This is absolutely nuts.
It looks like a giant puzzle to me; one that I might have figured out when I was 13-years-old, but don’t have the eyesight for, as an adult.
Below is a floor plan from a rather unique condo in New York City, with a very interesting back-story.
Let me tell you that story, as well as show you a couple of other videos and floor plans from luxury NYC units…
Have you ever wondered what the floor plan for a 9,000 square foot condo would look like?
I have.
And I’ll be honest – I wasn’t impressed by the one shown above.
There are just way, way too many walls!
I’m not going to suggest that a 9,000 square foot condo should be completely open concept, but my God look at all those different rooms!
This technically shows as only a 3-bedroom, but note that the den at the top has a dressing room. Why do you need a dressing room adjacent to a den?
But that”s not the only question to ask here.
Why is the kitchen only 5.7% of the square footage of the entire condo?
What is the difference between the “library” and the “study,” and why does one need two dens with BOTH a library and a study?
Why does the dressing room open to the kitchen?
Why is there a pantry off the bedroom?
What is a “dress corridor?” Am I that poor, that I have no idea what this is? Why is it 180 square feet?
Why does this floor plan provide measurements for the hallway?
It’s an odd one, I tell ya.
But you know what? It’s still $68,000,000. Or $7,556 per square foot.
I first read about the condo HERE.
A Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui has been “hiding out” in the apartment (which is actually a co-op) and not a condominium, since he fled China in 2015.
He purchased the property for $70 Million, and tried to sell it in 2017 for $86 Million.
Now here he stands, looking at a $2 Million loss, plus costs. I guess there are worse things for exiled billionaires?
Here’s a video tour of the unit that’s worth watching:
Not bad, for $68,000,000.
But if you can afford $68 Million, you can afford $73,800,000, right?
There’s a 10,000 square foot, 5-bedroom penthouse for sale at 212 Fifth Avenue, with an additional 4,700 square foot terrace, and 950 square foot……um…..balcony?
Now this is a little more like what a 10,000 square foot condo floor plan should look like:
I’m not an expert in 10,000 square foot floor plans, but doesn’t this look a bit cleaner?
There’s a 1,500 square foot “great room.”
I counted some 15 rooms in the first floor plan, and only 9 here. This is less choppy, better flow, and well-organized.
Of course, I wonder why one needs a sitting room off the 400 square foot master bedroom, but I guess there’s just nowhere in that bedroom to sit.
I will say, I was somewhat unimpressed by the Sotheby’s listing, which you can see HERE. There were maybe 7-8 interior photos of the unit, but only the foyer, hallway, bathroom, atrium, etc.
But hey, the view isn’t bad…
My last comment on this world of real estate that I know nothing about, is this:
The listing reads, “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
It’s a $73,800,000 condo.
I find that statement to be both incredibly misplaced, and absolutley ironic.
It may be the opportunity of “a” lifetime, in the most literal sense. Because there may be “a” buyer out there, but probably not many more.
Anna
at 8:55 am
is there no laundry room in that first one? I guess when you have that much money maybe you just pay someone else to figure out how to clean your clothes. Or it’s the unlabeled room off the service elevators, that would make sense.
That whole floor plan is mindbogglingly strange. Such a weirdly small kitchen for a place like that. A dressing room off the kitchen? Shouldn’t that be a butler’s pantry? A ‘den’ that has two interconnecting walk in closets. There appears to be a full bathtub in the bathroom off the study?! Who is taking a bath there? And now I see the study has a closet too, so is that also potentially a bedroom!?
The more I look at it the weirder it seems.
JL
at 10:31 am
I think it still retains much of the original layouts, where at one point that floor would have been several individual units. The original owner simply didn’t put much effort into integrating it all into one massive unit when they took over the whole floor.
Katie
at 9:32 am
This actually hurts my eyes just a little.
Kyle
at 9:42 am
The dressing room off the kitchen, reminds me of that awful “lifestyle video” that was used to sell a condo a couple of years back. In the video, the story was of some douchey guy entertaining his bros, while his wife made dinner, but she would keep spilling crap all over herself thus needing to change outfits for every course.
bal
at 9:42 pm
🙂
Marina
at 10:32 am
The first one was clearly 3 apartments that were merged into one. To my eyes at least.
Look at it as 3, and it makes perfect sense. But then when they merged, they didn’t do any re-design. They just re-labelled the rooms. Nuts.
Anna
at 12:35 pm
ah you are right, when you look at it as three apartments it all makes sense.
So bizarre they didn’t do any reconfiguration!
gC
at 7:03 pm
“The same year, he bought the Sherry-Netherland co-op, which was pieced together out of smaller apartments over the years.” from TheRealDeal.com
Appraiser
at 10:34 am
Or for a mere $15,900,000, one could have a fabulous 5,555 SqFt condo located at 50 Yorkville Ave. in the “Four Seasons Private Residences.”
Currently the highest priced condo offering on TREB.
Tommy
at 12:59 pm
Should have 15 foot ceilings throughout for that price.
