Hong Kong’s home prices are so scary, people will live with ghosts to get a discount
- More than half of respondents in a survey by Squarefoot said they would consider living in a home which hid a tragic past – if the price was right
- Flats which were the scene of a grisly death generally sell for around a third below market value in the world’s most expensive city to buy a home
Which is more frightening: a haunted house or one that takes a lifetime to save up for? For most people Hong Kong’s sky-high property prices are a more terrifying prospect than the thought of living with ghosts, if a recent survey is anything to go by.
More than half of the respondents quizzed by Squarefoot, an online property portal in Hong Kong, said they would consider living in a home which hides a tragic past – if the price was right.
In Hong Kong, flats linked with grisly, untimely deaths – murders, suicides and the like – usually sell at huge discounts. Not only is the possibility of sharing a home with the spirits of the departed an unpalatable thought for many, it is also bad for Feng shui, the ancient Chinese belief that the external environment affects the fortunes of people inside.
On June 10, a three-bedroom flat in Taikoo Shing from which a man jumped to his death five years ago sold for a little over HK$18,000 (US$2,300) per square foot. That is almost a third less than a flat the same size that sold a couple of weeks earlier in the same building of the mass residential site, which is popular with families.
A flat in the New Territories whose previous tenant had hanged himself was snapped up for slightly more than HK$3 million in March, almost 30 per cent below market value. Later in the same month, a 602 square-foot flat in which the body of a well-known local singer who had committed suicide was found sold for HK$10 million after 10 rounds of bidding at auction – again, 30 per cent lower than similar flats in the same neighbourhood.