“There are only two markets, ultraluxury and subsidized housing.” —Rafael Vinoly, architect of 432 Park Avenue
“现在只有两个市场：超级豪宅市场和补贴房市场。”——公园大道432号建筑设计师拉斐尔o维诺利Along a stretch of New York City’s Park Avenue, between 56th and 57th Street, soars a tower so jaw-droppingly altitudinous that King Kong himself would likely think twice before scaling it.
在纽约市公园大道上，第56号与第57号街道间，有一栋摩天大楼高耸入云，此楼之高，估计就连金刚也会望而却步。Its rooftop, roughly a quarter of a mile high, makes it the tallest building in New York and the highest residential tower in the western hemisphere.
该楼屋顶层高约0.25英里（约402米），使得此楼成为纽约最高建筑，也是整个西半球最高的住宅楼。
At 96 stories (1,396 feet), it has no company in the space it occupies atop Manhattan’s skyline. The Empire State Building tops out some 150 feet below that. Absent its spire, the newly built World Financial Center—itself a giant—is 28 feet shorter than this new cathedral to uber-wealth. 432 Park Avenue can be seen from all five boroughs of New York City, from inbound Metro-North trains coming in along the Harlem River, from the Meadowlands in New Jersey, and from several vantage points on Long Island. Its lone silhouette dominates the skyline from every angle. It demands your attention in a way that no residential building ever has.
这座96层的大厦总高约1396英尺（约425米），在整个曼哈顿已是俯视群楼，比帝国大厦（Empire State Building）还要高出约150英尺。哪怕不算其尖顶，此栋超级豪宅也要高出新建的世界金融中心（World Financial Center）28英尺。从纽约市所有的5个区，你都能看到公园大道432号，不仅如此，你还能从沿着哈莱姆河驶入纽约的大都会北方铁路（Metro-North）列车上看到它，从新泽西州的Meadowlands看到它，从长岛（Long Island）的几个高点都能看到它。不论从哪个角度看，高耸入云的公园大道432号都带着几分遗世独立的味道。从来没有哪栋住宅楼像公园大道432号这样引人瞩目。The most remarkable thing about 432 Park, however, is not just its sheer size. It is the fact that, in a building so tall and imposing, with over 400,000 square feet of usable interior space, there are only 104 units for people to live in. 432 Park Avenue is, in short, a monument to the epic rise of the global super-wealthy. It is the house that historic inequality built.
不过，公园大道432号最引人注目的，并非其大块头，而是在这栋内部使用面积高达40万平方英尺（约3.7万平方米）的高楼里，居然只有104套住宅。简言之，公园大道432号是全球超富阶层崛起的历史见证物。它是史无前例的收入不平等现象堆出来的摩天大厦。Our story begins in 2009 with a little-known Los Angeles-based private equity firm called CIM. The firm’s three managing partners, a former Drexel Burnham banker and a pair of former Israeli paratroopers, quietly dropped in on Manhattan’s punch drunk post-financial crisis real estate market with money to spend. CIM moved quickly, writing checks to bail out some of the city’s most prestigious real estate families and firms, as projects were stalling and financing had all but dried up. The outsiders became Manhattan power players overnight.
我们的故事始于2009年，当时有一家名为CIM的私募股权公司，该公司总部位于洛杉矶，此时尚名不见经传。金融危机后，公司三位管理合伙人，一位是前德崇（Drexel Burnham）银行家，还有两位是前以色列伞兵，他们带着钱悄悄来到遭受重创的曼哈顿房地产市场。CIM迅速开出支票，救助纽约市最负盛名的房地产家族和企业，当时，许多项目已经暂停，资金几乎枯竭。这三位外乡客一夜之间成为曼哈顿的重量级人物。Strong relationships with investment organizations like Blackstone and Calpers put the west coast-based firm in a position to capitalize on a once-in-a-generation opportunity in a city where the incumbents were largely overleveraged from the prior boom. They acted as the bank behind the resurrection of several high-profile distressed properties, and allowed the original developers to stay involved with each deal as their partners.
与黑石（Blackstone）和加州公务员退休基金（Calpers）等投资机构的过硬关系，使得这家位于美国西海岸的企业，能利用纽约市数十年难得一见的机遇，当时，纽约市的企业大都因之前的繁荣过度举债。CIM公司为多个备受瞩目、出现问题的房产项目提供资金，并允许原开发商作为CIM的合作伙伴继续参与项目。By 2011, CIM was everywhere. The economy was slowly improving, the financial firmament was beginning to thaw, and institutional investors were cutting checks again. It is in this recovering environment that a project as ambitious as 432 Park Avenue can even be dreamed of, let alone funded.
