Resi

Business

That’s the in-house slang used by real estate agents (realtors) to describe residential real estate (as opposed to commercial).  So we have this, from Britishland:

Centre Point joins growing list of empty luxury skyscrapers as developer gives up trying to sell apartments for up to £55m each after receiving too many ‘detached from reality’ low offers

I would suggest that someone trying to sell a simple apartment for £55 million is the one who’s detached from reality, but then again I’m no market expert.  Even Mr. Free Market, who is, has expressed disbelief at some of the prices being asked for places that are, in a word, overpriced even for one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Judging from some of the pictures of said places, they could best be described as “not memorable”.

(Me, I’d call them pig-ugly but that’s because I detest modern architecture and decoration.)

7 comments

  1. Who’s detached from reality, the person charging, and not getting, an exorbitant price, or the person who refuses to pay it and offers a lower price? Basic economics, the price of an item is what the buyer is willing to pay for it, not what the seller would like to sell it for. At least if you actually wish to sell it.

    1. Yep. If 50% of your apartments are sitting empty, I’d say it’s not the people with low bids who are detached from reality. True worth is only what people are willing to pay. If I make the best widget in the world and charge $5 million for it, but people are only willing to pay $1, then it’s worth $1. Period.

      55 million pounds for a freaking apartment? Not a chance. You’d have to pay me that much to live in the middle of a crime infested craphole.

    2. It’s an old saying, but a true one: “The worth of a thing is what it will bring.”

      If you think your property is worth 55 million, then more power to you, but if nobody buys it, it’s worth nothing. Kind of like how the REAL minimum wage is always zero.

  2. Good Lord, who’d want to live in a recently renovated McDonald’s or local mall food court? My taste for decoration is probably what one might call spartan, but good grief those aren’t pictures of a place someone lives. Those are pictures of a place someone buys a slice of overpriced over-heat-lamped pizza and wonders if they have all their Christmas shopping done.

  3. Ignoring the fact that those prices are what’s actually detached from reality, as has been noted, buried in the article is another reason they’re not selling: “It is estimated around 60 per cent of the luxury flats in London go to foreign buyers, but the prospect of a wealth tax should Labour come to power that would introduce a 50p rate for those earning more than £123,000 per year is putting outside buyers off.”

    Yeah, 50% *wealth* tax? No thanks. I would kind of expect, reading that, that there’s a fire sale going on as people try to get out of Formerly Great Britain to avoid that.

  4. Not only are those apartments sterile and fugly, can you imagine living at the top of Centrepoint and having that sign in your window? Thank you, but no thanks. For 55 million pounds, I would demand that the sign be taken off and replaced one story lower.

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