Housing

The Big, Big, Big, Big Money Behind Tall Buildings

How super-luxury apartments became a major global investment tool.
One57, a new luxury skyscraper apartment building on New York City's West 57th Street.REUTERS/Mike Segar

The $100 million duplex penthouse to be perched astride the 73rd and 74th floors at 220 Central Park South will offer five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a gallery, library and a 713-square-foot terrace. The luxe building is one of a handful now springing up on Manhattan’s nascent Billionaire’s Row, and its penthouse is just one of at least a dozen area units expected to be priced in the nine* figures. The second Gilded Age will not lack for monuments to its greatness.

“It’s not that prices rose to this level,” Jonathan Miller, president of the real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel, told the Real Deal, an industry bulletin, “but that a new housing category has been created.”