not to be so negative, but realistically you can't even find a crappy old apartment at that price, much less serviced, unless you goto really inconvenient places like hung hom, northpoint, tun mun, tin shui wai, etc. you need to be at least 10K and up to find a non-serviced, ~20 year old building in a place that westerners might even consider living.
Thanks Kalvin. You are perfectly right! I hope my friend realize that after I show the inconvenience places. Maybe he will consider increasing his budget.
well, if you look at the link Ed sent - there are some - quite a few actually! can only imagine the standard of course, but if you friend is coming from UK - he should know - you cant get anything for that money in UK either! unless it is a council estate in the middle of nowhere!
I would not regard places such as North Point or any others on MTR points on the Island as inconvenient. HK transport is vg. Some locations more preferable than others but here personal choice kicks in...... even so 9k for a serviced apartment will be a squeeze. He would be better dropping the 'serviced' angle on those figures and if you can push him to 10k or even 12k, then even better.
the advertised serviced apartments in hung hom are no longer available - last i tried checking (last month), they only had limited amount of aprts for this price (lower floor ones) with only available apartments the higher floor ones starting from around $11.5k/month. From what i can gather, all the lower floor apartments were leased out within the first month, but the signs are still on every street corner.