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April 15, 2006
Better than floorplan porn
I've been thinking a lot about real estate lately. Real estate is a favorite pass-time with Manhattanites, since almost everyone here spends an insane amount in some form to put a roof over their heads. So why not at least own rather than pay someone else rent?
I decided to look to buy up here in Harlem, where prices are more reasonable, though now even Harlem prices are hitting $600/sf. (In the suburbs, $150/sf is an expensive price.) It has, of course, been a huge pain in the ass already, starting with out-of-date listings, brokers who don't return inquires promptly, tax issues, etc. Corcoran, for one, might have a good reputation, but try getting one of their brokers to reply to an email. Once I finally did get a call back, the place I was looking at is "no longer available," though their website indicates otherwise. I wonder if they didn't bother with me because I used a ".edu" email address and the figured I'm a poor grad student that they don't want to deal with?
Yesterday I paid a visit to 40 Mercer, a new $130M condo project in SoHo. I don't think I'll be moving there anytime soon, but a Columbia guy offered to show us around the site. It's one of those places where they say, "if you have to ask, you can't afford it." A small section of private terrace on the roof starts at $500,000 to buy. The cheapest place *under* a roof is $2.3M, and it has a view of the butt of another building. $2.3M gets you one bedroom, at a price of around $2300/sf.
After $130M is spent building 40 Mercer and the units sold, it's likely that fewer than 20 people will live there full-time. Most units were purchased by out-of-towners as pieds-a-terre, or homes-away-from-home. On one hand, it seems like a giant waste for people to dedicate years of their lives to building a $130M structure for 20 people to live in. And, because of a tax abatement, a resident of a $13M place in 40 Mercer pays less property tax than I would pay if I bought a single floor of a brownstone in Harlem. On the other hand, maybe some resident there needs a house-sitter?
Floorplan porn is fun with this development. Here is Andre Balazs's $10M penthouse floorplan. And here is the $13M pool residence--yes, it has a private rooftop pool and terrace. It also features a 17-foot section of glass wall that is opened and closed with a motor. The owner of this unit is some London hedge fund guy.
The floorplans don't show some of the more obnoxious parts of the development--ok, the most obnoxious thing: the giant blue and red panes of glass in the units. Supposedly the designer thought of Broadway as blue and Mercer St as red, so units fronting those streets have windows that are partially clear, partially red or blue glass. That's obnoxious enough, but the worst is a group of three units that have a giant pane of blue glass covering the best view from the unit. And it's written into your property title that the hideous blue glass stays forever. Small wonder that these four units have been very difficult to sell.
Posted by adrianjo at April 15, 2006 08:13 PM