Most valuable never-used space in a home? Ceilings
(Published on - 8/15/2016 2:02:32 PM)
Aug. 12, 2016 – Developers in crowded luxury condo markets are hoping to rise above the competition with units that have ceiling heights of 11, 12 and even 20 feet – and buyers pay a premium for the extra head space.
Realtor.com analyzed more than 2,300 condos priced at $750,000 or more across the country and found that prices per square foot rose as ceiling heights increased. In Florida, the average price per square foot for a condo with ceilings at the standard height of 8 to 9 feet was $616, but a ceiling height of 10 to 11 feet correlated to a 25 percent increase to $767, and 15-foot ceilings and above correlated to a 40 percent increase to $867.
In Miami, a 6,644-square-foot penthouse with 18-foot ceilings that sold this year for $21.5 million broke the record for price per square foot on Fisher Island.
"It flies in the face of typical economics," says Peter Zalewski of CraneSpotters, a Miami-based condo-project tracker. Usually the price per square foot drops as units get bigger, but the opposite is true of some Miami projects partly because "these developers are thinking in cubic feet" and ascribing value to more volume, he says.
Source: Wall Street Journal (08/11/16) Chen, Stefanos
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