HK car park investment craze raises bubble fear

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Agencies: Hong Kong, Nov 28 2012, 00:41 IST
Investors looking for new places to park their cash in Hong Kong are driving up prices for parking spaces, sparking fears of a bubble in the Asian financial center.

Prices for parking spots in Hong Kong are nearing historic highs, the side effect of government curbs to cool the housing market amid worries of overheating following the latest round of monetary stimulus in the US two months ago.

There are "a lot of speculators in the market, especially for car parks," said Buggle Lau, senior analyst with Midland Realty. A bubble is "definitely forming."

Over the weekend, a developer sold about 500 parking spots at a new suburban apartment complex at prices up to 1.3 million Hong Kong dollars USD 167,000 per space.

In a commercial building near the city's financial district on Hong Kong Island, an investor has put 34 parking spaces on sale for USD 12.9 million, according to a report last week in the Ming Pao newspaper.

A parking spot in the exclusive Repulse Bay neighborhood sold for HKD 3 million, the paper also said, citing Land Registry data.

On Thursday, a single parking spot in a building in the popular Mid-Levels residential neighborhood will be auctioned off with the opening bid at HKD 680,000.

Second-hand parking spaces changed hands in the third quarter for an average of HKD 640,000. That's up 16.4 per cent over the year before, according

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