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Posts Tagged ‘Penthouse’

[Forbes] Penthouse Juxtaposition – What Developer Wants v. What Market Supports

June 15, 2017 | 5:14 pm | TV, Videos |

No one will argue that a $70 million penthouse can be special. But when a penthouse has many open houses and sits on the market for more than a year, it seems reasonable to wonder about pricing.

Samantha Sharf at Forbes presented a great video that juxtaposes the amenities of the apartment with my perspective on the state of the super luxury market and the next possible housing cycle in front of us. When they filmed this in Bryant Park, there were many people standing and watching off camera which was kinda fun despite my serious slouching.


[click on image for video]

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A Fifth Avenue Co-op’s 87-Year Price Increase was 3.6X Rate of Inflation

August 1, 2014 | 6:30 am | |

960fifth$450krecord-1927

[click to expand]

A few months ago there was a record $70M sale of a penthouse co-op sale at 960 Fifth Avenue.  The purchaser paid $5M over list price.

While doing some research I ran across an article in the New York Times archive that described a record Manhattan sale of $450,000 in the same building in 1927.  The apartment was located on the 10th and most of the 11th floor in the same building (aka 3 East 77th Street).

Based on the unit description, I believe this to be Apartment 10/11B which last sold for $21,000,000 on July 24, 2013.   Using the BLS calculator for CPI, a $450,000 sales price in 1927 adjusted for inflation to 2014 dollars would be $6,164,043 or an increase of 1,270%.

However the apartment sold for $21,000,000. an increase of 4,567% or 3.6 times the rate of inflation.

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Manhattan Penthouse Co-op Sold For 2nd Highest PPSF in History

June 9, 2014 | 2:57 pm | Milestones |

960fifthFP

Real estate reporter Katherine Clark at the New York Daily News got the scoop on the $70,000,000 penthouse sale at 960 Fifth Avenue, the highest price ever paid for a Manhattan co-op apartment. Curbed New York lays out all the (pretty?) pictures.

The previous record was held by David Geffen, who paid $54,000,000 in 2012 for the Penthouse at 785 Fifth Avenue. Although the Geffen penthouse was renovated, it was 12,000 square feet, more than twice as large as the 5,500 square feet within the penthouse at 960 Fifth Avenue – that just sold for a record price of $70M.

To further illustrate how much more expensive this new record price actually is, take a look at the two highest Manhattan co-op sales prices achieved, but on a price per square foot basis:

David Geffen paid $4,500 psf for the penthouse at 785 Fifth Avenue for the then record price of $54,000,000.

Nassef Sawiris paid $12,727 psf for the penthouse at 960 Fifth Avenue for the new record price of $70,000,000. On a sales price basis, the new record is 29.6% higher than the old record of 2 years ago.

On a price per square foot basis, the record sale was 182.8% above the previous record sale price set two years ago.

With all the attention focused on the newish or new development residential condo market, the all-time price per square foot apartment record was set 2 years ago, around the time of the Geffen purchase.  A Russian oligarch paid $88,000,000 for Sandy Weill’s penthouse condo that works out to $13,049 per square foot. That record breaking sale was largely viewed as a market outlier, that the buyer overpaid as part of a larger divorce strategy – since it was 31% higher than the previous record in the year prior within the same building.

Some other oddities about this new record co-op sale at 960 Fifth Avenue:

  • The 960 Fifth Avenue co-op board is old world and I’ve heard it is fairly tough. As a general statement, it is not that common to see a foreign buyer at the high end of the market approved by a co-op board.
  • The news coverage suggested the buyer was slow to pay his taxes and negotiated a reduced amount with the government. This would be a concern for most co-op boards in terms of collecting maintenance charges in arrears from a foreign national if they stopped paying.

Since these conditions would probably make any high end co-op board nervous, perhaps this is a sign that shareholders (board members are also shareholders) are concerned about damaging potential property values by limiting the universe of people that would be able to afford these types of prices in this new market condition.

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The Woolworth Penthouse Explained

May 29, 2014 | 5:35 pm |

woolworthPHinfographicnyp
[Source: NY Post, click to expand]

I’ve had this page bookmarked all week and found myself referring to it periodically for the above sort-of infographic. Lois Weiss lays it all out in her article, clearly titled: This is what a penthouse on top of the Woolworth Building could look like

At one point in time, the Woolworth Building was the tallest building in the world, so this apartment would have been the highest condo in the world (ok, ok, condos weren’t around back then).

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Manhattan’s Electric Kool-Aid Penthouse Test

June 5, 2013 | 10:23 am | Charts |


[click to expand]

Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” gave me the phrase “master of the universe” which I can liberally use when (respectfully) describing the penthouse apartment demographic, but his earlier book cover better matched the chart colors – hence the title.

But I digress…

I got a call by a reporter who thought there was an uptick in Manhattan penthouse sales. So I looked at the market from January 2012 by month for frequency and price trends. Penthouse sales represent a very specific and small market niche with a huge disparity in characteristics.

I found 329 penthouse sales out of a pool of 14,612 sales over the past 14 months. I tagged any sale with a “PH or some abbreviation of the word “penthouse” in the label. Yes there are penthouses that aren’t necessarily tagged as such, but that occurance would be random and not likely a factor. That’s a 2.3% market share for penthouse sales which seems to correlate to the housing stock i.e. 100 unit building with 2 penthouses.

Although a 2.3% market share seems a tad high to me, no real trend or pattern emerged. I did observe that the average sales price of a Manhattan penthouse was $4,249,323 since early 2012 or 3.1x higher than the overall average sales price of $1,354,766 in 1Q 2013.

I can’t let a bunch of research time go to waste so I whipped up a chart that shows…nothing.

Conclusion: No uptick. (ie No Kool-aid.)

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Penthouse Article In New York Living

July 5, 2006 | 12:05 am | Articles |

An article I recently wrote on the penthouse market, Penthouse Living: On Top of the World, appears in the July-August edition of New York Living magazine. I have been writing for them periodically over the past 4 years.

The magazine contains a lot more than pretty pictures (and there are a lot of those). There’s great information on various types of residences in the New York market and region, especially concerning luxury and new development.

Download article.

For urbanites, its safe to say that many aspire to be on top of things, and that goes for their apartments. Penthouses seem to fit the bill, but also, how is a penthouse apartment defined? The term “ penthouse” as a marketing label, implies exclusivity, cache and uniqueness, yet as an apartment type, its definition remains elusive. Besides their “elevated” status at or near the top of a building, penthouses tend to be uniquely configured, have open views, outdoor space and other unique amenities which may include above-average ceiling height, multi-level configurations and fireplaces…

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