The sum is raising eyebrows even in a city renowned for real estate excess
+ READ ARTICLEHong Kong is the kind of place where one-room apartments have been offered for sale at $3 million on — you can’t make this up — Welfare Road. So it’s hardly surprising that what could be the world’s most expensive house, in dollar-per-sq.-ft. terms, is to be found by a bay named Repulse.
On the market since 2012, the four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 4,120-sq.-ft. “beautiful British style townhouse” at 110 Repulse Bay Road can be yours for $87.3 million. Realtors Engel & Völkers insist that’s not a typo.
The house’s price means that it costs roughly $21,190 a square foot. By contrast, the 38,000-sq.-ft. Bel-Air mansion described by Forbes in January as “the most expensive home ever listed in America” was put on the market for just $6,560 a sq. ft.
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The world’s most expensive home in absolute terms — the $1 billion Antilia in Mumbai — is valued at a mere $2,500 for each of its 400,000 sq. ft.
So what would a buyer of the villa at 110 Repulse Bay get for their money?
According to the sales pitch, the property has “large windows [that] capture picturesque views of the sea” as well as an internal staircase. The master room hosts “a nicely fitted out walk-in closet.” There are bedrooms for two domestic helpers. It’s undeniably opulent but hardly a palace.
Mary Kwan, senior adviser for sales and leasing at Engel & Völkers Hong Kong, admits to TIME that the chance of a sale going ahead at this price is “very low.”
But, as they say, never bet against Hong Kong property. A townhouse on the Victoria Peak was listed in 2014 for an even more insane $22,588 per sq. ft., while another standalone villa in Repulse Bay was actually sold in 2015 for a jaw-dropping $104 million, or $14,436 a sq. ft.