LuxuryBlurb
Posts Tagged ‘Donald Trump’
Monday, April 9th, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on April 9th, 2012
New York’s famed Plaza Hotel built in 1907 is for sale again by current owner Elad Properties: the landmark property that recently underwent a significant renovation and was partially converted to condominium residences has traded hands several times over the past decade. Sahara India Pariwar Ltd from India is the reported buyer. The cash offer is for the hotel “as is” and debt free. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc. manages the hotel, which overlooks Central Park and the Plaza in front of Bergdorf Goodman across from the APPLE store, for Elad. The Sahara Group would terminate the contract with Fairmont Hotels. The estimated price is $ 575-600 million, a relative bargain considering individual apartments have sold in the building for almost $ 50million. Sahara Group has supposedly already made a down payment for the Plaza Hotel, and is conducting due diligence. It says that the hotel part of the property, which has 100 condominiums and 130 large condominium rooms, is being valued at $400 million, and its premium retail space is being valued at around $200 million. It also says that a condition of a deal is for Elad to first terminate the management agreement with Canada’s Fairmont Hotels with immediate effect.
I’ve always felt the retail segment of the hotel was a bit of a flop: I think New Yorkers are simply not used to entering a mall-like setting and don’t particularly like it…..especially when above or below street level. Time Warner seems to be doing much better although the other night I spotted several vacancies above street grade. I also felt the service and quality of the hotel was a bit disappointing and hopefully this sale will improve things. Remember when Ivana Trump and the Donald were in charge? Those were the days….
Sunday, December 4th, 2011
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on December 4th, 2011
Did MTV start the reality TV craze with MTV CRIBS? Maybe C-span started it? Maybe it was HGTV? Actually it was PBS with a show called AMERICAN FAMILY….and it aired in 1973. Remember PBS creates content on a tight budget. The snowball seemed to escalate with SURVIVOR, The Apprentice, American Idol, The Real Housewives and all of a sudden Television Land had learned how to produce super-dumb content with weak but regular ‘who shot JR?’ cliffhangers at a low cost. The dumbing down of our world has indeed accelerated.
Now the worst show of all: THE REAL REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEES: The country and world watch this reality-TV style debating structure with shock and awe as each candidate slowly eliminates themselves through their own ‘gotcha’ moment. Just like every show, this one too has it’s Amarosa, Bethany and Danielle Staub. It’s creepy. And it would probably be as bad if these were Democrats, although the hypocrisy may be somewhat lesser. Now with news that Donald Trump will be doing a Republican nominee debate, it is absolutely certain that life has become one big reality TV show, of course purveying a reality that is highly scripted (un-officially of course) hyper-edited and hyper air-brushed. In short what is being conveyed as reality is far from it. We witness this with the real estate reality shows. Its entertainment in the guise of reality. The other day I was asked to participate in a Broker’s Poker game for an HGTV show showing how brokers sit around playing poker with one another all the time…..I don’t even play poker, least of all with other brokers…..yet in a few months time this episode will air and what was once fiction will now become fact and ‘reality’. These reality shows could actually be genuinely informational, but they have mostly bowed to entertainment value and choose superficial garbage over solid content. These shows have decided that the viewership are simply idiots. Really?
I do thoroughly enjoy flipping through a PEOPLE or US WEEKLY magazine every now and then: who can truly resist a taste of ‘who wore it better’, ‘best and worst beach bodies’, etc. To me the biggest problem with reality TV is how it skewers fact horrifically and makes fiction reality to the masses. This is a sad day in our culture. Is it the tipping point? I do hope so. It would be nice to have a presidential-quality debate with candidates who were not posturing as presidential candidates for the sake of selling their latest book, upping their fees for television appearances, or boosting their tv show ratings. The joke is on us, and we are paying for it in more ways than one.
OCCUPY REALITY TV LAND!
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on March 12, 2011
4 East 80th Street, the house that belonged to Lucille Roberts, the notorious gym diva who passed away in 2003, has hit the market with a whopping $ 90 million asking price. Ms. Roberts bought the 18,000sf mansion for around $6 million in 1995 and the house underwent substantial renovations to convert it from a men’s gym back to a single family house as originally envisioned by its first owner, Frank Woolworth.
So the big question of the day: is this house worth $ 5,000/sf? Possibly yes, although it certainly would set a record, even for Manhattan mansions. Remember, the richest man in the world Carlos Slim purchased another little shack just down the road (The Duke Semans Mansion) for a mere $ 44 million. And in Euro’s,$ 90 million is only about 65 million….
My suspicion is that the asking price may be all about boosting its rental value: Maybe Mr. Gaddafi or Mr. Mugabe need a refuge from their ailing countries, and with all their hidden billions, this could be a solution, without those pesky co-op boards. Was the interior design a collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Donatella Versace maybe?
So who would buy this property besides the obvious Russian oligarch or Saudi prince (chump change with the recent oil prices!)? Personally I would love to see Charlie Sheen buy it and deliver a Manhattan-style playboy-mansion of our time. Then again, Donald Trump could convert it into ‘Limestone House’, the alternative to the White House when he becomes our next president, thereby saving taxpayer millions in commuting costs.
Lets face it, if this pricing is a gimmick, it has worked: Even if the house trades for half its asking price, a 400% return on investment (assuming it cost about $ 6million to renovate) in 16 years is not to be sneezed at!
Seriously, this house represents a growing international trend: We first identified it as LUXFLATION, but this could be a sign of HYPER LUXFLATION. We live in a world where the volume of super-wealthy keeps growing, and their demand for the very, very best outstips the supply.
Sunday, November 21st, 2010
  Posted by: Leonard Steinberg, 11/21/2010
Have you noticed how markets have been reduced to entertainment in recent years? Did it start with Donald Trump who once upon a time was just a serious (seriously!)developer that morphed into a reality TV star?
When did we ever think that picking stocks could be akin to a Wheel of Fortune styled show with Jim Cramer spewing market advice like a character out of Punk’d?
Then what was once a guilty pleasure, looking at other peoples homes on line, became an HGTV show, and now I know of friends who watch that channel all day long, transfixed by the REALITY of the real estate world.
Well, maybe Grey’s Anatomy is no REAL insight into the lives of real doctors in real hospitals either. But with all this UN-real REALITY, I beg to answer the question: What is reality, and are we re-defining the meaning?
A brilliant example of how one can create one’s own reality is Sarah Palin, who with FOX, FACEBOOK and TWITTER communicates her message to the world, and in many ways avoids the immediate questioning that comes with the real world.
We have entered the era of MARKETAINMENT, a new era where what is real and what is fiction, what is created and what is natural will be much harder to define, and much more difficult to identify.
From a real estate broker’s perspective, I find this the most exciting prospect of all: now, more than ever before, the consumer will really have to rely on a trustworthy, informed source to edit through the un-reality of the new ‘real’ world.
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