NINE around-6-square-meter apartments in Nanshan District were sold out in one morning, with the average price reaching 150,000 yuan (US$23,810) per square meter, Guangzhou Daily reported yesterday.

    The apartment building at the intersection of Shahe East Road and Xinzhong Road was refashioned and refurbished from a hotel built in 2004. The “pigeon cage” apartments are on the sixth to 15th floors, with each’s floor area ranging from 5.73 to 7.48 square meters.

    These apartments make full use of the space by placing a foldable bed inside the closet, but each has a kitchen and toilet, which is an extra 6 square meters offered by the property developer for free.

    A sales associate said the offering price of each tiny apartment was over 880,000 yuan, and all nine were sold Saturday morning.

    According to the national design codes for residential buildings that came into effect in August 2012, the usable space of a residential apartment should not be smaller than 22 square meters. But the design codes don’t apply to these “pigeon cage” apartments because the building is a remodeled hotel built in 2004 before the codes were in effect, according to the report.

    A photo of the property deed of the tiny home posted online, said to be provided by a sales associate, shows that the apartment’s property area is 6.68 square meters, along with a 70-year land use permit issued in 1998.

    Earlier media reports, citing a letter from the city’s housing watchdog two months ago, noted that the tiny apartments were designed for commercial purpose instead of residential use.

    According to the letter, unlike residential apartments, commercial apartments are not qualified for residential property registration. Commercial apartments usually adopt commercial standards for the use of water and electricity and follow different daylighting requirements and housing-loan policies compared with residential apartments.

    The involved building’s owner acquired official permits to construct the commercial apartments and offices in 1999. A total of 169 commercial apartments on the building’s sixth to 15th floors were sold to several homeowners in 2007. The watchdog said a Shenzhen company that bought the apartments had them refurbished and put them on sale.

    Statistics from Centaline Property’s research center showed that the average transaction price of new homes in Shenzhen reached 60,610 yuan per square meter last week.

    (Zhang Yang)