The sky’s the limit if you have enough money to fund your dreams – and one place that drives home the point is Singapore.
One property developer is even tackling the parking problems of the mega rich by installing sky parking to let them admire their expensive super cars in a glass garage next to their apartments – even if they live in the penthouse of a block of 30 floors or more.
The skyscraper on select Orchard Road, new of the most affluent city neighbourhoods, is marketing ‘en suite sky garages’ with lifts that float cars up from the basement once the driver has input a personal biometric code.
“It’s done in such a way that it’s a museum showcase, it’s not just a car park,” says Leny Suparman, chief executive of KOP Properties, the developer, that is focussing on a millionaires in Singapore who own expensive cars.
Mitt Romney auto elevator
Apartment prices range from £5 million to £15 million for a penthouse with room for parking four cars.
“The clever marketing is targetting two factors – the Asia Pacific rim, and especially Singapore, has a higher ratio of millionaire households than anywhere else in the world, while drivers in Singapore own more Maseratis, Ferraris and Lamborghinis per head than any other country” said Fred Brown of www.propertyinternational.com
Singapore’s Ferrari dealership says order books for the new F12 Berlinetta are full until the end of next year, while prestige car make McLaren is opening a new dealership in the city.
The USA has a fair share of auto elevators – presidential candidate Mitt Romney has a $12 million expansion planned for his oceanfront property in California that includes a lift to take from the huge basement garage to ground level.
Buy your own car lift for £15,000
Internet tycoon Tom Gonzales has gone one better with a 6,000-square-foot underground garage at his home in Lake Tahoe, California.
The garage is complete with a double decker former aircraft carrier lift that can easily take three or four cars at a time.
In fact, car elevators are becoming such a common plaything for millionaires that anyone can order a custom-made lift on Chinese showcase web site alibaba.com.
Prices start at just £15,000 for a single car lift from a manufacturer in Shanghai advertising the capacity to produce 1,000 units a year.
