A $250 million trophy apartment in One57 is making headlines. The 23,000-square-foot and four-story apartment overlooking Central Park will soon hit the market, and many are wondering, who will buy it?
A $250 million trophy apartment in One57 will be on the market in the upcoming months, which tech, media, or oil billionaire will purchase it?
The One57, formerly known as Carnegie 57, is a 75-story building that is marketed as a 90-story. The skyscraper owned by Extell Development Company is located at 157 West 57th Street in the Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Extell Development will be offering 38 apartments at One57 for sale in 2017 including the much-talked about trophy apartment worth $250 million. These apartments were previously intended to be rentals.
For those wondering, here is the definition of trophy apartment, according to reals estate experts:
“What does “trophy” really mean in New York real estate these days? Minimum “trophy” price tags ranged from $10 million to $45 million, with uptown trophy homes drawing higher cutoff prices than downtown ones. Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Dolly Lenz said a trophy might have any price tag, as long as the home is “without peer.” But her colleague, Elliman’s Howard Margolis said anything that’s either above $4,000 per square foot or $20 million in total constitutes a trophy sale. According to Michael Vargas, principal of Vanderbilt Appraisal Company, a trophy property is “rare, special and coveted by many, like a Picasso.”
Extell Development Company’s founder and President Gary Barnett filed documents in April with the state attorney general’s office, which revealed that the property is for a quarter of a billion dollars, the owner will get 16 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, five balconies, and a massive terrace. Monthly common charges will be more than $45,000, with annual taxes of about $675,000.
According to the documents, the “new tower units” include 21 one-bedrooms, ten two-bedrooms, six three-bedrooms, and one four-bedroom duplex that range from $3.45 million to $17.5 million. Barnett said:
“We recognize the demand for efficiently sized, luxury inventory below $10 million. There is absolutely no comparable product currently on the market.”
So, who will purchase One57’s $250 million trophy apartment? Several real estate experts weighed in on the matter. Most of them will be bought by foreigners seeking what one real estate agent calls “the trophy buildings of our era.” Others from unstable, violent lands want a “safe haven” for their money. Like the Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who broke that record by agreeing to purchase a penthouse unit for $100 million in 2012. Moreover, the rest will be owned by very wealthy Americans like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and the star of the Yankees Alex Rodriguez.
The $250 million price tag obliterates the previous high-profile sale of a $88 million penthouse just a walk away at 15 Central Park West in 2012 to a Russian mogul by Sanford Weill, the American financier and philanthropist, who had purchased the apartment four years earlier for half that. Jonathan Miller, an independent appraiser said:
“That $88 million sale triggered the sense that there was this yet-to-be-harvested, nine-digit New York housing market.We started to see a frenzy of $100 million listings – what I call aspirational pricing.”
Many in the real estate business “credit former billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg for pushing city rezoning laws that allowed these to be built in previously restricted areas… and positioned New York as the capital of the world.”
