“Accept it or not?”: young people’s struggles with parental financing for property-purchase in Hong Kong

Abstract

When skyrocketing house prices worsen housing affordability, parental financial support is suggested to be more important and prevalent in young people’s housing transition. However, little is known about young people’s perceptions and responses to it, particularly when they struggle among different sets of conflicting norms – the values of self-reliance, deep-seated home ownership preference, and marriage and gender expectations. Based on in-depth interviews with 50 highly educated young people aged 25–34 in Hong Kong, this study found that many young people were torn between the housing ideal – achieving home ownership by themselves – and economic realities. They did not necessarily welcome their parents’ home financing while many struggled to establish their financial responsibility even when they agreed to accept parents’ money. Some explicitly rejected parents’ assistance due to different concerns, such as preserving decision-making power. Gender and marriage norms also shape parents-of-daughters’ financing and young men’s acceptance. Young people’s attempts to carefully delineate financing responsibility in own housing projects (e.g. an outright rejection of parents’ money) may impede parents’ accumulating reciprocal support resources and shape intergenerational relationships in the long term.