New York Real Estate Is Retarded

What does $801,000 get you in Manhattan these days? 800 square feet with 20-foot-high ceilings and two windows - but there's a catch: it's a basement that is not zoned for living in.

Where a studio can be as small as 300 square feet and the median price for an apartment is more than $850,000, there's nothing like the exorbitant waste of money by New York's elite. The Dakota, best known as the home of John Lennon and the scene of his 1980 assassination, routinely sells it's Central Park overlooking apartments for many millions of dollars, but the basement was the prize for hedge fund manager John Angelo. Angelo and his wife already live at the Dakota, and acquired the basement space from a departing resident who sold their apartment for $20.5 million and dealt the storage room separately. Due to the ridiculous quest for square footage a 100 to 200sq. foot storage room could easily sell for $150,000 to $350,000 if it had a sink or its own toilet.

He plans to turn the room into a small gym and open it up for use by other residents of the building, which, for all its luxury, doesn't have a common exercise room. Nice...New York City's homeless thank you!