By Kenneth Rapoza | Forbes
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.)
Last November, down a stretch of road heading into downtown London just across from the Thames I see this grayish-white building that looks like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. There’s a good half dozen of them lined up along the river, looking completely out of place among the cranes that are busy constructing the next luxury high-rise. My Addison Lee driver tells me that the developer didn’t even bother advertising the homes to Londoners. It was sold entirely to the Chinese, he tells me. It’s their London ghost city.
You don’t need to go to London to see how the world’s globe trotting elite, some quite unsavory characters, have been behind the boom in super luxury real estate. Drive down 11th Avenue in New York along the Hudson and you will see them: new towers with their own architectural sex appeal, catering to multi-millionaires willing to fork over more for a property than any American would ever dream today.
