are a property owner, you would say, "yeah, why should it be lower? It should be higher!". 1997 is centuries ago, 2011 is almost here, just factor in inflation and prices should be higher. There's really no reason for real estate prices to be lower than 1997 levels. In addition, there's no property bubble here. Prices are just higher.

On the other hand if you are an ordinary Hong Kong guy or family without a personally owned home and waiting for a long time to get one, you definitely need to wait longer, or another option is to just quit waiting. As things are going at this time, with prices going up so fast salary increases will definitely not be able to catch up with real estate price increases. Guys like these (including me) would say prices should be lower than 1997 levels so that more HK people can afford to buy their own homes. It's a very lame reason though as wishes by people don't get answered anymore. The market's definitely being played well by people who are asking the question posed in the title of this post. I'm sure the HK government is not going to mess things up by doing more to adding measures to lower prices.

So, powerless poor guys will settle for rants on the internet (just like this one) to express their hopelessness but keep on plodding along. What's there to do?