Hong Kong  - A mainland Chinese buyer who paid a record 56 million Hong Kong dollars (7.2 million dollars) last week for a "lucky" flat Hong Kong may be regretting his purchase, a media report said Tuesday.

The buyer paid the equivalent of 88,000 Hong Kong dollars per square foot for the luxury duplex apartment on the 68th floor of the project in the Mid-Levels district of the city. Both 88, which means double fortune, and 68, which translates as happiness and fortune, are lucky numbers in Chinese.

But it turns out that the flat is actually on the 44th storey of the building - 44 sounds like double death in China's two main languages, Mandarin and Cantonese - and the building is only 46 storeys high, the South China Morning Post said.

Hong Kong builder Henderson Land Development confirmed the floor numbers do not correspond to the actual storeys of the building.

Instead, the firm admitted it picked the floor numbers 68 and 88 to help lure Chinese buyers obsessed with lucky numbers. (dpa)