Man sells single parking space for nearly $1 million

Dillon Thompson
Updated ·2 min read

An investor in Hong Kong is being called the salesman of "the world's most expensive parking space," after he managed to sell the spot for a whopping $969,000.

Businessman Johnny Cheung reportedly sold the space — which is located at The Center, a massive, 79-floor skyscraper in the business district of Central— to an unnamed buyer on Thursday.

Cheung, a member of the investment firm that purchased The Center for $5.15 billion last year, is no stranger to pricy deals. The businessman said he originally owned four total spaces in the building's parking area and had already sold the other three for six-figure totals.

"There aren’t many car park lots in Central’s office towers for sale, so prices have always been kept high," James Mak, a district sales director for Midland Commercial, told the South China Morning Post.

The space itself encompasses a massive 134.5-square-foot area, but even at that size, its value is still high. The South China Morning Post reported that the per-square-foot cost of the spot is more than three times the median home price in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, with a population of nearly 7.5 million people, has been the world's most expensive city for at least the past two years, according to Mercer's 2019 Cost of Living Survey. In addition, a 2019 study by the CBRE Group found that Hong Kong was home to the world's highest property values.

"Good times or bad times, there are still ultra-rich people paying whatever needed to get what they like," Mak told the South China Morning Post.

And parking space in the city has long been at a premium. Last year, a 150-square-foot space in Hong Kong sold for $760,000.

The South China Morning Post reported that large, luxurious "parking bays" have long been a sought-after status symbol for Hong Kong's wealthy elite. And those spots are often hard to find: The Center, for example, has only 402 parking bays to serve its 1.2 million square feet of office space.

It's unclear if Cheung's $969,000 sale actually marks the most expensive spot ever sold, but it's likely close. In 2015, a building in New York City sold three massive, ultra-exclusive spaces for $1 million; however those spots were even larger than the ones in Hong Kong.