A Hong Kong penthouse just sold for $59 million – or $17,542 per square foot – making it the priciest apartment ever sold in Asia

• A Hong Kong penthouse just sold for $59 million in Asia’s most expensive apartment sale by square footage.
• It was sold by Victor Li, chairman of CK Asset Holdings and son of Hong Kong’s second-richest man.
• The five-bedroom penthouse includes a private rooftop and pool.
• Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

A five-bedroom penthouse in Hong Kong just sold to an unidentified buyer for about $59 million, breaking the record for the most expensive condo ever sold in Asia by square footage, Shawna Kwan reported for Bloomberg.

The residence sold for a whopping $17,542 per square foot.

The seller was developer Victor Li, the chairman of CK Asset Holdings, a Hong Kong property developer valued at about $23 billion. He’s the son of Hong Kong’s second-richest man, Li Ka-shing, who has a net worth of $36.7 billion, according to Forbes.

The 3,378-square-foot apartment sits on the top floor of a 23-story luxury residential building at 21 Borrett Road in Mid-Levels, an affluent residential neighborhood that’s surrounded by upscale restaurants and offers panoramic views of Victoria Harbour, according to Luxe Living Asia. 

21 Borrett Road, completed in 2020, is a complex of five residential buildings with 181 units, according to Homewise Realty, which markets the property. Only a few of its apartments have been put on the market.

The developer delayed the sales launch of the Road residences in August 2019 because of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests, according to Hong Kong publication The Standard.

The penthouse is the development's largest unit and comes with a ​​2,131-square-foot private rooftop as well as a 717-square-foot terrace.

Li of CK Asset Holdings declined to comment for this story.

The priciest apartment in Asia

The Borrett Road penthouse broke Asia's record for price per square footage, but it's not the most expensive apartment ever sold on the continent.

In 2017, two apartments in Hong Kong's Mount Nicholson development sold for a combined $149 million. The price per square foot in that deal, however, was $16,897 - about $645 cheaper per square foot than the Borrett Road residence.

Singapore, another one of Asia's priciest cities for real estate, is also known for condos that sell at exorbitant prices.

In 2019, Dyson vacuum billionaire James Dyson paid $54 million for a three-story penthouse in Singapore's Guoco Tower. That residence, however, was massive - 21,000 square feet - meaning he paid only about $2,571 per square foot. A little over a year later, he sold it at a loss for $47 million.

Singapore's largest penthouse, a 28,000-square-foot spread of five combined residences, hit the market earlier this month for $104 million.

In Hong Kong, several standalone mansions have sold at much higher prices than the Borrett Road penthouse. In the exclusive enclave of the Peak, where billionaires and business moguls live in secluded mansions, homes can sell for hundreds of millions.

In 2016, real-estate developer Chen Hongtian paid $270 million for a 9,212-square-foot mansion at 15 Gough Hill Road. In January 2017, iPhone screen manufacturing billionaire Yeung Kin-man paid $361 million for a 51,000-square-foot mansion on Pollock's Path. Alibaba founder Jack Ma was rumored to have bought a $191 million mansion in the Peak in 2015, but it's never been confirmed.

Just last week, a group of investors paid about $935 million for a 1.25-acre parcel of land in the Peak that was previously used as housing for Hong Kong civil servants. It was the highest price ever paid per-square-foot for a government-owned parcel of land.