Dealing With the Stars
WAY back when the New York real estate market was strong, a few short months ago, there was a belief in - or at least a fervent hope for - the celebrity premium, the idea that an association between an apartment and a legendary, admired, notorious or simply marketable person, could lead otherwise rational buyers to pay far more per square foot for a property.
Now, as the economy stalls, that notion appears to have taken a bullet. Last year, after a renovation and redesign believed to have cost more than $1 million over 18 months, Lenny Kravitz, the singer and songwriter, put his large duplex at 30 Crosby Street in SoHo back on the market.
After opening up the layout, and adding chocolate-brown walls and idiosyncratic design details, Mr. Kravitz listed the place at $19.5 million, far more than he had listed it for intermittently several years before. (When not on the market, it was rented out to Nicole Kidman and, later, Denzel Washington.) Mr. Kravitz paid about $7.1 million for the apartment eight years ago.
In early October, as the stock market plummeted, he cut his price by $750,000, to $18.75 million, at a still pricey $3,125 a square foot, not counting the 3,000 square feet of outdoor space.
"Newly redesigned and renovated with no expense spared to create the most luxurious and important property downtown," says the listing, by Andrea Wohl Lucas, an associate broker at The Corcoran Group.
The celebrity appeal may also be lagging at the penthouse at the Palazzo Chupi, a five-unit condominium building at
But after going on the market last spring for $32 million, it took price cuts, in stages, to $24 million, with the latest cut in the second week of October, amid the turmoil in the financial markets.
Then there was the combined $4.5 million in price cuts in mid-September on two town houses once owned by Andy Warhol (though one, a town house at 57 East 66th Street, last listed by Carol Cohen and Deborah Grubman of Corcoran for $35 million, is now off the market).
And in
Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel Inc., an appraisal company, said he believed celebrity apartments were overrated and rarely commanded higher prices. But, he added, anything to do with celebrity, including the price cuts on celebrity apartments, attracts attention and can help a property sell faster. "Anything to do with celebrity is going to get more eyeballs," he said.