– New York Luxury Housing Bubble On Steroids: 15 CPW Flipping Returns 192% In 5 Years (ZeroHedge, Aug 17, 2012):
“It’s defining a new category in real estate” is how the ultra-luxury apartment business is seen in New York. Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein and his buddies (including Sting) at 15 Central Park West are set to double their money as Bloomberg reports four condos in the Richie-Rich style extravaganza of a building have hit the market at asking prices at an average 192% over what owners paid in 2007 and 2008. The most expensive (a five-bedroom 35th floor pied-a-terre), topping Oaktree’s Howard Mark’s previous $52.5mm record purchase at 740 Park, is priced at a stunning $95mm. Testing the glass ceiling of a $100mm apartment is nothing though – as just like the rest of the nation’s apparent house price recovery ‘tight supply is supporting the current spate of eye-popping asking prices’ which obviously will mean an influx of ‘very expensive’ inventory hitting the market in the coming years. For $95mm we wondered exactly what the apartment comes with? Perhaps $90mm of gold bars on the coffee-table? Perhaps Hugh Verrier and his wife Celia sum up the largesse perfectly: “we just thought of it as a living space”. Indeed, Hugh, indeed.As JPM noted today – with regard the broad ‘housing recovery’:-
The recent rise in home prices are a result of record low housing inventory and improved distressed sales, not an increase in demand;
Net demand (3.2m in June) driven by 3.2% decline in inventory, which has fallen 24% YoY