Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Luxurious apartments – Hong Kong style

These “luxurious apartments” are standing one block away from the quaint little 冰室 in the previous posting, and right next to the dilapidated 九龍城碼頭. It is surrounded by 40 year old low rise apartment blocks without elevators. Hard to imagine why people would pay more than 10,000 dollars per square feet in such surroundings.

Presumably it is because the old airport, where the trucks are parking in the foreground, will be developed into valuable space, bring up the value of the neighboring properties, which in turn will be re-developed. In the mean time, the giant wall of “soon to be valuable” apartments will sit for years in a huge construction site. By the time the construction site metamorphoses into desirable space, the giant wall itself will have become quite aged.

How much are we HongKongers willing to suffer to earn our money?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Hong Kong, most of us have to suffer a lot to make some money: we work. But to others, money comes knocking at their door: money works. Heard about the ever-widening wealth gap?

StephenC said...

Yeah, most of us work hard to earn money. But some earn money using other people's money (actually my/our money).

The wealth gap is certainly an issue. a related one, and even more worrying, if that some people are so dis-advantaged that no matter how hard they work, they still cannot maintain a minimum standard of living.

Anonymous said...

I definitely wouldn't be bothered buying these apartments, even if I got the money of course. In terms of "the harbour view", it's going to be blocked by newer apartments sooner or later. More importantly, these apartments play a major role in trapping heat and the bad air.

StephenC said...

You seem to be thinking like a normal person who buy the apartment to live in there for a long time.

However, some buy it for "stir-fry" (炒) :)