While U.S. real estate market is taking a breather, sales of homes at the high end of the market—trophy homes selling for eight to nine figures—are reaching new records.
A hedge fund manager, it was reported on Monday, paid $147 million for an East Hampton property on exclusive Further Lane, less than a month after the previous record was broken with the $120 million purchase of a 51-acre Greenwich, Conn., estate.
SLIDESHOW: The 10 Most Expensive Home Sales in America
“With the $147 million sale in East Hampton, N.Y., it has been a busy couple of weeks for the .0000000000000000001 percent of the home-buying public in the U.S.,” Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consulting firm in New York, wrote on his blog.
There are currently only six properties that sold for $100 million or more in the U.S. and a handful that traded hands for amounts shy of that figure. California, the (Long Island) Hamptons and Connecticut are well represented in the top, while properties in New York City have yet to break the $100 million mark, although it might only be a matter of time.
Related: 2039: The Year of the First Trillionnaire?
Miller views this phenomenon as product specific and not so much location specific. “There is a randomness to the locations where these sales occur,” he wrote. “However, I do believe the probability is high that NYC will see such a sale in the not-too-distant future.”
Buyers are typically American financiers, hedge fund managers or investment bank CEOs, and foreign billionaires, including a few Russian tycoons. They don’t represent the 1 percent but a fraction of the 1 percent, which means that these sales remain rare. Still, they’re becoming more common than they used to.
Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
