8 NYC Apartments That Cost as Much as Luxury Storage Units

The supertall towers and super luxury buildings popping up all over Manhattan command sky-high prices for their condos, but the prices they ask for their uninhabitable spaces can be even more mindboggling. Bloomberg Business ran the numbers on half a dozen pricey new developments and found, to no one's surprise, that many offer separate storage units for the same price as a starter home in most of the country. Basement cages where billionaires pile their belongings that they can't fit into their mansions in the sky can run up to $4,000 per square foot, often making them way more expensive than the apartments themselves. And it's not just limited to storage—at 220 Central Park South, 38-square-foot wine cellars start at $133,000. To put the numbers in perspective for New Yorkers, we found apartments at the same price point for the storage units of seven different developments, with prices ranging from $300,000 to $65,000. Yep, there are plenty of Five-Digit Club apartments in this fine city.

First up: 56 Leonard, where storage units go for about $300,000. Out in Elmhurst, Queens, you can buy a one-bedroom in a newly redeveloped building for $299,000 (↑).

If you'd prefer to stay in Manhattan, options about $300K are much more limited, but there is a great-looking studio (↑) with a brand new kitchen in Yorkville listed for $292,000.

At One57, home to a $100M apartment, storage units sell for $216,000, or about $4,000 per square foot. If you venture deeper into Brooklyn, there's quite a bit available at this price point, but this 500-square-foot one-bedroom in Fort Hamilton (which really isn't that far out), is one of the nicer options. It has a balcony, and is asking $220,000 (↑), or about $440 per square foot, so by that metric is about ten times cheaper than the storage unit.

Moving onto another Billionaire's Row tower, storage units at 432 Park were priced around $190,000, or $2,500 per square foot. On East 63rd Street and Second Avenue, there's a studio listed for $195,000 (↑), but it's an estate sale that has been on the market since February, so it's probably cheap for a reason.

Storage units at 252 East 57th Street (see a pattern here?) cost $155,000, and out in Forest Hills, that will buy you a lovely renovated studio (↑) that looks quite spacious.

It's been rumored that someone is buying a massive $250 million condo at 220 Central Park South, so it is expected that the tower would have pricey storage units. They start at $111,000, but for slightly less than that, you could buy a brand new-looking studio in Spuyten Duyvil (↑). Sure, it's the Bronx, but it's really close to Manhattan. It's asking $109,500.

Surprisingly, there are several not-horrible options for apartments asking around $95,000—the cost of a storage unit at 520 Central Park South—within the five boroughs. The Riverdale one-bedroom shown above (↑) is listing for $99,900, though the listing does tell you to "bring your contractor and your imagination."

The cheapest storage unit on this list is at 93 Worth Street, a Tribeca building that opened in 2013. Units here cost $65,000, which seems like pennies compared to others, but that's still $2,031 per square foot. To find apartments this cheap, you have to go to the Bronx, but the Fieldston studio above (↑) is nothing to scoff at (though it does have a horrid pink bathroom). It's listed for $64,500.
· These Luxury Storage Units Cost More Than a Starter Home [Bloomberg]