So even though "Selling New York" looks more like the "The Real Housewives of New York City" (e.g. you won't see desperate couples looking at 500 sq ft nightmares for $600k), it's still an interesting and illuminating show. The young couple (well, young to be buying a $2.3M apartment anyway) who bought in the Scarano Bowery building in particular, got us thinking about the "intangibles" of New York City real estate. Unlike the rest of the country, where people typically buy homes using some form of rational calculation (e.g. is this house worth the price? Can I rent a comparable unit for less?), in New York, people often buy homes for a variety of very irrational factors. Chief among them: bragging rights. We think people just like telling their friends, work colleagues etc. that they own a snazzy apartment in Manhattan. Most likely, they are in a hush-hush competition (as we all are) with their peers, playing a high-end version of that old game that never goes out of style: Keeping Up with the Jones'. While we think that bragging rights is a crazy reason to buy an apartment, we also think that paying $800 for a handbag or $1500 for a pair of boots is similarly insane, however people do that too. All the time.
And the $2.3M couple really got us thinking about this. Not only did they pay the asking price
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