The $1 Million Parking Space

It’s common knowledge New York City is home to some of the priciest real estate in the country, but still, paying $1 million for a parking space is a little excessive. A luxury building under construction in the trendy SoHo neighborhood will offer the pricey parking spots on a first-come, first-served basis, and they cost more per square foot than the apartments above.

Owning a car is often extremely expensive if you live in one of the biggest cities in the country — there are all sorts of fees, insurance rates are generally higher, and, oh yeah, you need to find somewhere to put it. In densely populated areas, that’s no easy task. If you want a guaranteed spot, you’ll pay a premium. For cost reasons alone, many city dwellers choose to ditch their personal vehicles for public transportation or bicycles.

For the likely tenants of this new building in SoHo, a $1 million slab of concrete is probably a small price to pay for easy access to a vehicle: The three-bedroom units will cost between $8.7 million and $10.45 million, and the duplex penthouse is $25 million (though that’s nothing compared to this palace in Florida, the most expensive U.S. property on the market right now). If you think of it in terms of monthly expenses (which is how most people deal with buying property) adding $1 million to the price of these units adds just a few thousand dollars to the cost.

These parking spaces aren’t the equivalent to a typical home’s garage, which the owner would pay for as part of a mortgage. The buyer won’t own the parking space in the same way she would own the apartment — they are being sold as 99-year licenses, allowing the owner to use the spot as long as he or she is a resident of the building. If she moves, she must sell the spot.

Even for New York, where parking spaces like these sell for $136,052, according to the Times, $1 million is an eye-popping figure for such an amenity. It almost certainly costs more than any car that would sit in it, because people don’t generally drive excessively luxurious sports cars in Manhattan traffic. This building stands out among other luxury properties because there are as many private spaces as residences, which the developer was able to accomplish by getting a special permit — the city usually limits parking spaces in new buildings to 35% of the units.

The $1 Million Parking Space

More Money-Saving Reads:

You Might Also Like