Want Deed to Park Place?

When David Kean got home from his shopping spree Sunday, he immediately went online.

"Well, I spent 40K today," wrote Kean, a real estate agent, in a post on the website LoftLA.com. "Expensive weekend."

Pricey jewelry? Luxury car?

No, parking spaces.

Kean is a future resident of 1100 Wilshire, a swanky high-rise condo development downtown. And for his $40,000, he bought the right to park his Mercedes CLK coupe and Lincoln Aviator in two spaces on the sixth floor of his building.

Not long ago in car-friendly Los Angeles, free parking seemed like a birthright.

But the real estate boom has hit even the parking lot.

1100 Wilshire is selling parking spots for $15,000 to $20,000 a pop, offering new residents, who are paying $400,000 to $1 million for their units, the chance to wrap the cost of their spaces into their mortgages.

Such prices may have been standard in tony sections of New York, Boston and San Francisco, long known for their walk-able downtowns and elaborate public transportation systems. But in Los Angeles -- home to some of the world's first parking garages as well as those sprawling postwar shopping mall parking lots -- the price tags are raising some eyebrows.

Real estate professionals said the setup seems unusual -- even along the canyon of high-rise condos in West Los Angeles. Shel Kirschner, an agent with Coldwell Banker in West Los Angeles, said that he hadn't heard of selling parking spaces separately from condo units.

"If you buy a unit in any of condos on the Westside, 90% of the time, you do have assigned parking" included with the purchase price, he said.

Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, said the arrangement "is bringing us more into line with what other big cities are doing."

By charging separately for parking, said Shoup, author of "The High Cost of Free Parking," 1100 Wilshire in effect encourages use of public transportation by residents of the building, which is just a few blocks from a Metro subway stop.

"Unbundling the parking gives people a new choice," said Shoup. "Maybe it will deter people who want to own three cars, and encourage people who own only one. This is exactly the direction L.A. ought to be moving: People who use less parking pay less for housing."

In other cities, "it would be unthinkable to have the parking thrown in for free. It would turn it into L.A."