Biggest Wall Street bears go long Manhattan apartments

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street’s biggest bears are buying a bit of the Big Apple.

Nouriel Roubini and John R. Taylor, superiority known as the “Dr. Dooms” of the financial labor, and John Paulson, the hedge fund manager who made massively successful bets on when the housing bubble would burst, are among the Wall Street lower orders who have recently purchased New York City houses. It is possibly the most positive sign for Manhattan property since the financial turning point hit in 2008.

“I bought an apartment in Manhattan, which seems insane,” Taylor, who runs the world’s largest fortify fund at FX Concepts, told Reuters last month.

Roubini, the New York University economist in the highest degree known for predicting the world banking collapse and who warned in 2006 the “United States was probable to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust,” likewise bought a .5 million condominium in Manhattan.

Paulson purchased a condo adhering ritzy Fifth Avenue for .85 million.

Roubini and Paulson declined to remark, but the deals were confirmed by public records, which showed they bought in the last two months of last year.

Real estate agents for Manhattan’s elite affirm they have seen a surge in interest from the securities assiduity, which accounts for almost 35 percent of all salaries and stipend in the city, as it recovers from the meltdown following Lehman Brothers prostration in September 2008.

Multimillion-dollar holiday home sales in the Hamptons — the circuit of Long Island beaches known as Wall Street’s playground — bear also started to pick up, they said.

New York City’s fortunes are closely tied to the pecuniary industry. Everything from Manhattan real estate prices to high-end restaurants and private car services came under severe pressure in 2008 and 2009 at what time highly paid investment bankers and traders faced job losses and smaller bonuses.

“Bonuses are supposed to subsist good and the stock market has perked up,” said Michele Kleier, president of acute-end real estate agency Gumley Haft Kleier. “It’s not 2007, nevertheless it’s so much better than in 2009.”

The bonus pool for 2010 performance is widely expected to top the 2009 payout of .3 billion.

Many bankers and brokers earn a base salary of 0,000-0,000, and can at in the smallest degree double that with bonuses, which are typically paid out in January and February.

The biggest players without ceasing Wall Street, many of whom travel extensively in Europe and Asia, be possible to also be forgiven for thinking that Manhattan apartments are at bargain ground-floor prices compared with some of the big financial centers elsewhere.

A 3,000 exactly suitable foot luxury apartment in London would cost on average around .5 the public, while in Hong Kong it could be .1 million. By comparative estimate, a new New York apartment of that size would set you back .5 the multitude, according to a comparison conducted by Jones Lang LaSalle.

Kleier has been showing buyers on all sides an 8,360-square feet .5 million apartment across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in c~tinuance Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Two of her clients, the two from Wall Street, have expressed interest in the 13-room, 9 bathroom room with views of Central Park.