We love a good garage sale, and no, I am not talking those that happen when a family collectively decides that it’s time to get rid of their junk.

Rather, I am referring to those rare and hella expensive garages or parking places located along the Atlantic Seaboard that pop up on real estate listings every now and then.

An example of such batshittery can be found here and here.

But, while Cape Town is no stranger to paying exorbitant prices for the smallest of square meterage (found a decent flat yet?), it’s nothing like Hong Kong.

According to Business Insider, a car space in the city’s Kowloon district was just rented out for a whopping HK$10,000 (R15 300) a month, making it the city’s most expensive rented car space:

Property agents confirmed the 135 sq ft park was rented on Monday at the luxury Ultima project in the residential Ho Man Tin area.

According to South China Morning Post, the rent for the parking space is more than what some people pay for some of the city’s smaller apartments.

And more on the building from the South China Morning Post:

There are 370 parking spaces at Ultima, which means only about 70 per cent of homeowners – those who bought large flats – were entitled to get their hands on one at the 527-unit development.

“Buyers of flats at Ultima are usually rich and may own more than one car,” said Man Lam, regional director of Ricacorp. “The shortage of parking spaces was aggravated as a result.”

The cost of buying a parking space outright at the development is also more than enough for a modest dwelling.

In terms of property prices in Hong Kong, two units in a luxury housing development at The Peak were sold to one buyer for a combined HK$1,16 billion (R1,77 billion) in November. Pheweee.

But, of course, this all makes some sense: Hong Kong is the second-wealthiest city in the world, but less than 1/10th of its land is zoned for housing. Tight squeeze. (Cool breeze).

To compare it with other cities in the world, you might have seen this lovely green/turquoise graph [below] being spread around Facebook.

It compares locations of the most expensive square metre of prime property in the world today (per $1 million USD):

Basically, what will buy you 157sqm in Cape Town, will buy you 78aqm in Tokyo, 46 sqm in Paris and a walk-in-closet (16 sqm) in Monaco.

Cape Town doesn’t seem too bad, now does it?

[source:businessinsider&scmp]