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Developers Creating Housing For Those With Money to Burn
An artist's rendering of the Ensuite Sky Garage planned for New York shows the latest in high-end living: elevator parking for the Maserati outside an apartment that costs as much as $16 million.
(By Hayes Davidson Via Bloomberg News)
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Trump is upgrading the lifestyles of his apartment residents. In his new Trump Plaza in Jersey City, N.J., they'll have access to three BMWs to run errands.
Developer Dean Geibel, a partner with Trump in the Plaza, is building in Asbury Park, N.J., what he calls the ultimate amenity: a 60-foot-by-40-foot private swimming pool perched above the Atlantic Ocean. The pool is part of his new development's $4 million penthouse, which Geibel is keeping for himself.
Tunes Underwater
In New York, residents at 48 Bond Street will claim the latest pool perk: music piped underwater from their iPods.
The appeal of these extravagances has more to do with social status than convenience, says Christopher D. Carroll, an economist at Johns Hopkins University who studies savings patterns among the wealthy. "They really get pleasure from the thought that they can spend and they can show it off to others," he says.
Moscow's Alye Parusa (Scarlet Sails) apartment building sells penthouses costing up to $2.7 million that come with nautical showpieces: yacht berths on the nearby Moscow River.
The escalating prices for amenity-filled apartments aren't scaring away buyers. Condominiums at the former Plaza Hotel in New York -- developed by Naftali, head of New York-based Elad Properties -- range in price from $2.5 million to about $40 million. As of March, 80 percent of them were sold, sight unseen, because the developer refused to show unfinished units.
At Your Fingertips
They come with a handheld gadget for making restaurant reservations and ordering the valet to fetch the car. A video monitor shows residents when it's delivered.
Residents have only a small chance of losing money. In 2001, the combined might of a U.S. recession and a terrorist attack in New York wasn't enough to push the city's luxury apartment prices per square foot down, Miller says. They jumped 40 percent from 2003 to 2006, the appraiser says, and there's no slowdown in sight.
Peter Woodifield, Sean Cronin and Garfield Reynolds contributed to this report.
