If you don’t already own a home, you may be hit by the irresistible urge, like many other prospective homebuyers are, to rush to your nearest property agent to look for an apartment that fits your budget.

That’s the state of the latest property rush, which has pushed up home prices in Hong Kong by an average of 3 to 4 percent in the past several months. The price increase, reversing the downtrend in the latter half of last year, has set in motion a market cycle fed by people’s fear that if they don’t buy now, they will never be able to afford to do so later.

The latest buying spree was, in turn, triggered by indications that interest rates will not be going up, at least in 2019, resulting in a sudden turn in buyers’ sentiment, which has apparently caught even the developers by surprise.

Following the herd instinct is not uncommon among stock investors, especially in less-mature markets. But buying properties is a much longer commitment than buying and selling stocks, which can be done multiple times in a single day.

While the fear of missing the boat is understandable, there is really no big rush for the average homebuyer. The gap between supply and demand is not going to widen much further as developers are gearing up their production to meet the demand surge. Industry sources estimated that there will be an additional 80,000 new apartments due for completion in the remaining months of 2019.

The projected supply may not be sufficiently large enough to make much of a dent on prices. But it can at least help slow down the rate of increase seen in previous months. What’s more, banks aren’t going to tighten credit. On the contrary, they are expected to become increasingly aggressive in promoting their relatively more-lucrative mortgage lending businesses while profit margins on other loans remain depressed by low interest rates.

You’d expect that homebuyers would have learned a lesson to keep a cool head after last year’s price correction. Apparently, not many did.