January 9, 2018     How Joseph and Mary bought a bargain house ....in HK!

Joseph and Mary were due to be married but they couldn't afford a house in Hong Kong. Many of their friends were in the same situation. So were some of their relatives. So they found a way to solve their problem.

They held an open meeting which was attended by about 40 families. The meeting decided to set up a committee and apply to the government for a start-up funding grant to help buy an old factory building and turn it into apartments.

Government bureaucrats had an attack of Christmas charity and agreed to the request, providing 25% of the funding, seeing the project as part of the government's revitalisation scheme. The families raised the rest of the funds and as a body corporate took ownership of the building. A construction firm boss, a friend of one of the families, agreed to take on the project at cost price.

The renovations took about a year and cost only a fraction of the cost of a new building. It was a win-win situation, for the building, for the families and for the government.