Originally published at: The strange reality of billionaire's row | Boing Boing
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The video does not mention that if you want to move money from a foreign bank account into an American bank account there are all kinds of paperwork and checking you have to do to account for the origin of the funds. If you want to buy real estate, there are no requirements to show where the money came from. So, if you want to launder money you buy the $2 million dollar expensive real estate and then take out a loan for $2 million with the real estate as collateral from an American bank. Boom you just moved $2 million into an American bank. Owning the real estate is not really the point, it is just a step in the transaction, so if this was really going on, you would see a lot of very expensive properties that are not actually lived in. They are not meant to be useful or used. They are meant to be expensive. Oh gee. That’s exactly what we have here.
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Romanticism of any large American city is an interesting step into a fantasy world replete with your very own prison cell pretending to be an apartment.
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Multi-million-dollar safe deposit boxes in the sky for Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes and other contenders for Worst People on the Planet. While thousands are sleeping on the streets in the shadows of these eyesores.
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Does Serhant of SERHANT have a punchable face? (Asking for a friend.)
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I read this as “Row” as in “argument”, not “Row” as in “lined up”, or “Row” as in “propel a small dinghy through the water”. I was really curious what the billionaires were arguing about.
And “read” above should be rhymed with “lead”, not “lead”
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They are arguing about caviar, i.e. “roe”
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Thank you for clarifying. /s 
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Row riff-raff rue roe row
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The building owners are not blind, and must have noticed the massive outflux of trust-fund babies and the like to Brooklyn where rents are cheaper. You’d think said owners would carve out some units for affordability and get some cash coming in instead of it being siphoned off by B’klyn’s gentrification madness.
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There’s the cost of the condo/co-op (my guess is that these are condos, though), there’s the monthly assessment fee, and there’s the cost of running the building.
The billionaires are buying the condos, and paying the monthly assessment fee, whether or not they set foot in the building. Meanwhile, you don’t need to pay for as many staff positions if the building is never more than 1/3 to 1/2 occupied.
Trust fund babies have food deliveries that have to be brought up to their doors, restaurant deliveries, Amazon deliveries, etc. They cost the building (in staff hours) more than absent foreign billionaires old enough to be their parents or grandparents.
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We have to file a Speculation & Vacancy Tax Declaration annually to prevent having a hefty tax levied on a residential property here in Greater Vancouver. BC residents subject to the tax pay .5% of the assessed property value, foreign owners pay 2% of the assessed value.
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So, ultimately the cause of homelessness is the Real Estate industry.
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If I was younger and lived in NYC it would be really tempting to try squatting in one of these. I think it would be fairly low risk if you were caught because I think they would probably just run you off and not arrest you.
The primary reason NOT to live in one of these Billionaire Death traps (unless you have the chute and are a qualified
sky diver)~
… or have we learned NOTHING from 9/11?
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I believe Toronto is following suit.
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The original inspiration for NFTs?
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An unrestrained reflex triggered… and now I have a cracked computer screen.
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