Value soars on choice Hub parking spots

In 1997, the average price for a detached, single-family house in Massachusetts was $199,968. Now, you might pay nearly that for a parking space in Boston.

Last month, a parking spot at the privatelyowned Brimmer Street Garage on Beacon Hill sold for $160,000. And that wasn’t even the city’s record price. That distinction goes to a 156-square-foot rectangle of concrete and white paint at Brimmer that was listed for $200,000 in August, and eventually fetched $167,500.

Since July, five of the 110 spaces at the three-story garage have been sold for sums between $144,500 and $167,500. The price, plus a monthly $163 condo fee, includes heat and valet service for the privilege of having a covered parking spot in a place where cars outnumber on-street parking spaces 4 to 1.

All things being relative, parking-spot prices are soaring in other neighborhoods, too. Several spaces on the market in the South End range from $29,000 (with a $29 monthly condo fee) for a spot at 650 Columbus Ave. to $89,900 ($90 condo fee) for a tandem spot close to the elevator at 1313 Washington St. (The elevator is clearly a premium. A similar spot farther from the lift in the same building is $79,000.) A single spot at Tremont on the Common is $65,000.

In October 1979, Brimmer Street became the first freestanding garage in the nation to switch from daily and monthly parking to operate on a condominium model. It is not attached to any housing. Although “most of the people pay with cash,” according to Russ

Kelcourse, listing agent for the record-setting Brimmer Street sale, mortgages for parking spaces are not unheard of.

The spot becomes a real estate investment as well as a convenience, in a neighborhood where “you could spend a quarter of your life looking for a parking spot,” remarked Gus Herrera, the Brimmer Street Garage manager.How good an investment? The price for a Brimmer Street Garage space in 1979 was $6,500. But prices rose, and in 1998, during the market downturn, one went for as little as $27,000. By 2001, spaces there were up to $150,000.

“I had the whole garage offered to sell to me in 1977 for $350,000,” said John Forger, founder of Olde Forge Real Estate and a Boston broker since 1969. “I could kick myself up and down Brimmer Street.”

The most recent sale at Brimmer Street was recorded with the Suffolk County Registry of Deeds on March 24, at $160,000. The record-setting sale was recorded in August for a third-floor spot, when Jeanne C. Gibson sold it to the Brimmer Realty Trust for $167,500. Originally listed for $200,000 in April 2003, it was on the market for three months before it was sold.

The City of Boston currently assesses each spot for $79,900 and each owner pays an annual tax bill of $810.99 on the property. In September, John S. Reed, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and his wife, Cynthia, purchased a space in the Brimmer garage for $155,000 to go with the Beacon Hill condo they purchased on Chestnut Street for $2.9 million.

(The Reeds set a South Shore real estate record when they purchased a $10 million property in Duxbury at roughly the same time. It came with 15 acres of land and at least three garage bays.)

One irony of Brimmer Street is that, even for owners, the garage is open only from 6:30 a.m. until midnight on weeknights and 1 a.m. on weekends. So no late nights. No early trips to the airport or hospital. Got an emergency? Call a cab.

“People will put up with virtually anything to park close to where they live,” Forger said.

When Herrera was asked whether someone might be better served putting their money toward a vacation home, he laughed and replied, “Well, they could pitch a tent here.”

While no one has yet taken to vacationing at the garage, owners have been known to show up and wash the pavement beneath their vehicles.

Surprisingly, the cars on the ground floor of the garage are standard fare: Toyotas, a Volkswagen, a few Mercedes sedans, one Porsche SUV, a minivan. The lone American car, a Chevy, belonged to a garage employee, who said, “The Bentleys, Ferraris, Maseratis, they’re upstairs.”

Cars with permits have outnumbered parking spaces in the South End, Back Bay, and Beacon Hill for years, so prices have pushed the envelope. At an October 2001 auction of convicted gangster Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi’s real estate holdings, three back-alley parking spaces off Marlborough Street fetched an unexpectedly high $342,000.

Eileen O’Connell of West Roxbury attended the auction with hopes of a purchase.

“I was stunned,” she said, recalling the outcome. “Because I knew I couldn’t afford a condo,

but I thought I could afford a parking space.”

Carol Beggy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.