Manhattan’s new “mansions,” it turns out, are not really even mansions at all. New York City developers are increasingly marketing ground-floor, extra-wide condominium units with a moniker usually reserved for sprawling single-family homes, the New York Times reported.
“We’re seeing the term ‘mansion’ used as an enticing marketing term to put a better spin on units on the lower floors of luxury condominiums,” Pamela Libeman, CEO of the Corcoran Group, told the Times.
“It seems like developers have found a way of glamorizing what might have been ordinary space and fetching an extra price for it,” she added.
And words like “maisonette” or “townhouse” would diminish the product in the eye of a buyer, developers said.
“The trend of buyers in search of grand, elegant new homes that aren’t jerry-built but are intentionally built on a grand scale has taken hold up here,” Sabrina Saltiel of Douglas Elliman told the Times.
This creative trend, like so many others in New York City, supposedly began in Greenwich Village, where the sold-out Abingdon condos, at 320 West 12th Street, test-drove the mansion concept three years ago with a pair of huge spaces at its base. A 9,600-square-foot triplex — the larger of the two — sold for $23.4 million and is reportedly a recent acquisition of Steven Cohen, the troubled head of hedge fund SAC Capital. [NYT] — Julie Strickland