(ECNS) - A car parking space at a high-end residential area in Beijing has sold for 1.38 million yuan ($210,000) in an online auction, enough to buy two houses in one of China's smaller cities.
Five potential buyers bid 101 times in the auction, hosted on e-commerce giant Alibaba, for the spot located at Baiziwan, a community in Beijing’s East 4th Ring Road.
Local residents seemed to think the price was reasonable as the average house price in the community was 120,000 yuan per square meter. Most families there have two cars, including premier brands like Porsche and Maserati.
Mr. Lin, who lives in the community, said parking spaces sold for 520,000 yuan initially, but recent deals showed they had risen in value to 1.2 million yuan.
Meanwhile, one property agent said a parking space at Wanliu House, another community in the capital city, was worth approximately 2 million yuan.
According to the Centaline Property Research Center, the average transaction price per square meter of parking spaces in Beijing in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 was 5,762 yuan, 5,995 yuan, 5,897 yuan, 5,989 respectively. This meant the average price of a parking space was about 216,100 yuan, 227,300 yuan, 224,700 yuan, and 225,500 yuan in each of the past four years.
Zhang Dawei, chief analyst at Centaline Property, said what drove rising prices were the imbalance between supply and demand as well as rising land costs, making parking spaces a form of investment.
