How much would you pay for something you really wanted?
I remember once upon a time young me had a game I really wanted and I saved what little of my student money to get it.
Come the day to buy the game, I dropped around $100 for the release on day one.
I ended up…not liking it all that much.
You can laugh at me now.
But if you thought that was bad, wait till you see how much people pay for a damn parking lot.
The Price Of Parking
I see (feel) that some of you have adjusted your seats already.
Let’s get to the point.
According to Mothership, a parking lot at The Center, a 73-storey office tower in Hong Kong, was recently sold for around S$1.3 million.
Hold the freaking phone.
Parking lot.
S$1.3 million.
One reaction isn’t even enough for this.
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
What’s even wilder is that the building itself was once sold for around S$7 billion, also making it the most expensive commercial. building sold.
Man, if I even had a tenth of that amount of money…
As of now, the parking space is still vacant as is pending for the transaction to complete.
Comparing Houses To Lots
You thought the crazy part was over?
Well, it just began.
The price per square feet of the lot is around S$9,800 and is over three times more than Hong Kong’s median home price.
In fact, the average price of each parking space at The Center costs around S$1.04 million.
Would it also help to mention that the price of housing in Hong Kong is terrible?
Like ranked worst for nine years in a row kind of terrible?
Apparently, parking spaces in Hong Kong are some kind of status symbol and unsurprisingly, good investment opportunities thanks to this.
It just boggles me that people are willing to buy a damn lot for tens of thousands of dollars.
Is this why carpark prices are more than housing prices? In a country where it’s already hard to get a house?
You wonder why in 2017, one out of five people in Hong Kong lived below poverty standards.
Some say this unaffordable housing madness has been touted as a reason for the current protests.
Unfortunately, this kind of problem cannot be fixed so easily if it’s been going on for so many years. It all starts with people wanting to change it.
I really do hope things start to change for the better.
And in case you’re not aware, unlike Singapore that limits cars on the streets to ensure that congestion isn’t that bad, Hong Kong kind of limits it by its parking fee.
For example, an hour of parking at their airport is about S$4.17, while it’s about S$2.40 per hour at our airport.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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