Supersized Family As Status Symbol

And no one needs the suburbs now that the suburbs are here:

While the national housing market is experiencing a major slowdown, Manhattan’s wealthiest families are buying up as many apartments as they can and combining them into rambling mega-units. Brokers and developers say that buyers in this segment of the market are finding that they have few large apartments to choose from, and so they are creating the spaces they want from a half dozen one- and two-bedroom apartments. While some buyers are swallowing up whole floors of new condominiums, others are buying neighboring apartments in older co-op buildings as they become available.

Gary Barnett, the chief executive of the Extell Development Corporation, which is building the Ariel West at 245 West 99th Street, where the Ashleys bought, said the building has 70 apartments after seven units were combined into three.

These combination units are not bargains: two-bedroom apartments in the building typically cost $1.5 million to $2 million, and three- and four-bedroom apartments cost $2.5 million to $3 million.

Mr. Barnett plans to include 4,500- to 8,500-square-foot apartments in two projects planned for the Upper West Side for more families like the Ashleys. “A number of people we’re seeing who have three, four and even five children need these spaces,” he said.

This trend is seen most often on the Upper East and Upper West Sides. For example, in the last two months, five families paid $5.5 million to $13 million for apartment combinations at the Brompton at 205 East 85th Street. These resulting apartments range from 4,500 to 8,000 square feet, according to the Related Companies, the Brompton’s developer.

. . .

Stephanie Coontz, the director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research group in Chicago, described this as an “hourglass economy” with more rich people at the top and more poor people at the bottom. At the top, the superrich are finding that there are so many “merely rich” people that they have to find new ways to distinguish themselves. They are able to set themselves apart by having larger families and larger combined apartments to house them.

“You’ve got this incredible wealth at the top, and more people jockeying to put themselves at the top of that,” Ms. Coontz said.

High-End Manhattan Real Estate Is A Riche Market

New York is Tijuana for the European middle classes and now Cabo for the Euro-rich:

Meanwhile, the housing market everywhere else in the country is morbid, Wall Street is skittish and even Mayor Bloomberg says pricing here should be coming down. “You might think we were being set up for some major reversal,” said Prudential Douglas Elliman senior vice president George W. van der Ploeg.

But New York is unfallen: This autumn’s new batch of listings will trek onward and upward.

According to two sources, Roger Barnett (CEO of natural products company Shaklee) and his wife Sloan (cellphone billionaire George Lindemann’s daughter) have begun to quietly ask around $62 million for their 125-year-old neo-Georgian town house. The 33-foot-wide mansion at 16 East 69th Street, designed by Peter Marino, was bought less than seven years ago for $11.5 million.

. . .

No townhouse in New York City has ever been officially listed for more than the Barnett place. Likewise, no apartment had sold for $50 million before two spreads in the newly made-over Plaza broke that sacred ceiling this summer.

Our city knows its real estate is monstrous and anarchic, and that the sales price of an average apartment has tripled over the past decade. But that stat is trivial compared to the high-end’s dazzling rise. There are more big-ticket buyers around who are willing to spend their money on “fine art” real estate, even if prices are so much vaster than last decade’s.

“The disparity between the rich and the superrich is becoming ever greater,” Mr. Henckels said, “and until that reverses itself, the prices at the very high end are safe.”

Downtown is getting in on the superrich action too. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson sold his family’s West 10th Street townhouse this March for $33.15 million, though he reportedly paid $7.35 million in 2000. And a full-floor penthouse at 200 11th Avenue, with an en-suite car garage space, will go on the market this September for around $18 million, which listing broker Leonard Steinberg at Douglas Elliman said will be the biggest Chelsea listing ever.

In an e-mail, Mr. Steinberg cited demand from “the NOUVEAU nouveau riche” — homegrown but especially foreign.

“Everyone with euros or pounds,” said Kathy Sloane, the Clinton family broker and another Brown Harris director, “thinks we’re giving real estate away.” She said she’s broken records at every building she’s sold in this year.

You Can Buy Stuff That Tastes Good But You Can’t Buy Good Taste

Lady, please put down the cosmo:

The Bordeaux was flowing, the foie gras abundant and the well-heeled epicures at Daniel were having a refined old time when suddenly all eyes turned toward a table against one wall and all conversation ceased.

Jean-Luc Le Dû, a sommelier in the restaurant, looked in that direction, too. And he saw her: the woman making like a dancer on a pole at Scores.

She stood facing the rest of the dining room. First she took off a vest or a jacket, as best Mr. Le Dû remembers. Then she went to work on her blouse.

