Shopping for a bargain on New York’s Billionaires’ Row

Gary Barnett is losing money. Over the past decade, the chairperson of Extell Development, New York’s foremost developer of super-luxury properties, has bequeathed to the Manhattan skyline not one, but two of the super-tall towers that have rechristened 57th Street as “Billionaires’ Row”.

In one of those towers, One57, Extell sold the penthouse to computer mogul Michael Dell for a then-record $100,5m in 2014. But now the city’s luxury property market is in the grip of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

With foreign buyers unable or unwilling to even visit the US to shop for real estate, Barnett expects to take a hit on three of his residential projects — he won’t say which. On others he may just break even after undertaking the Herculean task of erecting a new building in Manhattan...