Investors sense growing demand for car parking rentals from non-residents working in the Cotai resorts, fuelling rises in Taipa car park space values of over 30 percent this year, a property agent reveals

The capital value of car parking spaces in Taipa this year has been fuelled by the anticipation of the second-round openings of mega resorts in Cotai and development on Hengqin Island, says an agent specialising in car park sales.

Chan Lik Ki, general manager of CarparKing Co Ltd, told Business Daily that the value of parking spaces in Taipa has risen some 10 percent on average so far this year, compared with the end of last year.

"The rise in Taipa is generally more rapid than other parts of Macau," he said. "In some cases, the price has risen more than 30 percent since the end of last year."

The transacted price of a car parking space in one particular Taipa housing project, for example, reached about 1.3 million patacas (US$162,500) early this month, against some 900,000 patacas for a space in a similar project in Taipa at the end of last year, according to CarparKing.

"There are two reasons for the growth: one is due to the on-going development of resorts in Cotai, generating demand for parking spaces from imported workers, and another is about investors looking forward to the prospect of nearby Hengqin," Mr Chan said.

The rental market for parking spaces in Taipa is dominated by imported workers and non-residents, he said. Investors see opportunities to lease the parking spaces to foreigners as the number of imported workers is set to rise with the opening of new resorts, he added.

The mega resorts opening in 2015-17 in Cotai are expected to require about 40,000 workers to man their operations. Figures from the Human Resources Office show that there were 143,752 non-resident workers by February, rising 26.9 percent year-on-year.

Investors are also buying parking spaces in Taipa because of Hengqin's positive outlook, as the Lotus Bridge border terminal linking Macau to Hengqin is located there, Mr Chan added. But he admitted that the investment yield of car parks now is only about 2 percent, similar to that of homes, following the skyrocketing growth of parking space values last year.

The average transacted price of a parking space last year was 1.06 million patacas in Macau, surging by 60.6 percent from 660,093.7 patacas in 2012, calculations based on official figures show.

Some 751 car parking spaces were transacted in the first two months of this year totalling 1.12 billion patacas, government figures reveal. This means that the average transacted car parking price in the January-February period was about 1.49 million patacas, rising 18.3 percent from about 1.26 million patacas in the same period of last year.