到2011年，CIM已经无处不在。当时，经济正缓慢改善，金融界开始回暖，机构投资者又开始投资。正是在这种复苏的大环境下，公园大道432号这样雄心勃勃的项目才得以诞生，并获得资金。Harry Macklowe is one of the real estate industry’s most famous and colorful characters, with a massive portfolio of properties and projects to go along with his outsize personality. No stranger to gambles and calculated risks, Macklowe found himself in a bit of a squeeze in 2008, as the seams of the property market began to tear and the bills from New York’s decade of excess came due. A highly leveraged real estate transaction backed by a $5.8 billion loan from Deutsche Bank kept his name in the news, and his stake in several trophy properties, like the General Motors Building, were said to have been in jeopardy.
哈里o麦克洛是房地产行业最著名、最有趣的人物之一。他个性十足，手头有众多房产和项目。麦克洛喜欢赌博和冒险。2008年，随着房地产市场开始崩溃，纽约十年过度挥霍的后果开始显现，麦克洛发现自己处境有些不妙。一桩杠杆率极高、获得德意志银行（Deutsche Bank）58亿美元贷款的房地产交易，使得麦克洛成为新闻人物，而麦克洛在几处重要房产【比如通用汽车大厦（General Motors Building）】中的股份，据称已经岌岌可危。CIM stepped into the breach, providing financing for several of Macklowe’s troubled projects, and a partnership was born that would lead to the groundbreaking at 432 Park. By August 2011, their incredible plans for the tower—which would occupy the land where the Macklowe-owned Drake Hotel had been demolished—began to leak onto real estate news sites like Curbed and The New York Observer. The idea of a “fifth-act” survivor like Harry Macklowe partnering with a “mysterious” developer from out of town proved to be an irresistible storyline to the chattering classes.
就在此时，CIM挺身而出，为麦克洛多个陷入困境的项目提供融资，双方就此建立合作关系，这才有了后来开创性的公园大道432号。到2011年8月，公园大道432号大厦的惊人计划——此项目将在拆毁的麦克洛名下德雷克酒店（Drake Hotel）原址上建造——开始在Curbed和《纽约观察家》（The New York Observer）等房地产新闻网站上出现。哈里o麦克洛这样的绝处逢生者，与“神秘”外来开发商合作的戏码，对爱侃侃而谈的人士而言，是极为诱人的故事情节。Within a year, we began to get a sense of what 432 Park Avenue would come to represent. First, we learned that the number of condo units built would be closer to 100 than the originally planned 140. Next came details about the building’s sales efforts. Notably, while Macklowe Properties had kept 432 Park Avenue’s units off of popular broker databases like StreetEasy and the Residential Listing Service (RLS), the firm was going full-throttle in its attempt to court the Russian oligarchy. A kind of traveling sales office was set up at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Moscow’s Tverskaya Street, where dozens of billionaires pass through the lobby each day.
不到一年，我们就开始大概知道公园大道432号会是什么样。首先，我们了解到，建造的公寓数量将接近100套，而非原计划的140套。随后我们获悉了该建筑的By May 2013, Macklowe had announced that the top-floor penthouse was already sold for an astonishing $95 million. Half of the building’s apartments were under contract, with projections of $3 billion in total sales. This February, Manhattan realtor Douglas Elliman was brought on as the exclusive co-sales agent to help move the rest of the units.
销售工作细节。值得注意的是，麦克洛地产公司（Macklowe Properties）没有将It is widely believed that the building will only be one-quarter occupied at all times, even though it will be completely sold out. Keep in mind that these are pied-a-terres that begin at $7 million each and include several full-floor parcels in the $75 million range. More than anything else, this speaks to the insatiable appetite of the world’s greatly expanded billionaire class. Middle Eastern oil magnates, Chinese billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and the Latin American aristocracy all have one thing in common: More money than they know what to do with and a desperation to get as much of it out of their home countries as possible. New York real estate works very well as both a facilitator of this as well as a store of value.
公园大道432号的公寓放上StreetEasy和住宅挂牌服务系统（Residential Listing Service, RLS）等大受欢迎的经纪人数据库，而是大力吸引俄罗斯寡头。该公司在莫斯科特维尔大街的丽思卡尔顿酒店（Ritz-Carlton Hotel）设立了流动销售办事处，每天有数十名亿万富翁穿过该酒店大堂。As of this writing, there are currently plans for eight more ultra-luxe towers in and around Manhattan, in various stages of development. The explosion of wealth among ultra high net worth (UNHW) individuals around the world has made all of this possible. According to a new study from UBS and Wealth-X, there are 211,275 people in the world who could be considered ultra high net worth, with assets totaling north of $30 million. The approximate amount of wealth controlled by this group is estimated at just under $30 trillion. And while the number of UHNW people grew by 6% since 2013, their assets grew by 7%.
