New York has a dynamic luxury real estate market. The formerly poor industrial districts were able to develop into particularly posh artists’ quarters, as the Tribecca district shows, which is now full of fashionable restaurants, shops, celebrities, and luxury apartments.
Stylish lofts, such as in the much sought-after Chelsea, can also be found in the once commercial Soho, where warehouse buildings have been converted into artist apartments. These days the streets are haunted by fashionable real estate prospects looking for spacious luxury apartments such as can be found in the West Village.
Greenwich Village and characteristic Little Italy give the impression of being in a small village, mainly due to its comfortable apartments with large fireplaces and tall windows framed in dark brown. For a classic residential area, you’d better avoid neighborhoods that never sleep, such as the East Village or Midtown (with the exception of Turtle Bay), and focus on the Upper East Side. A majestic 20th-century city mansion or a multi-story penthouse with a terrace and views of Central Park on the Upper West Side could find your attention there.
He’s done it again. Just a few days ago it became known that US hedge fund entrepreneur Ken Griffin had bought a classy townhouse with historic flair in London for 95 million pounds (about 108 million euros). Now the multibillionaire struck again, this time in New York: In the posh skyscraper 220 Central Park South, Griffin acquired a feudal penthouse with a living space of around 2200 square meters, which should extend over several floors. Cost: $ 238 million. This makes it the most expensive residential property in the USA.
Hedge fund billionaire Griffin is adding another acquisition in a long line that he can already look back on. The founder and head of the investment firm Citadel, headquartered in Chicago, has been working on his reputation as a busy real estate investor and art collector for years. Griffin has already acquired more than $ 500 million in real estate in New York and Chicago alone. This does not include the current deal.
Some highlights: A few years ago, Griffin bought two complete floors of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Chicago for 30 million dollars. He had a penthouse in Miami Beach that cost $ 60 million. In 2017, Griffin also made headlines when he bought a four-story penthouse in his hometown of Chicago. The price of almost $ 60 million made it the most expensive residential property in the city at the time.
The media also reported a $ 230 million property purchase in Florida and a $ 40 million purchase in New York in 2009.
Griffin has also broken records in the art market. In 2016, for example, he bought works by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning from the David Geffen Foundation for a total of around $ 500 million, according to Bloomberg. At the same time, the investment entrepreneur was already active as a benefactor, for example, donating more than $ 600 million for education and cultural purposes.
Griffin made his current home purchases at an apparently propitious time. In both London and New York, the prices for luxury properties have recently dropped noticeably, as market participants report.
In London, for example, the upcoming Brexit has been causing uncertainty and reluctance among buyers and investors for more than two years. The prices for houses in the most exclusive areas of the city have fallen by 18.4 percent since 2014, according to figures from the real estate consultancy Savills. The approximately 200-year-old property near Buckingham Palace, which Griffin bought for 95 million pounds, was originally put on the market for 145 million pounds, reported the Financial Times.
Interesting Fact: 389,000 millionaires, 2,929 multimillionaires, and 103 billionaires live in NYC. This makes New York City the number one billionaire list.
In New York, too, property sellers recently had to lower their asking prices. Ken Griffin’s penthouse purchase hardly fits into the overall picture, as the record price of $ 238 million would rather speak against a weak market trend. You don’t think that single deal says much about the market, Bloomberg quotes a New York luxury real estate broker. It is more of an isolated case. “Hats off to the project developer”, so the conclusion of the market expert.
Background: Ken Griffin founded the Citadel hedge fund back in 1990 and is currently estimated by Forbes to have a personal fortune of $ 9.9 billion.
Griffin’s Citadel company manages approximately $ 28 billion in investor money. The company was able to close the past year successfully, according to the “FT”. While other hedge funds struggled with the global market turmoil, especially in the fourth quarter of 2018, and performed poorly, Citadel resisted this trend. According to “FT”, the flagship fund “Wellington” of the house closed the fourth quarter with a plus of 9 percent. Two other products achieved a profit of 6 percent and 9 percent, according to the newspaper.
Admittedly, it is not just any apartment: there are two complete floors, number 89 and 90, a total of almost 1014 square meters. And the view of the southern end of Central Park is likely to be one of the most beautiful in Manhattan. But the luxury apartment doesn’t even exist yet.
It is part of the One57 building. The developer is Extell Development. President Gary Barnett told the New York Times that half of the 92 apartments had already been sold.
He didn’t want to reveal exactly how much the penthouse on the 89th and 90th floor brought in. Despite the record price, the magical 100 million dollar mark was not exceeded. “I really hope that one day we’ll break it,” said Barnett.
Like us on Facebook for more stories like this: