Parking mad: London parking spaces sold for over £200,000
LONDON is one of the world’s most expensive places to pay for parking space. On Brewer Street in Soho, for example, you could spend over £50 on just three hours of parking.
That may be why some mysterious buyers have forked out as much as much as half a million pounds to buy a parking space in the capital.
In March this year, a 19.5ft by 8ft space near Marble Arch was put up on the market for £350,000.
Advertised by Knight Frank in March 2016, the parking space is £62,000 more expensive than the average UK home which costs £288,000.
Harrison Woods, managing director of the website yourparkingspace.co.uk, said: “You would have to rent out the most expensive parking space in Westminster listed on our website for more than 50 years and it would still be cheaper than purchasing this space.”
But this spot is not the most expensive parking space in Britain. In 2015 a parking spot in Kingston House, South Kensington, which had space for three cars, went up for sale for nearly £500,000.
Described as having an "exceptional location in a prestigious and exclusive environment", the parking space came with 24-hour security, a valet service, an “exceptional chauffeur lounge”, and a number plate recognition system.
It sold for an undisclosed sum.
Another parking space in central London was sold for £202,000 last year with marketers of the parking spot, Colliers, describing the sale as “a bit ridiculous”.
A bidding war ensued for the 80m strip of parking space that ran between two rows of houses in South Kensington.
The space on Wetherby Lane, between Rosary Gardens and Hereford Square, was snapped up by an unknown buyer after three months of fierce bidding.
In 2014, a parking space near Royal Albert Hall in Kensington was on sale for a whopping £400,000. Big enough to fit only two cars, the space was sold through estate agents Hobart Slater who said they got “plenty of interest” in the property.
In the same year, three parking spaces on Mayfair’s Park Lane were snapped up for £255,000 by an unknown buyer. Priced at £85,000 each, the spaces have a 105 to 110-year lease.
Harrods Estates described the property as a “good, long-term investment” for those living in Mayfair.
In further parking mad news, a space near Harrods measuring just 12ft by 23ft was on the market in 2010 for an eye-watering £200,000.
Managed by Harrods Estates, the space was only open to people living within 400m of the parking spot that had a separate entrance and 24-hour remote-controlled access and security.
The space could accommodate only two small cars that had to be parked bumper to bumper but that didn’t discourage the buyer from spending a six-figure sum on the spot.
A spokesperson said at the time that there's a waiting list for the spaces despite the hefty price.
The cheapest of the most expensive parking spaces was sold in 2005 for a cool £180,000. Spend that same amount of money on property in Hull and you could easily buy a five-bedroom terraced home.
Located near Eaton Square, the parking space was reportedly sold to one of the residents of 21 Chesham Place, a luxury development built by the Candy Brothers that replaced a BT telephone exchange designed by Lord Foster.