Hong Kong is famous for its expensive nano-flats, but one property developer recently made international headlines for selling apartments smaller than the average parking space.
Just when you thought homes in Hong Kong couldn’t get any smaller, a local real-estate developer unveiled the T-Plus, a new type of so-called “shoebox flat” measuring only 128 square feet, which makes it smaller than the average Hong Kong parking space (130 square feet). Despite its shockingly small size, the T-Plus housing unit includes all the amenities a person might need, including a kitchen, a toilet, storage space, a refrigerator, a bed and a dining table. That’s pretty impressive, considering that this apartment is so small that you only need to take a total of five steps to get from one end of it to the other.
The layout of T-Plus micro flats was apparently inspired by student hostels which utilize small spaces with maximum functionality.
The newly-completed Hong Kong apartment building features 73 T-Plus micro flats and the developer hoped to sell most of them at a sale in December of last year. However, the extremely small units failed to impress potential buyers, and the company only managed to sell two of them. The abysmal result was “the worst in recent times” according to Sammy Po Siu-ming, chief executive of the residential division at Midland Realty.
The T-Plus apartments on sale were priced at a whopping HK$2.85 million ($364,600), which, believe it or not, is actually cheaper than the average nano flat. In March of last year, a micro apartment of only 209 square feet, in Hong Kong’s Pok Fu Lam area sold for no less than HK$7.90 million ($1 million).
While a 128-square-foot apartment sounds more like a cage than a living space, developers in Hong Kong would make them even smaller if they could. Back in 2016, one company filed plans with Hong Kong’s buildings department to turn a commercial building into an apartment complex with 68 units, each measuring only 61.4 sq ft. That’s smaller than a jail cell.
So next time you feel like complaining about how small your home is, remember that it could be a lot smaller.