Grand illusions
Hong Kong property developers love superlatives and are fond of giving apartment buildings names such as The Palazzo, The Masterpiece and Celestial Heights. However, these titles can sit uneasily on structures that are often brutal urban exercises in concrete and glass with a few decorative flourishes, many of which would be better named The Grand Illusion.
Pick up a brochure for any new residential building and it will list the gross floor area of the apartments within. Go to the building itself, though, and the floor area of a flat will be less than stated - sometimes by as much as 30 per cent. And the explanation for this magical shrinking effect is simple and quintessentially Hong Kong - it helps property developers make bigger profits.
It's hardly a secret but it's a system that remains effective. Last year, Gabriel Leung, who owned properties in Hong Kong and the mainland, was attracted to The Palazzo development, in Fo Tan. A splashy television advertisement suggested the building was going to be like a Roman villa in a sylvan setting. The commercial mentioned that The Palazzo's flats were more than 700 square feet in size and Leung thought the space would be ample for his family of three.
He struggled to buy the apartment 'off plan' (before construction had been completed) during last year's economic downturn, which meant the deposit required increased from 10 per cent to 30 per cent as banks tightened their lending policies. After Leung raised more than HK$1 million from his family and friends he was able to complete his purchase. But his dream quickly turned sour. When he took possession of his '717 sqft flat', in May, he was shocked. He found the bay window of the master bedroom was 6.5 feet long and 2.5 feet deep and ate up a significant portion of his bedroom area. The rest of the room was too small for normal-sized furniture and the kitchen was so tiny it was barely able to accommodate two people.
'We could have had a bed tailor-made and put it into the bay window to save space, but then I'm sure I would have been woken up by the traffic noise outside,' says Leung.
The flat's dimensions were listed in The Palazzo sales brochure and included the revelation that the flat's saleable area, defined as internal floor area plus balconies, was just over 500 square feet - 26 per cent less than the gross floor area promoted by the developer's commercials.
Despite having access to this information, Leung claims he was misled by The Palazzo's demonstration flat - which had few doors and thus seemed relatively spacious. Leung says that when he visited, the doors to the main entrance, kitchen and two bedrooms had been removed, the kitchen was set up as an open-plan space and the two bedrooms were separated with glass, not a wall, to make the flat seem open.