Niche

Bought a columbarium niche (靈灰龕位) for my mother over the weekend.

Oh, don't worry. My mum is entirely well. As always, she's just cautious and well planned ahead. We all had the not-too-satisfactory experience of trying to find a columbarium urgently when my father suddenly passed away twenty years ago, and my mother would never wish that to happen again.

As you know, it is not easy to find a columbarium niche in Hong Kong. The niche that we finally put our money on was actually the third place that my mother checked and had a look. The first turned out to be illegal (how could that happen !?) while the next was an open sale that ended up a chaos.

To an amateurish investor, it is in fact somewhat surprising not seeing more people joining this business (not as the customer) while the property market for living people is frothy (alas, no bubble). Take the niche that we fixed up, it costs HK$150,000 - take aside the service charge and the others. You know what. The small place had nearly 100,000 niches, meaning a total sale of HK$15 billion. What could be better ?

Maybe that's why we see no listed company of this kind on the stock market. Since the business is so profitable, the owner would not be in his right mind if he prefers to share the company with other people.

PS. Actually I bought two niches - so that my parents could stay together forever. What better could a son do ?