到2013年5月，麦克洛宣布，顶层阁楼已经售出，售价高达9500万美元。半数公寓已经签约，总销售额预计高达30亿美元。今年二月，曼哈顿房地产经纪商道格拉斯艾丽曼（Douglas Elliman）成为独家联合销售代理商，帮助销售剩下的公寓。But these figures obscure an even more important trend taking root among the UHNW rankings: People with over a billion dollars in assets (there are 2,325 of them) saw their wealth increase by 12% year over year, while those at the bottom of the group—the 91,000 people with assets between $30 million and $49 million—realized a comparatively smaller 7% bump in wealth. Those at the top of the top are seeing their fortunes grow twice as fast as those at the bottom of the top. And the number of UHNW individuals who fall in the $750 million to $1 billion category saw their ranks swell by 20% this year to over 1,200 people. The bottom line is that the richer you are, the faster you’re getting even richer.
人们普遍认为，尽管所有公寓将全部售罄，但该大楼的入住率将始终保持在25%。请记住，这些临时住所每套起价700万美元，还有几套公寓占据了一整层，售价高达约7500万美元。这是全球亿万富豪阶层大大扩充的绝佳例证。中东石油巨头、中国亿万富翁、俄罗斯寡头，以及拉丁美洲贵族，都有一个共同点：钱多得不知道该怎么花，而且都拼命将钱转移到海外。纽约房产既可以帮助他们实现上述愿望，又能作为储值手段。This explains why a city like New York can build dozens of ultra-luxury residential towers and continue to sell out. In New York alone, it is estimated that there are 8,655 full-time residents who would be categorized as ultra-high net worth, the most of any city in the world. Wealth-X finds that the average UHNW individual owns 2.7 properties and that 8% of their wealth is invested in real estate. Logically speaking, as their wealth grows, so too does their capacity to own and invest in an increasing amount of high-end housing.
截至笔者撰稿时，曼哈顿及其周边地区计划新增八栋超豪华大楼，相关项目进展情况不一。全世界超高净值（UNHW）人群的财富激增，使得这一切成为可能。瑞银（UBS）和Wealth-X进行的一项新研究显示，全球有21.1275万人是资产总额超过3000万美元的超高净值人士。该人群控制的财富总额估计仅略低于30万亿美元。2013年以来，超高净值人士的数量增加了6％，其资产增长了7％。This coming spring, the few dozen occupants of 432 Park Avenue, North America’s third-tallest building, will begin to move in. They will furnish their palatial apartments against a global backdrop of deflationary fears, central banks in perpetual crisis mode, massive unemployment, and stubbornly stagnating wage growth for 99% of the world’s population.
不过，上述数字掩盖了超高净值人群中一个更重要的趋势：资产超过10亿美元的人士（约2325人），财富年增长12％，而处于超高净值人群底层的9.1万人，其资产为3000万至4900万美元，财富增幅不到7％，相对较小。那些顶级富豪的财富增长速度，为底层富豪的两倍。今年，资产为7.5亿至10亿美元的超高净值人士，人数增加了20％，超过了1200人。总之，越是有钱人，财富增长越快。In previous generations, when towers of this scale were erected, they were monuments to working. 432 Park, unlike the Chrysler Building, the World Financial Center, and the Empire State Building, is a monument to owning.
纽约这样的城市，能建造数十栋超豪华住宅楼，而且栋栋售罄，原因即在此。仅在纽约，估计有8655名常住居民为超高净值人士，在全球城市中独占鳌头。Wealth-X发现，超高净值人士人均拥有2.7套房产，其8％的财富投资于房地产。按理说，随着其财富的增长，他们将有能力持有并投资于更多的高档住宅。In the Medieval era, towers were erected to separate royalty and feudal overlords from the rest of the population during times of plague and suffering. It was an effective barrier, both physical and symbolic. A 1,400-foot skyscraper, in America’s most populous city, in which fewer than 100 people will reside, is perhaps the perfect present-day parallel to such behavior. The ascendance of 432 Park Avenue to its now-dominant place in the skyline says more about the state of our world than a thousand Thomas Pikettys typing on a thousand keyboards ever could.
北美第三高楼——公园大道432号的数十位住户将于2015年春季开始入住。在可能出现通缩、各国央行处于长期危机模式、大量失业以及全球99％的人口工资增长停滞的大背景下，公园大道432号的住户们将开始装修其富丽堂皇的公寓。