Surreal Estate: What You Get for $2 Billion

OCTOBER 14, 2010

A billion-plus tower home in South Asia (almost) brings a new perspective to New York City’s most opulent residences.

“Antilla,” the mammoth Mumbai manse being constructed by Mukesh Ambani (the world’s fifth richest man, if anyone’s keeping track) is also, according to Forbes, the world’s first $1 billion-and-up home (the tower’s costs currently ring up at about $2 billion). The oil bazillionaire’s 27 story, 570 foot tower employs 600 servants to keep it running smoothly. Like many growing families–the Ambanis have three children–they found themselves outgrowing the 22-story Mumbai tower that they’d spent years renovating. Ambani’s wife was apparently so taken by the design of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel New York during a visit that the couple consulted the hotel’s designers, Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, to order up a similar skyscraper.

This makes the most expensive residences in New York City (via Business Insider)—the triplex penthouse at the famously French Chateau-ified Pierre Hotel, for example, whose most recent asking price was a mere $70 mil—seem quaint by comparison. Other top-dollar city properties: The former Julius Forstmann house, a 21,000 square foot limestone townhouse near 5th Avenue on the Upper East Side currently priced to move at $59 million, a $60 million penthouse at The Mark, and a 10,000 square foot penthouse at East 77th Street—with a 23,000 roof terrace—for $60 million also occupy the rarified air at the top of the city’s real estate pyramid.

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Surreal Estate: What You Get for $2 Billion

OCTOBER 14, 2010

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