The tiniest and slightly committed research would've exposed all these pitfalls.
Personally, I flew to HK for a holiday to see the place. I met with CX HR at CX City. In between beers with mates and Wan Chai inspired hangovers I went out and checked out many real estate agency windows, brochures and web sites. As for predicting the future of the HK market and where I may stand with respect to the package I was expecting to receive, I met with a few agents at the time whom my mates at CX referred me to, ie whom they had used and were well versed about the CX housing allowance. A few hours of time was the cost.
That's where I got all my "BULL$HIT" from: visiting HK and studying the property market from first hand (expert/reliable) sources.
So, is buying a ticket to fly to Hong Kong the "tiniest and slightly committed research" you're talking about? Or are you talking about the few websites you pulled up that talk about how the housing market is going up. If you're saying that doing some searches on google will uncover ALL the pitfalls of the offer, I would disagree, and your actions demonstrate that more was needed to uncover all the nuances. I was calling bull$#!t on your claim that only the tiniest research would uncover all the pitfalls. It takes a bigger investment of time than that.
Could I have done more research on living in Hong Kong? Yes. Maybe the studying I did to land the job was overkill. Hard to say. I do know it was sufficient to get the job, while working full time at the career I was in. Again, there were other personal motivating factors as well that I'd rather not include here.