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Thriller Author’s Harbor Pent-house Condo

March 4, 2012 by · Comments Off on Thriller Author’s Harbor Pent-house Condo 

Thriller Author’s Harbor Pent-house Condo, Tom Clancy has given a bit of a boost to the battered condominium market – at least in Baltimore. The novelist this week paid $12.6 million for three condos that will be combined to create an 11,959-square-foot pent-house in the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, according to published reports and people familiar with the matter.

The price amounts to $1,054 per square foot. That’s a stratospheric price tag for gritty Baltimore, where average condo sales run in the range of $300 to $500 per square foot and luxury condos go for $600 to $800 per.

“I think it’s probably the largest [condo sale in Baltimore] by a long shot,” said Bob Merbler, a partner in Baltimore brokerage Yerman, Witman, Gaines & Conklin Realty LLC, who specializes in luxury-condo sales but wasn’t involved in the Clancy deal. “A few years ago, if you had a $1 million or $2 million house in Baltimore city, that raised eyebrows.”

Developer RXR Realty LLC completed construction of the 191-unit Ritz Carlton Residences last summer. Unlike other hotel-residence projects that offer both hotel rooms and for-sale condos, the Baltimore project is made up solely of for-sale condos. However, residents there do get access to hotel amenities such as concierge service, a spa and an indoor pool.

The market for luxury condos in such developments has collapsed in the past year as the recession has wiped out would-be buyers of the residences. Many such projects stalled in construction due to anemic sales. Marriott International Inc., Ritz-Carlton’s parent, disclosed in September that it no longer will build such hotel-residence projects, though it will manage and license its brands to those built by other developers.

At the Baltimore Ritz Carlton Residences, RXR has sold 23 units and has another 15 under contract, RXR Chief Executive Officer Scott Rechler said.

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