Golf
Carts
Roll
Past
HK$2
Million
The price of one kind of property
continues to see massive escalation this
year - the Discovery Bay golf cart. The
latest transactions for the highly prized
and highly restricted vehicles broke the
HK$2 million mark.
‘You can pick up a studio apartment
here for around HK$2 million,’ said
Brian King, the principal of property
brokerage Headland Homes.
‘So how ridiculous is that? Your golf cart
may cost more than your apartment.’
The surge in demand for the carts
pushed their value above what you
would expect to pay for many luxury
cars. Carts that were selling for HK$1.5
million at the start of the year are now
HK$2.2 million.
The doubling of price in two years has
more than matched events in the prop-
erty market.
‘It’s a ridiculous amount of money, I
know,’ admitted an airline pilot who
bought a cart in June for HK$2 million.
He did not want his name to be used
because he is embarrassed about how
much he spent.
‘But, I said, I have the cash. I can put it
back into the property, but the market
is berserk. Sitting in the bank it’s doing
nothing. So I thought, why not? It’s not a
bad return.’
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WWW.GOLFCAROPTIONS.COM
The carts rent for HK$8,000 to
HK$9,000 a month, meaning that even
at their current high prices they can
generate a yield of around 5 percent -
better than most property purchases in
Hong Kong.
Cashing in on resales of carts has also
become a popular transaction - the cart
that the pilot bought cost only HK$1.5
million when the seller, another pilot at
Cathay Pacific, bought it at the start of
the year.
The Hong Kong Transport Department
has capped the number of golf carts in
Discovery Bay at 490. The number of
cart permits has not changed signifi-
cantly since the area was first developed
in the 1980s because the department
was concerned the carts would over-
crowd a road system that sees frequent
bus traffic and the occasional delivery
van. Hire cars are available in Discovery
Bay, but residents complain of a half-
hour wait at best to book the service
and believe the golf carts offer greater
flexibility. This is causing the squeeze on
prices.
‘The market is very, very small,’ said Dick
Hung Koon-fai, who runs DB Golf Carts,
one of the two servicing centers for the
carts. ‘Nobody is selling one now. I think
we’re waiting for HK$2.5 million.’
Hung said during school term time,
there was a traffic jam of around 200