An analyst at a local think-tank has welcomed this year's Policy Address as one focused on improving the quality of people's lives, saying the increased chances for young people to attain an apartment under the Home Ownership Scheme would motivate them to climb up the housing ladder.

Jason Leung, the Head of Land and Housing at the Our Hong Kong Foundation, made the comment on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme on Thursday after Chief Executive John Lee said the Housing Authority would allocate an extra ballot number to young families and single-person applicants aged below 40.

"In the past, if we are talking about Home Ownership Scheme flats, the numbers offered for sale each year is very low. It's about 3,000 to 4,000 a year perhaps. Now it's getting more and more and moving to about 8,000 to 9,000 per year. So it's slightly easier to get a flat in the balloting right now and especially with the new mechanism that people who previously were unsuccessful in the balloting could get you know more ballots," he said.

"Youths could get a more preferential treatment as well. So the Home Ownership Scheme flats, these are more accessible to these people right now, and I think that this will be a positive direction for people to attain home ownership."

Meanwhile, Leung said residents living in subdivided units that do not meet the minimum standards could potentially be moved to transitional housing given its flexible conditions, after Lee said the government would propose a new set of standards which include the provision of windows, an individual toilet, and a floor area of no less than eight square metres.

"If you look at the distribution of transitional housing, actually there are quite a number of them that are in the urban areas as well, and as the government constructs more light public housing and public rental housing in the coming few years, existing tenants in the transitional housing could move on to these government-run housing programmes," he said.

"The space in these transitional housing in the urban areas can then be released and hopefully used to house these people that could be affected by these subdivided units."