Since Citigroup’s former chairman Sandy Weill sold his penthouse at 15 Central Park West late last year for $88 million, or $13,000 a square foot, to a Russian billionaire, sales prices in Manhattan have been flirting with $100 million, and brokers say it’s only a matter of time until the barrier is broken.

Sales at such stratospheric levels in Manhattan, as well as records in certain   neighborhoods in Miami, Los Angeles and a few other pockets isolated from the nationwide collapse in real estate prices, have left real estate professionals struggling to explain the surge. Art may be the answer.

“Art is what people are willing to pay for, and an apartment like this is like a piece of art,” the Long Island real estate developer Steven Klar told a colleague of mine at The Times, Alexei Barrionuevo, in late July as he listed his penthouse on West 56th Street for $100 million.

Kathleen Coumou, senior vice president at Christie’s International Real Estate, said that some residential properties can legitimately be marketed and sold as art.

“When we call a property art, it tends to have architectural or historic significance,” she said.

Source: Yahoo