Housing Secretary Winnie Ho said on Saturday that less competition for the latest round of low-cost flats under the Home Ownership Scheme is a healthy sign.

Authorities have received around 170,000 applications for more than 9,100 new HOS homes situated in Kai Tak, Kwun Tong, Tuen Mun, and Yuen Long, costing less than two-thirds of the market price.

This means that there are some 18 applicants competing for each flat, while previous sales had seen more than 20 people sign up for each available home.

Speaking on Commercial Radio, Ho was asked whether this suggested the flats should be made even cheaper.

"In fact, 18 times is just slowly going to a normal state from a very abnormal situation," Ho said. "Isn't it healthier? When our supply increases, it may be ideal if this number could be adjusted slowly towards a more desirable state.

"People who want to buy subsidised housing really don't want the competition to reach 30 times,” she added.

Earlier this week, lawmaker Leung Man-kwong, a member of the Housing Authority's subsidised housing committee, linked the drop in applications to a fall in home prices.

The minister reiterated that there will be sufficient land supply in Hong Kong for the next decade, bringing increasing opportunities for young people to own homes.

But Ho said the supply of new public housing supply for 2023-2024 is particularly low, with only 13,000 flats becoming available.

She said the government's light public housing scheme, in which modular techniques will be used to quickly build homes on temporary sites, will help reduce the waiting time for public flats. She said good progress was being made on the first batch of homes under the scheme.

She said some 2,000 households would be able to move in early at public housing projects in Tsing Yi and Tuen Mun next year thanks to a new allocation system. She said the changes had brought forward the date at which homes would be available by between five and eight months.