Buying a home is the most important investment most people will make in their lifetimes. It is the time of all times when you would expect them to have a clear picture of what they are getting for their money. Yet if you asked Hong Kong people how much actual living space they have - that is, the square footage of the usable floor areas in their home - most could not say.
They may know what the sales brochures call the saleable area, which includes walls, bay windows and balconies, but these are not living space.
They are more likely to know the gross floor area (GFA), which includes a notional pro rata portion of the area occupied by common facilities such as a clubhouse, including its pool, gym and saunas, mailing room, sky garden, lobbies and even machine and air-conditioning rooms. The developer has wide discretion over what to include, and thus can give an inflated impression of a flat's size.
That is curious enough. Perhaps even more curious to an outsider would be the fact that when homes are sold, prices are quoted per square foot of GFA rather than of living area. It is when the door closes behind an owner as he or she enters their flat that reality kicks in. As our report on page A18 today says, clubhouses and swimming pools have got bigger and flats have got smaller.
Hong Kong may live or die by property, but it has turned on its head the accepted wisdom that as a place becomes more prosperous the living gets better. If you like your own space, it does not.
It is a clear case of more being less. What is not so transparent is the pricing approach of developers and agents. They prefer to base prices on the GFA to disguise the real, higher cost of the saleable space or the actual living space, although they are compelled by law to disclose the saleable space and balcony size in sales brochures.