In addition to public housing, Sham Shui Po is also home to low-density residential complexes. In the early 1950s, work began on the development of an area of garden villas in the hilly area between Kowloon Tong Railway Station and Tai Hang Tung in a project originally known as “Boundary Street Housing Estate (Yau Yat Chuen)”. The streets and roads in the vicinity were all named after Chinese flowers, including Peony Road, Begonia Road and Marigold Road. The main road in the area, Tat Chee Avenue, was named after the candied ginger merchant U Tat Chee, who was a keen advocate of the project.

Large estates built by private developers can also be found in the district. As Hong Kong’s economy began to boom in the late 1960s, an expanding middle class came to expect higher housing standards and were able to afford them, and this opened up the market for private estates. Mei Foo Sun Chuen was Hong Kong’s very first large private estate. Constructed by Mei Foo Investments Ltd., a total of 99 blocks were erected on the estate during the 1960s and 1970s, which featured a “city in the city” concept – an estate with comprehensive amenities. A variety of communal facilities and commercial operations were incorporated in each phase, including schools, clinics, markets, indoor sport centres and cinemas. The estate was advertised to potential buyers as a sophisticated community with state-of-the-art facilities that could meet the lifestyle requirements of residents in full. Its success prompted the government in 1974 to invite the Mei Foo Investments Ltd. to participate in a private residential development project in Sha Tin. Although the company later withdrew from the project, Sham Shui Po, in some sense, pioneered the development of another dimension to Hong Kong’s private housing.