The market for luxury goods is in full-fledged revival mode, and that includes high-end city real estate — apartments and townhouses in the $5 million-plus range. After plunging 30% from peak to trough, luxury-home prices in many big urban markets are back on the rise. Unit sales in Manhattan, Miami and San Francisco are up as much as 50% since 2009, as new buyers have come into the market from China, India, Russia and Brazil. Prices are up 15% or more.
"Buyers at every price point smell value and, at the high end, they are in a position to do something about it," says Brian K. Lewis, executive vice president of Halstead Properties in New York.
Some sellers are even making money. Scott Bommer, founder of the hedge fund SAB Capital, couldn’t have bought his $28.5 million 5,800 square-foot apartment on the 29th floor New York’s Ritz-Carlton Tower on New York’s Central Park South at a less propitious time: July 2008. He relisted the apartment four months later at $35 million, but not surprisingly found no takers. In late August, he finally closed a sale for $30 million, according to Leighton Candler, senior vice president at the Corcoran Group. Bommer declined to comment.