Hong Kong parking space sells for record HK$5.18m

[HONG KONG] Hong Kong just set another property-price record. This time, it was for a parking space.

A 188-square-foot space on Hong Kong island sold for HK$5.18 million ($918,000), or HK$27,500 a square foot, last month, newspaper Ming Pao reported Wednesday, citing land registration records.

The car park cost more than some Hong Kong homes: Centaline Property data shows a HK$4.2 million sale of a 284-square-foot, two-bedroom home in Sha Tin, in the New Territories, in April.

Property prices keep soaring higher in Hong Kong despite the government's efforts to tame the world's least affordable housing market. Higher taxes on home purchases could stimulate investment demand for non-residential properties, with some buyers shifting to office and parking space, according to analysts Patrick Wong and Francis Chan of Bloomberg Intelligence.

The parking spot is at the residential building Upton, which was also the site of the previous record parking-space transaction, the Chinese newspaper said.

An entire car-park building sold for a then-record HK$23.3 billion last month to Henderson Land Development Co, which snapped up the rare Central district site for a planned office tower.

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