Parking Slot Sold for Rs 4.9m

Buyers have turned to car parks to make quick gains since the government imposed a series of measures to try to cool the Chinese city's overheated housing market.

Inflated market

But the soaring prices of parking spaces is raising concern that money flowing into the city could further inflate the red-hot property market, the South China Morning Post reported.

Tycoon Li Ka-shing's flagship Cheung Kong Holdings made an equivalent of about  Rs2 358 813 750 over the weekend when it sold 514 car-park slots, according to the Post and Standard newspapers. Some of them, priced between Rs3.8-million and Rs4.9-million in the New Territories bordering mainland China, were quickly resold for profits of about Rs 1.18 m each, the reports said.

Cheung Kong could not immediately confirm the sales when contacted.

The parking can be rented for anything from Rs 15 000 to Rs 18 000 a month, fetching a yield of about four percent and attracting investors after housing market sentiment was dented by the cooling measures.

Property up  20%

Wong Leung-sing, research head of estate agency Centaline, said: "It's natural as people don't want their money to stay idle in the bank. The measures force people to turn to speculation in the car-park market.”

In October 2012 the government announced special stamp duties on properties re-sold within three years of purchase to try to rein in home prices.

The price for a small to medium apartment surged 20% in the first nine months of 2012.