Exclusive | Hong Kong’s infatuation with multimillion-dollar shoebox homes is over as quickly as it began
- Of the 1,549 micro-apartments built by 10 developers in Hong Kong since 2016, one in three remained unsold as of this week
- The smallest abodes are likely to lead the plunge in property prices in 2019, with declines of up to 30 per cent, according to industry analysts and developers
Hong Kong’s infatuation with micro-apartments, some of which hold the world record as the smallest living space constructed for humans, has ended almost as quickly as it began.
Known variously as nano flats, micro-apartments and shoebox homes, these abodes are specifically designed to be small, typically less than 200 square feet (18.6 square metres) in size.
Two of every three of these homes built in Hong Kong since 2016 were constructed this year. Of these 976 units that were added, 461 units remain unsold as of this week, according to calculations by the South China Morning Post using data by Dataelements, which monitors the sale of new flats in the city.
The unsold homes, backed by some of Hong Kong’s biggest developers, are what remains of a bull market that until August was the world’s most expensive urban centre to live in.
The infatuation began in late 2014. A supply shortage, combined with mortgage rates that hadn’t budged for a decade, had caused home prices to spiral.