JT06: Yes, I remember negative equity.
You do realize, don't you that keeping the saps who have bought their rabbit hutches already fat and happy requires apartments to get progressively ever smaller and more crappily built and and more expensive, don't you? Sadly, of course, that's exactly what's actually been happening.
Most of those middle class folks you're talking about either have or will be having kids. As it stands now, their kids will have no hope of purchasing homes of their own or, if they do, they're going to be smaller and worse in just about every way than the ones that their parents currently "own" -- or, rather, will own in that brief period that will begin once they've paid the mortgage and end when it has begun falling apart badly enough, hello shoddy construction!, that the govt lowballs the owners, buys a bare majority of them out, forces the holdouts to take the offer, and knocks the whole thing down.
It would be great if HK society could have a conversation about land policy, living standards, how HKers are not simply human-sized termites, etc. and what would be better for their children and grandchildren moving forward. The suckers who have bought into the current regime would have to take one for the team, but their kids would be able to sit on the toilets in their homes without one thigh scraping a wall (or toilet paper roll) and the other rubbing against the shower door.