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Invisible Billionaires Find NYC Real Estate Is A Bargain
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Nov 4, 2013
Modified Nov 4, 2013
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Nov 4, 2013
Modified Nov 4, 2013
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Members of the "global super elite" are driving up the cost of real estate in New York City with $95 million penthouses and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. "It turns out there is a pretty deep market for people that can afford residences like this," real estate developer Gary Barnett tells a Times reporter as they stroll through a $67 million apartment in the One57 building. Why buy in New York? It's cheap.
The average price for a unit in the One57 building is around $6,000 a square foot.
Last year, an apartment in Monaco’s curvaceous Tour Odéon sold for $8,850 a square foot. A well-off buyer paid slightly less, $8,779 a square foot, for an apartment in the sleek Frank Gehry-designed Opus Hong Kong.
And in West London, the average price for the 86 apartments in One Hyde Park has been more than $9,500 a square foot, according to research from the British property consulting firm Knight Frank.
New York: Cheaper than a Goddamned Principality, a rarefied Special Administrative Region in the world's fastest growing economy, and a town whose center has been almost exclusively colonized by invisible billionaires.
“We’re building the equivalent of bank safe deposit boxes in the sky that buyers can put all their valuables in and rarely visit,” said Jonathan J. Miller of the real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
Left unmentioned in the article is the fact that The Bank Of Plebeian Shoulders also features obscenely low property taxes if you're of the favored caste. As long as you're not here for 183 days of the year, there's no income tax either.
"But no matter what you build, once you're done, there's always another developer around the corner," Times reporter Julie Creswell says over the didactic marimba in the story's accompanying video, the same kind of marimba you'd hear in a clip about photosynthesis or the construction of the Panama Canal. It's just the way it is.
Tagged
global elite
income inequality
one57
real estate
rich people
tax the rich
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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