Is it an American banker? A mainland tycoon? Who has HK$850,000 a month to spend on RENT? Will the person who has leased the first 6,000 square foot Opus apartment to be rented - Duplex A, one of the double-level garden apartments with a private pool and garden, for HK$850,000 a month for three years, please stand up. Who has a housing allowance that big? Anyone? A free dinner at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club is on offer for whoever can tell me Hong Kong’s highest housing allowance.
After some prodding, Swire Properties admitted on Thursday they had also sold an apartment in the Opus, the first residential project in Asia designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry. They could have learned this from the SCMP’s Property Post and this column on Wednesday, but it’s nice to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
The only thing different is the reported price - the 6,755 sq ft apartment on the 8th floor made HK$430 million, Swire says, HK$40m less than reported, but still a mind-blowing record-breaking HK$63,656 per square foot.
“These two transactions mark an important milestone for Opus Hong Kong,” said Martin Cubbon, chief executive of Swire Properties. “We embarked on this project with Frank Gehry with the intention of producing an exceptionally rare work of architecture; these transactions demonstrate the market’s appreciation for our achievement.” You may be right Martin, but it also shows someone is being paid much too much if they can afford nearly a million bucks a month in rent. Still, that’s two flats gone, ten to go...
Fishy business
When a Swiss bank recommends investing in an ocean fish farm, you have to wonder. Although, oddly enough, Switzerland does have an Admiral, it is the country blessed with cheese, chocolate and cuckoo clocks, but no coastline.
So when Swiss bank Sarasin, unaware of this irony, puts out an excited press release exhorting investors to pile into the Dalian Zhangzidao Fishery Group, it smacks of vegetarians describing the best way to slice beef Carpaccio.