Hong Kong might be heading for recession after months of violent protests but that hasn’t stopped someone from forking out almost US$1 million for a parking spot.
The mind-boggling sum, paid to previous owner Johnny Cheung Shun-yee, highlights the gaping inequality that has helped fuel nearly five months of demonstrations in the financial hub, where one in five people live below the poverty line. The identity of the buyer was not immediately available.
The HK$7.6 million (US$970,000) price tag is more than 30 times the average annual wage in Hong Kong, and about the same as a one-bed apartment in London’s plush Chelsea area. It also easily topped the comparatively paltry sum of HK$6 million paid for a parking spot in Ho Man Tin last year, which broke records at the time.
The spot of spots is situated in The Centre, the city’s fifth-highest skyscraper, which made headlines in October of 2017 when it became the world’s most expensive office building after Hong Kong’s richest man sold it for more than HK$40 billion.
The purchase comes even though there are growing concerns about the impact of the pro-democracy demonstrations on the city’s real estate market, with property firms’ share prices plunging in recent months as they are forced to offer discounts on new projects and cut office rents.
The economy has been tipped to grow just 0-1.0 percent this year, the worst rate since 2009 during the global financial crisis.
“A lot of those owners in The Centre are in finance or in other high-growth businesses,” Stanley Poon, a managing director at Centaline Commercial, said. “To these tycoons, it’s not a significant purchase if you compare it to the value of the office floors they own.”
Hong Kong’s white-hot property market has become a political issue as costs continue to soar, forcing some small businesses to close owing to sky-high rents, while many residents cannot afford to buy or lease decent homes.
Commercial and residential property prices have been fueled by an influx of money from wealthy mainland Chinese investors and developers.
While the long-running protests in the city are fired mostly by anger at a now-dead extradition bill and hatred towards the government and police, many have suggested they are also fanned by anger at the huge disparity between rich and poor and diminishing opportunities for financial stability for the city’s young.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Johnny Cheung Shun-yee was the buyer of the parking space. In fact, he was the seller. Coconuts HK apologizes for any confusion caused.
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