New Territories Indigenous Villagers Rights

Does anybody understand how this law works? We are looking to buy and our landlord has made us a very reasonable offer, but he says his name has to stay on the deed (as well as ours) because it must be owned by an indigenous villager. I'm not sure whether be means the land or the building on it. He speaks no English so all conversations are through an amateur translator so it's clear as mud.


We will of course go to a property lawyer if it gets that far, but if anybody has any initial info, we'd love to hear it.


Thanks in advance.

We looked at this. Even with the advantage of a Cantonese wife, I never got close to understanding what was happening. But I can share with you that you must begin by checking the lease (a public record at the government offices in Queensway) for any "restictions on alienation". Also, if it belongs to a traditional organisation (known as a "tso" or "Tsong") you may even require permission from the Secretary of Home Affairs.



Quite apart from these legal issues, there is a "face" problem: the land has often been passed down from father to son for generations and the whole village (ie cousins/uncles) will gossip if the current owner sells it. Hence the need for him to retain some form of notional "ownership".



And the next thing is that some of the land "belonging" to the house may in practice be communally owned and already verbally "promised" to a developer at some unspecified and/or unverifiable future date.



Anyway, the first port of call is to pull up all available public info, either by going to Queensway or by getting it online here:

https://www.iris.gov.hk/eservices/byaddress/search.jsp



Your life will be a whole lot easier when doing this search if you know the "Property Reference Number": select that search option in the dropdown box.



In the end, we decided - using a discount rate to reflect the risks that was plucked out of thin air! - that we would bid the equivalent of seven years rent for a comparable property. This was about 30% away from the owner's bottom line, so we didn't proceed.

Thanks very much for the useful info. We will investigate.

[quote='BumpyDog']

... but he says his name has to stay on the deed (as well as ours) because it must be owned by an indigenous villager...[/quote]


Male Indigenous New Territories Resident is allowed to build a house in his indigenous village, this kind of houses can be sold to outsider thus the deed shall transfer to buyer's name.


My friends have similar case as BumpyDog's. They only bought the 'using right' of the house of which the owner isn't an NTIR. In case the land is returned to gov't, gov't will only compensate to the owner not the buyer. Buyer only enjoys a 'using right'.


It's not recommended to buy that house as BumpyDog said. Better to check with experienced property agent in NTIR issues.