LuxuryBlurb
Posts Tagged ‘Fifth Avenue’
Friday, February 1st, 2013
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on February 1st, 2013
A Water main has burst at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway in front of EATALY and Madison Square Park. There is no N, R, or Q subway service at this time between Whitehall Street station and 57th Street station, at Seventh Avenue. The 36 inch main broke around 10 a.m. at 23rd and Broadway and is impacting subway service at the 23rd Street station.
The MTA says R trains are running on the F line between the 36th Street station in Queens and the 34th Street-Herald Square station, then run on the D line in both directions between the 34th Street-Herald Square station and the DeKalb Avenue station. The break has caused extensive flooding in the area and traffic is a MESS. Water supply has also been cut off to a large chunk of Downtown New York.
Is global warming to blame? The New York Metro area has seen a wild swing of temperatures over the last few days with highs yesterday at around 60 degrees and dropping near freezing over the last 24-hours. There is no word if the weather played any role in the break but we should remember how old Manhattans infrastructure is before we blame global warming for all disasters!
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
 Posted on February 4th, 2012 by Leonard Steinberg.
In a desperate attempt to find a lighter topic for a newsworthy real estate post, to-day I am trying to find meaning in the story of the weekend….SUPER BOWL. Yes, even I know its Super Bowl this weekend, although my attention is mostly focused on the half-time show. What message is 53-year old pop tart Madonna sending to us all, besides her highly choreographed, lip-synching performance? Did I just say 53-year-old-POP-TART??
To me, Madonna is sending a very potent message about 50-something year old’s in our world. Its especially noticeable in the wealthy environment of New York real estate. Do you remember what 50 years old used to look like? Well, it does not look like Madonna, although we are all certain this look is not natural. Maybe the entire package is un-natural, but maybe it’s a very important evolutionary revelation…. Madonna represents an entire breed I call the NOUVELLE 50 who have absolutely no desire to be associated or identified with anything that 50-somethings were from the past. This new breed of 50-going-on-40-somethings are youthful in their spirit, wear the clothes of people half their ages, have bodies that are lithe and youthful, and have skin as smooth as a 30-something. They do not want to be associated with anything tired or dull. They eat at the latest, greatest restaurants (although very, very small portions), they travel extensively, spend lavishly, work extremely hard at maintaining their youthful appearance and attitude, and more importantly for this blog, they want to live in more youthful environments.
The vast migration of Uptowners downtown is remarkable: couples with grown kids moving from very fancy Fifth Avenue apartments to West Chelsea? If the environment looks youthful, I guess it enhances the imagery. More importantly, the uptowners are decorating their homes to look like sleek, modern downtown (youthful) lofts. Real estate developers love this NOUVELLE 50 demographic: many are suffering mid-life crises, re-evaluating their place on the planet, coming to terms that life is not forever, and that youth is further away than ever…..most importantly, they are mostly much wealthier than their somewhat-similar-looking 30-something counterparts. They have disposable cash. Sassy divorcee’s often have big bucks to play with. They are 50 and they are ready for some FUN. Their homes have to reflect this spirit. A dowdy Park Avenue pre-war designed by Mario Buatta is not the answer.
Yes, the Madonna’s of the world represent an important real estate trend. No, not all 50-somethings want to re-build their entire faces or work out 2 hours a day, but there is a definite, noticeable difference in this group’s looks and aspirations when compared to just a few years ago. Older age does not equal older thinking or older looking any more, especially amongst those with the means to fight nature. Brokers take note: beware of limiting buyer profiling for a young-looking apartment: you may be surprised when Madonna shows up at the door for a viewing with a 20-something boyfriend in tow.
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
 The MANHATTAN BIDDING WAR has returned: Carlos Slim, reportedly the wealthiest man in the world, just won a bidding war on the Duke Semans Mansion at 1009 Fifth Avenue in New York City. His winning bid of $44 million outbid a Russian bidder whose bid was around $37 million. This is the largest multiple bid sale of 2010, and an indicator that the high end of the Manhattan luxury real estate market is alive and kicking. “This is an extraordinary sale,” says Leonard Steinberg, managing director of Prudential Douglas Elliman and head of the Luxuryloft team. “Then again, this is a really prized residence so it is not surprising that more than one person wanted to buy it…..especially two buyers who may have had great difficulty buying in the tough co-op’s on Fifth Avenue.” LUXURYLETTER has repeatedly reported on the demand by the super-wealthy for the best of the best, noting that there is actually a shortage of ridiculously expensive real estate in Manhattan.
Monday, July 12th, 2010
 A year after railing about the high tax burden on wealthy New Yorkers, Rush Limbaugh, the super-rich conservative radio talk-show host has sold his Liberace-meets-Ivana-Trump-meets-Donatella Versace Fifth Avenue penthouse to an undisclosed buyer.
Mr. Limbaugh’s 10-room condominium, which features a 30-foot-wide living room with fireplace and four terraces overlooking Central Park at East 86th Street, went into contract Thursday for a bit under the final $12.95 million asking price, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The lessons from this transaction are many:
1) Tax the rich too much and they leave town (and the state).
2) When a big, expensive sale like this takes place, the City and State reap the benefits of TRANSFER TAXES…in this case over $ 300,000.00. (Two brokers also each made somewhere in the vicinity of $ 300,000 in commissions….that income is taxed too.)
3) Sales like this help the economy; we seriously doubt anyone with remotely good taste will keep the interior of this apartment in tact, so a million dollar plus renovation will fuel sales of interior design products, jobs and sales tax coffers.
4) More telling may be the fact that while this building has a Fifth Avenue address, it is not in fact a Fifth Avenue building…..it actually sits on 86th street and does not front 5th Avenue…it’s about 100ft from 5th Avenue (which in snob-world is the equivilent of a foreign zip code) So maybe Rush’s claims to be living on Fifth Avenue were as accurate as some of the Limbaugh observations/comments/monologues?
5) Rush should send all over-taxed New Yorkers a THANK YOU note as the value of his property more than doubled since he bought it in 1986. So while he complained that high taxation destroys economies, here is an example of how high taxes have actually kept New York’s real estate very valuable in these tough economic times…and made Rush a pretty penny. Maybe he just wanted to cash out before capital gains taxes go up?
6) We would guess that while Rush complains about rising taxes, as a percentage he probably pays less than half of what his listerners pay in taxes.
Liberace would be proud of you, Rush!
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Mike Albanese 
lola gardner 
Hey Leonard, great message for all 50+ in your blog! Thanks for this spirited salute to youthful thinking combined with deep life experience. Can’t beat it–in real estate or anywhere else!