Good Lord! I didn’t even know rates went that high! I can’t believe someone would want to pay something like that!
What the hell does $4304 a month get you? A personal servant to wipe your own ass when you go to the loo? 
Tripler
Yeah yeah, I know it’s NYC. I’m just amazed.
That’s probably tip money to the people who pay the fees. They pay that much because they want to live only around people who can afford those fees. Kind of like private schools.
Good grief… I can’t imagine spending that much money a month (let alone making enough to spend that much!)
Geez o’ Pete, that’s about twice what I earn in a month!
And people wonder why I refuse to buy a condo… :rolleyes:
cheeze - I could pay my mortgage for 4 months with that and still have enough left over for a couple of electric bills…
If you could see the units in the West Perry development, you would understand why people would pay exorbitant sums of money to live there.
And the slick (sick?) thing is that a huge number of the owners don’t even live there in any sort of full time way. It’s got an amazing number of people who maintain the condos there as their “city places” even though they live full time up in New England, down in the retirement zones (Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas) or somewhere out on the West coast. They use the apartments as an alternative to staying in hotels when they need to be in the city for business or when they’ve popped in for the opera or shopping or a Broadway opening or awards show or the like. Martha Stewart is one such owner, I’m fairly certain that Mark Cuban and Michael Dell are also owners there. (I know that they own in the same building and I’m pretty sure that’s the one, but I could be confusing it with another foofoo Village hi-rise with West in the name, as half of them are _____ West or West _____. The other half are, of course, _______ East.)
If you aren’t “known” in NYC, you can’t even get in to see a vacancy. Despite having the financial means to buy there when the building first opened (not a $6.2 mill penthouse, something somewhat more reasonable) the realtor that Mr. TeaElle and I worked with could not get us an appointment to take the tour. To say that we were less than disappointed when we found a much larger, much nicer apartment with better amenities and it turned out to cost less to buy and to maintain and had a much nicer view is the understatement of the decade.
Eight months, for me. That kind of money was almost twice my net pay at my previous job.
No, even if the plumbing fixtures were goldplated, the doorknobs brilliant cut diamonds, and the rest of the place bejeweled and encrusted with wealth, I would not “understand” why people fork over such sums to “live” in a place like that. Especially since, as pointed out, most owners are absentee most of the year.
I do not understand why some people require lavish lifestyles that would make Louis XIV of France blush at the excess of it all.
Maybe if I had money I’d be different. Sure, if I was a billionaire I’d be living in better digs. But for the life of me, I just can’t imagine myself happy in such circumstances as paying $4k+ for maintenance fees for a condo. Maybe my priorities are screwed up. Maybe I’m only kidding myself.
I just don’t get it.
Let’s bring some stats into the picture:
My friends $200K condo has a monthly maintenance of $150. That’s .075%.
.075% of $4304 gives Martha Stewart’s condo a value of $5,738,666. Consider who it is and where it is, that sounds right.
That’s not at all unreasonable for New York, folks, especially because it covers lots of things that aren’t included in condos in other places - such as 24-hour doormen (and superintendent and maintenance), tight security, etc. Plus, these are the first Richard Meier buildings to go up in New York City - and they’re at the edge of a historic neighborhood (which was not at all happy about their construction, but tough luck, folks), and they have Hudson River sunset views, and the developers got the likes of Calvin Klein to buy in quickly.
Notoriously, at least one or two prospective tenants were given helicopter tours of the place - which was pretty crazy-making given that the buildings aren’t that tall.
And if I had the money, I’d consider these buildings, too. The sides facing the river are mostly glass, and the proportions are gaw-jus. It’s wonderful to see something beautifully modern rise in a historic area, particularly one whose inhabitants often seem to want to live in some sort of Disney-ized 19th century. (Oh, you’re whinging that they aren’t authentic? Well, if it’s authenticity you’re looking for, let’s deliver at least 25 pounds of horse shit to your curb every day, and remove your air conditioning units.)
Thank you, OxyMoron, for that very pointed and realistic take on that neighborhood. Just a tad too snobby for my tastes in the end, for sure.
Martha’s West Perry unit is a 3,258 square foot, terraced, duplex penthouse and she paid $6.16 million for it. Since Nicole Kidman’s new unit in that building isn’t a penthouse and she just paid $8 million for it, it seems like the value of the property is appreciating quite quickly, and it’s also clear that maintenance on Martha’s unit is closer to 0.6% monthly. That’s far below average for NYC condos, especially in luxury buildings.
As I recall, West Perry features advanced entryway security, multiple guards on premises 24/7, doormen and concierge staff on duty around the clock, a business center, meeting rooms, a fitness center, parking (which is worth $1k/month in and of itself) and more. You’re getting plenty for what you’re paying, especially if you’re an absentee owner like Martha, who CNN reports has never spent a single night in the building.
Looks like the building’s having an Aussie invasion, too. Hugh Jackman bought in because he needed NYC digs during his Broadway run. Of course, Nicole Kidman’s unit isn’t ready yet, and she’s afraid that the publicity surrounding the building will be bad for her children, so for the moment she’s crashing with Lenny Kravitz in SoHo.
Unfortunately, since the media knows that Nicole is living in Lenny’s building, and since some of the other tenants there are Nathan Lane, R&B singer Kelis (she sings that “Milkshake” song) and her fiance, rapper Nas, and both Maggie and Jake Gyllenhall, you’d think that she and her kids are just as susceptible to the pry eye of paparazzi there as they would on Perry Street.