(Bloomberg News) Roustam Tariko, billionaire owner of Russian Standard Bank and Russian Standard Vodka, completed the most expensive home purchase in Miami Beach since 2006 when he bought a $25.5 million estate on Star Island in April.
The transaction made Tariko the neighbor of another wealthy Russian with a taste for Florida luxury living. Vladislav Doronin, chairman of Moscow-based real estate developer Capital Group, paid $16 million in 2009 for the Star Island home previously owned by Shaquille O'Neal, the now-retired professional basketball player.
"In Russia, it's a status thing now," Jorge Uribe, a real estate agent with One Sotheby's International Realty Inc. in Coral Gables, Fla., says. "If you're wealthy and you say you have a place in Miami, it's like saying back in the old days, 'I own a place in Ibiza or Monaco.' It's a cocktail conversation thing."
International investors are buying some of the priciest homes in America as the broader housing market slumps and a weak dollar makes U.S. property more of a bargain. Sales of residences above $20 million are rising in New York, California and Florida, which are popular business and vacation destinations for foreigners, according to Miller Samuel Inc., DataQuick and real estate brokers who cater to luxury buyers.
Manhattan Record
More than two-thirds of the nation's residences with asking prices of at least $20 million were in those three states, says Rick Goodwin, publisher of Unique Homes magazine in Princeton, N.J., which releases an annual list of luxury homes on the market each March.
Seven homes have sold in Manhattan for more than $20 million in the first six months of this year, up from five in the same period of 2010, data from New York-based appraiser Miller Samuel show. The median price of those transactions was $27.5 million, up 15% from the year-earlier period. The deals included a $48 million sale to Russian composer Igor Krutoy that set a record for a condominium in the city.
In Los Angeles County, 42 houses were listed for more than $20 million earlier this year, Goodwin says. Six properties sold above that level through June, compared with four in the first half of 2010, according to DataQuick, a real estate data service based in San Diego. Thirteen changed hands in all of last year, up from seven in 2009.
The DataQuick tally for 2011 didn't include the priciest mansion sold in Southern California this year. In July, British heiress Petra Ecclestone paid $85 million for the late television producer Aaron Spelling's Holmby Hills estate.
Brokers with Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC sold about two dozen U.S. homes priced at more than $20 million in the first six months of this year, says Philip White, president and chief operating officer of the unit of Parsippany, N.J.-based Realogy Corp. As many as 25% of those transactions were to international buyers, he says.
"We're hopeful the second half of the year will be as good as the first in terms of the very high-end market," he says.
International buyers purchased an estimated $82 billion worth of U.S. homes in the 12 months ended March 31, a 24% increase from the year-earlier period, the National Association of Realtors reported May 18.