Authorities should provide quality homes rather than just roll out more flats, a leading Hong Kong think tank said on Thursday, as it predicted the government would meet its public housing supply target in a few years.

In a study, Our Hong Kong Foundation forecast that an average of 35,000 flats, including light public housing, were set to be completed annually over the next five years. This would exceed the government’s target of 30,800 flats per year.

“We can see that we are entering a “harvest phase” in land supply in the next few years, hence the prospects of [housing] supply will continue to improve,” Ryan Ip Man-ki, the foundation’s vice-president and co-head of research, said.

In the Hong Kong Housing Landscape Navigator study, the think tank estimated that the city’s housing supply in both public and private sectors would increase in the next few years.

For public housing flats, the think tank said that the government would be able to roll out an average of 29,000 traditional rental and subsidised home ownership properties for tenants annually in the next five years. The figure excludes light housing, government-built temporary homes that aim to serve families on the waiting list for a public flat for three or more years.

The number of public housing flats to be completed is expected to continue to rise in the subsequent five-year period, with the think tank projecting an average of 39,800 per year under conditions of three-year land handover delays and 15 per cent of projects subject to construction delays.