Wow - money to throw away. This guy has nothing better to do with it

I mean - what in the world is this guy thinking. Hell, if he wants to throw his money away, I would be happy to help him get rid of it...

It is a ton of money, but he is getting probably close to 12,000 square feet in a very desirable area. Pretty sweet pad.

Hey, I'm just glad when places like this are where this idiocy happens, instead of someone ruining it for the rest of us by elevating the prices of those nice quiet cottages by the lake.

Manhattan is a great place to visit... but I wouldn't want to live there even if I could afford a decent place.

Heh... tell him what an idiot he is when he turns around and resells it for 90 million in 10 years

Maybe he knows something we don't? Where I used to live, it was just a little backwater area with mostly old, small-time farmers. My parents bought a bunch of land that was just ugly, open field for around 30K, I think, then, a few years later, turned around and resold it in lots for development for around 120K when all was said and done. Prices there are still cheaper than the rest of the surrounding central PA area, but they're on the rise. If you know what you're doing with real estate, you stand to make a fortune.

That said, I think they guy's out of his bloody mind....

I wouldn't live in Manhattan if they gave that place to me.

Yeh, real estate is quite a game. I keep thinking about my grandparents' house in Toronto. It was a nice large brownstone in a nice neighborhood, at the edge of the woods, but by no means a mansion (they had 8 kids, so they needed a large house). They sold it in the early 80s for somewhere in the lower 6 figures (Canadian dollars, of course), and thought they were making a killing. Then, in the mid-90s, one of my uncles noticed the house was on the market for almost 1.4 million. I believe by now, the house would probably go for 3 mil Canadian. sigh...

Mmmmm I don't think I would like to live their, but then again I don't have 40 Mil to chuck around, I think if I did then Manhatten would be one of my homes, it's just one of those things that rich people do. House in the US, house in the countryside in the UK and a nice villa in the sun somewhere.

As far as doing it for an investment, I would doubt that was his intention. There is a difference between ctb's parents buying raw land and selling it for development. In Manhattan, that isn't likely to happen. New York real estate prices have been going up fast recently, so he might gain value, but real estate can go down just like stock (think Tokyo's real estate bubble) so I'm going to remain in the opinion that the guy is just richer than he has any right to be, and thought the apartment was pretty or something

edit: and if rycamor's grandparents had invested the money they got for the house wisely, they'd have close to $2 mil now too. (assuming they didn't put it all in internet stocks...)

Well its quite a decent size apartment, quite large actually. Would be rather nice

I may be wrong, but I think a lot of the ballooning prices in the NYC area were the result of the cleanup. Place used to be a dirty, disgusting dump. It got cleaned up, and apartment prices suddenly sky-rocketed. The problem now is that if the migration out of the cities continues (and it's been touched off in NYC now) and the place slips back to the way it was in the 80s again, that guy's going to be out quite a bit of money.

Oh ya. My point wasn't the money, but the unpredictability of it all. Who would have thought this place would become a millionaire-only kind of house? Even when they sold it in the 80s, they were surprised at how much its value had gone up. The corollary to this is, of course, that "normal" families in larger cities tend to have a much harder time than they used to in owning an actual house.

And it's not like everything in real estate went up. In certain parts of the this continent, a large 4-bedroom house on an acre of land might go for as low as $80,000. (nowhere near any major city, of course)

I remember talking to people from my father's generation, and my grandparents' generation, and it was surprising to me the number of them who bought a house. I don't mean they financed a house; I mean they bought their houses, paid in full. And we're not talking about Harvard graduates with a nice inheritance. I mean people with such mundane jobs as house painter, teacher, carpenter, etc... I remember my high school chemistry teacher showing me the finalized check for $26,000 from a house he bought when he was a young family man (I think it was the end of the 60s, or the early 70s). This kind of thing is almost unheard of now, in our credit-driven society. The norm is to be in debt for life .