Condodweller
at 1:10 am
These units are a perfect example of why Toronto is not a world class city as we keep debating. First of all, we don’t have anything that even come close to these units. Second, we can’t even begin to imagine how they are used.
Many of these places are just a playground for wealthy foreigners who need a place to stay when they arrive on their private jets and staying at a five star hotel just won’t do.
Think about it, it was a downgrade for Trump to move into the Whitehouse from his NYC penthouse. There is so much wealth in NYC or going to NYC that I bet the places will sell quicker than we think. Perhaps the exiled Chinese guy didn’t need to sell when he didn’t get his asking price. I am sure there is no shortage of qualified buyers but the pricing still has to make sense.
RealGeorge
at 10:50 am
Okay, now I understand. Your definition of a world class city is a “playground” for the rich. Thank God Toronto doesn’t fit that description. And we can (should) only hope it never does.
Condodweller
at 5:11 pm
@RG. It doesn’t appear you understand at all. Do you honestly think that I believe a world class city is defined by a single chriteria?
Batalha
at 10:26 am
“World class city” is a BS term dreamt up by ineffectual mayors pandering to their constituents. If people are willingly moving to City A or abandoning City B, that’s all that matters in my book. Putting my opinion of a city’s cachet above those of thousands of people is hubristic.
joel
at 9:37 am
These apartments in NYC are just a way to hold wealth, same as buying a Picasso. People don’t buy such lavish places as they need or want the room to live in, but it is a stable investment and a good way to park foreign currency. Look at Monaco condo pricing, absolutely insane there.
Kyle
at 10:08 am
The Toronto condo recently purchased by Peter Gilgan from Sarah Pursglove absolutely kills both these NY places. It even comes with a juicy high society back story.
Interestingly Sarah Pursglove and her ex-husband Robert Oesterlund held many properties:
A $5.2M home in Boca Raton Fl.
Two homes in Helsinki, with a combined value of $10M
Two properties in the Bahamas with a combined value of $10M
And an apartment in Wales worth $200K
As well as another condo in the Toronto Four Seasons worth $1.8M
Something to note about these incredibly wealthy people, they had no property in NY, London or any of the other cities some people place on a pedestal above Toronto. Instead over 50% of their real estate value was in Toronto.
They could easily have bought either of these NY penthouses, but preferred the Toronto location:
“With homes in Finland, the U.S., and the Bahamas already, “we were looking at places in Canada and interested in something that would be similar to New York, and walkable,” Pursglove said.”
Pictures here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-26/toronto-s-hotly-contested-27-million-penthouse-hits-the-market
Solicitors for High Society
at 11:53 am
Sir,
Our chambers has been tasked to represent the true members of High Society — families whose crimes are so old, or so obscure, that they may now glide with impunity in the Great Capitals of the World. It should (but apparently does not) go without saying that council estate urchins, those whose fortunes are built on advance fee frauds and internet ad click fraud, and those who dare not risk owning real estate in the Global Hegemon, pursued as they are by a rabble of State Attorneys, Revenue Agents and Federal wire fraud detectives, would be black balled should they attempt entree into our clients’ circles.
We would advise these persons, without prejudice, to remain in their colonial abodes and aboard their tacky yachts while their tawdry financial issues play out in the tabloids.
Yours in duplicitousness,
Jarndyce & Jarndyce, Solicitors at law.
Gray’s Inn, London
Kyle
at 12:15 pm
LOL, good advice to all those silly new moneyed
Housing bear
at 10:22 pm
@kyle
I think this guy stole my thesis
http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/unprecedented-reliance-on-housing-fuels-canada-recession-call
Kyle
at 10:39 pm
It’s certainly not a new thesis, i’ve heard it for many many years now.
Housing bear
at 11:28 pm
Not the crashbcould be worse than US. The part about the recession being caused by a slowdown in housing activity. Don’t know their methodology but claiming that we are two standard deviations off from the long term average of those employed by housing related sectors as percentage of total employment.
The recession is coming!
Kyle
at 6:51 am
No i’m very familiar with theory. People have been talking about the F.I.R.E. contribution forever and how a slow down in housing would create a feedback loop. I’ve seen those theories in Garth Turner comments since 2010. However as i’ve said before hypotheses are nothing more than ifantastical hypotheticals unless they have realistically high probabilities and high sensitivities. And as i’ve explained, i don’t see much more than a low to moderately low probability of that occurring.
Housing bear
at 12:39 pm
Fair enough. Shouldn’t be claiming that it’s my original theory either. Just have only started to see it in the mainstream recently. I think the problem and the probability will be compounded by how much bad debt is out there, but no way of knowing how much is out there until the tides start to reverse. Believe we are at that point now, so I guess we can see what starts to unfold over the next 6-12 months. In the meantime best we agree to disagree
Housing bear
at 12:42 pm
I do read Garth from time to time but a lot of his points need to be taken with a grain of salt. He has his agenda of trying to push people to invest in his stuff and can be a bit of a snake oil salesman from time to time