Developers Market Foreign Real Estate to New Yorkers | Waccabuc Real Estate
International buyers are known for spending big money in New York, be it the woman from China who spent more than $6 million on a home for her toddler at the skyscraper One57, or the daughter of Dmitry Rybolovlev, the Russian potash magnate, who used a trust to pay $88 million for an apartment at 15 Central Park West.
But what of wealthy New York buyers who might set their sights elsewhere? As luxury real estate surges globally, developers with projects in cities around the world are increasingly turning their marketing dollars toward New York.
“We have put our aims on New York because this is where a lot of potential buyers are,” said Yigal Zemah, the founder of Berggruen Residential, which is building a 42-story condominium in Tel Aviv. Designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier, the project, called Meier-on-Rothschild, is one of the country’s most expensive, offering a 15,000-square-foot penthouse priced at nearly $50 million.
A number of builders are following Mr. Zemah’s lead and marketing their projects in New York. So far this year, 13 offering plans have been filed in New York for projects being built outside of the state, according to the New York State Attorney General. That is more than double the six projects filed last year, although far below the 46 offering plans filed here in 2007 during the peak of the real estate bubble.
“There has been a definite increase, yes,” said Stuart M. Saft, a chairman of the global condominium development practice at the law firm Holland & Knight. “In the last two years, we have done as many New York offering plans for out-of-state offerings as we did in the previous five years.”
This is being helped along by the rising prices in New York’s ultraluxury market. Developers selling multimillion-dollar homes have tended to concentrate on the big money in areas such as China, Russia and the Middle East. But as condominium prices in New York approach the $100 million mark — catching up with cities like London — New Yorkers begin to look like prime candidates.
“Global developers are not scared of New York,” said Royce Pinkwater, a broker who specializes in superluxury projects in New York and globally, and the chief executive of the firm Pinkwater Select. “New Yorkers are not only among the most global residents in the world, but the increase of wealth here has made it very attractive.”
Among the projects drawing the attention of New Yorkers: 5 Princes Gate in London, a small luxury building developed by Mike Spink; and 18 Nouvel, two 36-story towers in Singapore designed by Jean Nouvel, also a Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Many of the developments being marketed to New Yorkers are in vacation areas like Florida and the Caribbean. For example, the developer of Oil Nut Bay, a community of vacation houses in the British Virgin Islands where prices range from $3 million to as much as $50 million, has been actively courting New Yorkers.
“New York kind of dropped off the radar for a few years after the collapse of the financial sector,” said David V. Johnson, the founder of the Victor International Corporation, the developer of Oil Nut Bay. “But it is certainly back now.” The company has hired a New York public relations agency and is holding parties to advertise the project, most recently at the exclusive Metropolitan Club. “Marketing to New York is a heavy focus of ours,” he said.
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