Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raymond Tam Vai Man said yesterday that the government is studying the feasibility of extending applicants’ eligibility for its “home swap” housing towers and temporary housing towers on Plot P in Areia Preta district.
Tam made remarks while chairing a regular meeting of the Urban Renewal Council yesterday.
The meeting was held behind closed doors. The council released Tam’s remarks in a statement yesterday.
The government-appointed council is tasked with advising the government on its urban renewal policies.
Construction of the six home swap housing towers and the eight temporary housing towers on Plot P was completed last year.
The flats in the six home swap housing towers are earmarked for eligible Pearl Horizon pre-sale buyers to purchase, while the flats in the eight temporary housing towers are earmarked for property owners affected by urban renewal projects to rent temporarily during the redevelopment of their former homes.
Both the home swap housing and temporary housing projects on Plot P are developed by the government-owned Macau Urban Renewal Limited (MUR).
The large Plot P was initially earmarked for the development of a private residential project, Pearl Horizon (海一居), but its developer failed to complete the work before the plot’s provisional land concession expired in late 2015, after which the government annulled the concession in early 2016. The government decided in 2018 to construct home swap flats on part of the plot earmarked for eligible Pearl Horizon pre-sale buyers to purchase.
Plot P, located near the peninsula’s north-eastern coast, initially covered 68,000 square metres in total, when its provisional land concession was granted for the Pearl Horizon residential project.
In March 2021, the government granted Macau Urban Renewal Limited the land concession of an area of 47,682 square metres on Plot P for the development of its home swap housing and temporary housing projects.
The 47,682-square-metre area has been developed for the home swap housing estate comprising six 50-storey towers and three temporary housing estates comprising a total of eight towers.
The eight temporary housing towers comprise two 37-storey towers, two 41-storey towers and four 50-storey towers.
The home swap housing estate is known as Pearl Metropolitan (明珠都滙), while the eight temporary housing towers are known as Ut Koi Building and Lok Koi Building.
According to yesterday’s statement by the council, Tam said in the meeting that the government is studying the feasibility of extending applicants’ eligibility for the home swap housing towers and temporary housing towers completed on Plot P, with the aim of enabling “a more reasonable use of its current housing resources”.
While the six Pearl Metropolitan home swap housing towers comprise 2,064 flats in total, the eight temporary housing towers comprise 2,803 units in total.
The government has still not launched an application process for those affected by urban renewal projects to rent a flat in the temporary housing towers on Plot P.
According to MUR’s previous announcements, 1,932 Pearl Horizon pre-sale buyers were eligible to apply to buy a flat in the Pearl Metropolitan home swap housing towers, 1,880 of whom had chosen their flats as of the end of 2024.
Last month, the government designated a deadline, January 30, 2026, for Pearl Metropolitan home buyers to make their payment. Those failing to make the payment before the deadline will be disqualified from buying a flat there.
While most of the home swap housing flats on Plot P have been designated to Pearl Horizon pre-sale buyers as special circumstances, government-built home swap flats in general, according to the law regulating home-swap housing, are earmarked for property owners affected by urban renewal projects to buy.
This file photo taken last year shows some of the temporary housing and home swap housing towers on Plot P in Areia Preta district. – Photo: Tony Wong
