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A sofa bed inside a nano-apartment pilot house in Hong Kong.
Photographer: Anthony Kwan / Bloomberg
Photographer: Anthony Kwan / Bloomberg
In the world’s least affordable housing market, one in eight homes sold is a nano apartment, a term widely used to describe tiny houses in Hong Kong.
A record 13% of apartments sold in 2019 were less than 260 square feet (24 square meters), or less than two parking spaces, according to a Liber Research Community report released Monday. These small units accounted for just 0.2% of total sales in 2010.
Hong Kong’s soaring property prices have made it difficult for younger generations to climb the housing ladder. The property of the city affordability is the worst in the world, beating out other housing hot spots like Vancouver, Sydney, and Los Angeles.
In recent years, developers have chosen to offer buyers smaller homes so they can afford them. Despite the fact that these small apartments can still cost more than HK $ 5 million ($ 645,000), they can barely cover basic needs.
Housing charge
Hong Kong has been the world’s least affordable housing market for a decade
Source: Demographia
Among the 8,550 nano-apartments examined by Liber Research between 2010 and 2019, 85% did not have a separate bedroom and 70% did not have a window in the toilet. Most of them had an open kitchen.
Read more: Covid worsens the crisis in the most unaffordable real estate market in the world
Reduced living space has long been a problem in Hong Kong. Low-income people have turned to so-called coffin houses which are essentially just a sleeping space. Some who cannot afford residential rents, but prefer a larger space, live illegally. industrial warehouses or container houses.
Henderson Land Development Co. was the largest seller of nano apartments, accounting for a third of sales in the period, according to the report.
Despite the city’s economy coming under pressure during the pandemic, with unemployment rising to a 15-year high, the housing market remains resilient. Home prices fell just 1% in 2020, Centaline data shows.
