Dumb, Dumber and Hong Kong

The story linked to in the title has been in the news here for about a week.

I don't know what bothers me the most about it; the fact that a developer is doing this or that buyers fall for it. But, it sort of makes sense when you think of the way they figure square footage here. The really-pretty-incredibly-smart-looks-20-years-younger-than-she-is Chinese wife and I own a flat in Causeway Bay that if you count the floor tiles is 811 square feet. However, in the world of Hong Kong real estate it is a 1200 to 1500 square foot flat. So, I guess calling the top floor of a 46 story building the 88th floor is par for the course here.

Maybe the government should get the real estate developers to solve some of our other problems the same way by re-measuring other areas in Hong Kong using the property developers system of counting and measuring.

If we measured roads the same way we measure flat size then all roads could be re striped with an extra lane. This would alleviate the need to build more highways

If we measured sidewalks the same way then suddenly we'd have more pedestrian areas.

All the buses could become triple Decker's and have three seats per side rather than two without any crowding at all.

School classroom size could be reduced by 30% and the teachers would still have a bigger classroom.

Here is the biggie. The Civil Servants will really like this one. The government could put a 100 square meter block of land up for auction and call it a 125 square meter block of land. That would instantly increase revenue from land sales by 25%.

Just think of all the problems we could solve if we measured everything the way that Henderson Land, China Chem, Cheung Kong, Sung Hung Kei and the other builders here measure apartments. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Of course we could have a population that refuses play into the hands of dishonest developers and a government that protects its citizens from fraudulent business practices and that would be more wonderful still.


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger with Sarcasm dripping from his keyboard