Just as she was getting to her bra, the maître d’hôtel got to her. Thus her drunken, wobbly stint as a stripper ended, and so did her dinner. She and her date, a smiling, sloshed man who had seemingly egged her on, were escorted to the door.

“She was not necessarily attractive or young, so it was disruptive,” complained Mr. Le Dû, who left Daniel several years ago and now owns a wine shop in Greenwich Village. “If she were beautiful, it might have been different. People might have been cheering her on.”

At Daniel? Hard to believe. But then Mr. Le Dû’s story provides a reminder that a 1985 Burgundy casts the same dark spell as a 2007 peppermint schnapps. That in a four-star temple as surely as a starless dive, some diners drink too much: way, way too much.

. . .

“If anything, a large bank account enables one to forgo normal levels of decorum, because you don’t have consequences,” said Rocky Cirino, a manager at the restaurant Cru, who previously worked at Daniel. “I’m thinking of several people whose station in life has enabled them to bypass normal civility and caution.”

. . .

Sometimes drunken diners don’t even bother to seek a private sanctuary for their libidos.

“People are often doing things underneath the table,” said a veteran server who has worked in many of Manhattan’s premier restaurants, including Gotham Bar & Grill and Fleur de Sel. The server asked not to be named for fear of angering past or future employers.

“The darker the restaurant, the more romantic the restaurant — there’s going to be some activity,” she said.

Man Bites Dog, Then Purchases Real Estate Using His Own Savings

Only in New York is it somehow unusual and newsworthy that someone squirrels away his or her modest income in order to buy a modest apartment:

When Janey Lee and Pablo Agüero were struggling freelance Web designers, buying an apartment in Manhattan seemed like a dream, one clouded by credit-card debt, student loans that had to be repaid and the bills for their wedding.

But now, five years later, they are about to move into a $445,000 two-bedroom condo in Hamilton Heights, in Upper Manhattan, with their 5-month-old daughter, Matilda. Their combined salaries of just over $100,000 qualified them for a mortgage, but it took a lot more for them to come up with the down payment.

In a city synonymous with luxury and spending, Ms. Lee, 30, and Mr. Agüero, 35, decided to do without.

They gave up smoking to cut costs, they stopped meeting friends after work for beers, they didn’t buy new clothes, and they stashed away tax refunds and as much of their earnings as possible. Whenever they wanted to buy drinks, gadgets or cookware, they asked each other: “Do I want an iPod or a house? Do I want a latte or a house?”

“It would be absurd for me to buy things when I wanted a place rather than a frying pan,” Ms. Lee said as she fed Matilda a post-nap bottle.

More impressive, perhaps, than their willpower was that they were able to save $90,000.

Still, Ms. Lee and Mr. Agüero are part of the shrinking pool of New Yorkers who have been able to buy apartments for less than $450,000, and the even smaller group who have done so without help from their parents or a Wall Street bonus.

“Most people that I’m working with are getting some kind of familial assistance,” said Tracie Hamersley, the Citi Habitats broker who helped Ms. Lee and Mr. Agüero find their apartment. “They were unusual in that they were doing this on their own.”

Manhattan As The Rich Man’s Gaza

Congestion pricing will help little in a city where most of the middle class is unable to afford even a parking space, much less an actual home:

In Houston, $225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a game room, den, in-ground pool and hot tub.

In Manhattan, it will buy a parking space. No windows, no view. No walls.

While real estate in much of the country languishes, property in Manhattan continues to escalate in price, and that includes parking spaces. Some buyers do not even own cars, but grab the spaces as investments, renting them out to cover their costs.

Spaces are in such demand that there are waiting lists of buyers. Eight people are hoping for the chance to buy one of five private parking spaces for $225,000 in the basement of 246 West 17th Street, a 34-unit condo development scheduled for completion next January. The developer, meanwhile, is seeking city approval to add four more spots.

Parking in new developments is selling for twice what it was five years ago, said Jonathan Miller, an appraiser and president of Miller Samuel.

Although spaces in prime sections of Manhattan are the most expensive, even those in open lots and in garages in Brooklyn, Queens, Riverdale and Harlem are close to $50,000, although at least one new Brooklyn development is asking $125,000.

Scarcity figures big in the escalating prices. Mr. Miller estimated that less than 1 percent of all co-op and condominium buildings in the city have private garages. The city also limits how much parking new buildings below 96th Street can offer, requiring that no more than 20 percent of the units have spaces.

“It’s a fairly rare amenity,” Mr. Miller said. “And in the world of pet spas and on-site sommeliers, it’s actually a pretty functional amenity.”

I don’t know — an on-site sommelier seems pretty practical. But don’t even get me started about pet spas . . .