Welcome to It Happened One Weekend, our weekly roundup of The New York Times real estate section...
1) Rich people. What are they spending millions of dollars on? What are they complaining about? This is What's Up With Rich People?
This week, Barbara Dean Zweig (widow of Wall Street honcho Martin Zweig) bought a $12 million co-op in The Pierre. In 1999, the Zweigs famously bought The Pierre's triplex penthouse for $21.5 million (at the time, a quaint record), and after Mr. Zweig's death in February, Mrs. Zweig immediately put up the penthouse for sale, asking $125 million (yeah, that's more like it!) Alas, the sunny climes of Fisher Island sometimes proved too oppressive for Mrs. Zweig, and she hoped to maintain "a toehold" in The Pierre. A $12 million toehold. [Big Ticket/"$12 Million for a Luxury Co-op at the Pierre Hotel"]
2) Every "The Hunt" column begins with the Hunters describing the apartment they want, and ends with them rationalizing whatever they came away with. This is The Hunt: Dreams vs. Reality
The Hunter: a young woman seeking a studio/one-bedroom
Price
Dream: up to $450,000
Reality: $400,000
Neighborhood
Dream: "Downtown"
Reality: Greenwich Village
Amenities
Dream: close to Chelsea office, doorman, roof-deck
Reality: doorman, roof-deck, closet space, laundry room
Summary
This week's Hunter is a young woman seeing out a studio or one-bedroom, "somewhere Downtown." After looking at a bunch of nice places in bad buildings, she decided to go the opposite route and look at bad places in nice buildings, eventually settling on a studio apartment in a large building in the Village. She paid a little over $400,000 for 400-square-feet of living space. This sounds like a real ripoff to us, but the lady seems happy, despite not being able to entertain people. Uh . . . congrats on the closet space? [The Hunt/"Destination: Downtown Manhattan"]
3) Finally, we urge you all to check out this brilliant interactive map on The Times site, which details Mayor Bloomberg's physical legacy on New York City. It's easy to talk about the residential housing boom during Bloomberg's tenure, but until you see it represented in photography, it's all kind of theoretical. Perhaps the most striking are the changes at the Williamsburg and Hunters Point waterfronts over the years. It's a fascinating map, regardless of your opinions of Hizzoner. ["The Bloomberg Years: Reshaping New York"]
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