Someone in Hong Kong Just Dropped $1.3 Million on a Parking Spot

This is probably not the kind of place where you’d stow a modest Toyota Camry.

It was revealed Thursday that a single parking space at Mount Nicholson on The Peak, a luxury Hong Kong residential project overlooking the city’s downtown core, sold for a world record $1.3 million.

Parking Cars, Parking Cash

Parking spots are so expensive in Hong Kong that they’re basically their own subsector. Speculators routinely flip them for quick profits and, in 2018, a record 8,968 spots worth $2.1 billion were sold. After a duty on transactions by non-residents was eliminated last November, they’re selling at a fever pitch:

• Sales of Hong Kong parking bays jumped 18 per cent month over month in May, according to Ricacorp Properties.
• One buyer paid $4.6 million for four parking spots in the same complex where the record-setting spot was sold.

The record setting purchase was not made by a speculator, however. “What concerns them most is that they need space to park their cars and not the money,” William Lau, a sales director at Centaline Property Agency’s branch on The Peak, told the South China Morning Post. “They have bought it for their own use and not as an investment.”

Pocket Change: For residents of Mount Nicholson on The Peak, one of the most upscale real estate projects in the world, $1.3 million is basically pocket change. A four bedroom apartment there sold for $72 million in 2017, making it the second most expensive unit in Asia at $17,000 per square foot. A nearby luxury home in The Peak, the exclusive residential area that includes development, sold for $149 million the same year.

Before the pandemic, The Peak was the world’s second most active residential area for super rich luxury transactions. In the five years to 2019, 35 sales involving homes worth at least $25 million were made there, totalling $2.8 billion. The only place with more activity was so-called Billionaire’s Row on New York’s 57th Street, which recorded 41 transactions over $25 million in the same period.

A Bit Much: Think your rent is too damn high? One house on the Peak rented for a record $206,000 a month starting in May.