(Photo: James Leynse/Corbis)

Old Luxe: The Gold Coast
In 2004, the most expensive co-ops on Fifth and Park Avenues sold for $25 million apiece; on Central Park West, they topped out at $20 million, according to Stribling & Associates’ Luxury Residential Report. And you think you’re going to pick up a sweet bargain there next year? Guess again. Today’s Gold Coast buyers are wealthy enough to be virtually impervious to what happens in the market, barring something ugly and public—a tabloid divorce, a scandal, a TV-show cancellation. Many of these buildings, don’t forget, require applicants to have a staggering amount in liquid assets to pass the board, and “one of the upsides of co-op-board financial stringency is that people don’t run into as much trouble,” says Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty. (The Dakota, among others, is known for requiring an all-cash purchase—no mortgages allowed.) Besides, notes Gumley Haft Kleier’s Michelle Kleier, these buildings’ boards know perfectly well that they have extraordinary, coveted spaces, magnificently carved and shaped by architects like Rosario Candela or Emery Roth. These apartments so rarely hit the market that once they do, they almost always find a rich admirer all too willing to pony up. At worst, this market segment will pause for breath, as it did after 9/11, before going right back into its standard climb. Will anyone actually buy the 19,000-square-foot Duke-Semans Mansion at 1009 Fifth Avenue—one of the last grand private homes on the Park, just put on the market by the descendants of the family that built it in 1901—for $50 million, even with all this talk of a bubble? We wouldn’t be surprised.

Risk Factor: 1.5