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Peggy Sito

Sandy Li

For sale: A window seat for HK$6 million - comes attached to what is believed to be the world's most expensive apartment, which went on sale yesterday for HK$357.73 million.
Address? 39 Conduit Road, West Mid-Levels. Floor? Difficult to say. The developer says the apartment is on the 66th floor, but the building is only 40 storeys high.
The 5,636 sq ft 'semi-duplex' is being sold by Henderson Land Development for HK$63,472 per sq ft. 
Included in the price tag - and the quoted gross floor area - is a 96 sq ft window seat, 98 sq ft air-conditioner area and 1,124 sq ft of common area.
That means the deep-pocketed buyer will be forking out HK$6.09 million for the window seat, HK$6.22 million for air-conditioning space and HK$71.34 million for their share of the  common area, which a Henderson spokesman said largely consisted of the resident's club with spa, swimming pool and gym. 
The apartment's price exceeds the HK$330 million fetched recently for one of the houses at the former  Skyhigh,  the one-time residence of former Hongkong Bank chairman Michael Sandberg,  on  Pollock's Path,  the highest point of The Peak. 
'Many Hong Kong people will think the price is simply too high,' Landscope Surveyors  managing director Koh Keng-shing said. 'But some mainland buyers may go for it.'  
But whoever agrees to pay HK$357.73 million for the luxury apartment may be  confused by Henderson's numbering system.  
The Henderson spokesman said the building had 33 residential floors, but he did not specify how many floors would be used for the 99 available car parking spaces.
So just what floor is the semiduplex in question actually on? 
'I can't tell you the answer to that, but we will tell the buyer the unit is on the 66th floor. Our top unit will be on the 88th floor, and the second-highest floor will be the 68th floor,' the spokesman said.
An agent who has obtained a sales brochure for the project, which will be released to the public today, said the developer had skipped floor levels  four, 13, 14, 24, 34, 40 to 59, 62, 64, 65, 67 and 69 to 87. The 22nd floor is designated as a sky garden. This makes the 88-storey tower just 40 storeys high and puts the 66th-floor apartment on the 38th.  
The Consumer Council described Henderson's numbering plan as misleading.  Conventionally, several floors such as the 4th or 14th may be skipped as the number four is associated with 'death' in Chinese tradition. 
'But they're skipping dozens of floors. This is misrepresentation,' a council spokesman said.
Angela Lee,  a partner at Baker & McKenzie, said floors were numbered for identification. As long as developers made it clear what level the floors really were, they were not misleading customers.
Alva To, the head of consultancy at property firm DTZ, said developers could fetch higher prices for flats on higher floors seen as lucky numbers according to Chinese tradition.
Twenty apartments at the development were released for sale yesterday and Thomas Lam Tat-man,  a general manager of Henderson's sales department, said 20 to 30 purchase offers had been received so far.
Asking prices for flats measuring 2,808 sq ft to 3,284 sq ft are between HK$26,143 per sq ft and HK$42,000 per sq ft.



A HK$357m flat, but what floor is it on?