The Griffin Effect + Tariff Squawking

Ken Griffin Has Had Significant Influence Over The US Super Luxury Market
“Vertical Travel” Is An Urban Real Estate Commuting Phrase
Tariffs Are A Huge US Policy Mistake, Says Everyone

Yesterday, I promised I would take a short break from tariff talk, so consider today’s Housing Notes as a partial palette cleanser. Admittedly, I’ve only eased off nominally since I included two must-watch videos on the topic of tariffs at the end of these notes. Billionaire Ken Griffin (42B) just spoke publicly about the adverse impact of the tariff tantrums emanating from Washington. “President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs amount to a hefty tax on families and are a “huge policy mistake” by the administration.” So it’s just a short leap to talk about his impact on the super luxury space which was chronicled in a recent Wall Street Journal piece (gift link). To catch you up. he is the same person who purchased a US record price of $239 million for a condo in Manhattan (gift link). That particular transaction reinforced the idea that these mega purchases have little to do with local housing markets. That’s why I refer to such transactions as a circus sideshow. In the coverage of the purchase and his firm Citadel’s big office lease, the phrase “Vertical Travel” was added to the real estate lexicon.

Jonathan Miller’s 2019 Artwork “Vertical Travel”

From the 2019 Bloomberg story, Ken Griffin’s Buying Binge Shows He’s the Ultimate Trophy Hunter (gift link), “Citadel has signed a lease to anchor a skyscraper at 425 Park Avenue, eight-tenths of a mile from Griffin’s new apartment, not including vertical travel” (bold my emphasis.) My above artistic masterpiece was an attempt to illustrate what his hypothetical walk to work would entail.

Griffin Helped Grow The US Super Luxury Market

Can one person have a substantial financial influence on a US housing market segment? Yes. The above sales in the table above are just the residential properties he purchased that closed above $50 million.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kathy Clarke, Author of the best-selling book Billionaire’s Row, penned a great piece about the Griffin effect: Ken Griffin Pushed the Luxury Home Market to New Highs—for Better or Worse (gift link).

There was a $120 million home sale in Palm Beach last month and local spec developer Todd Michael Glaser was relieved it wasn’t Griffin. “Griffin’s track record of aggressively purchasing the country’s highest-end homes could lead to a damaging perception in the market—that Griffin’s the only buyer in town.”

I’ve been a long-time chronicler of the $50 million or higher US housing market. Please forgive my indulgence, but here are a series of quotes in the WSJ piece that expressed my view of Griffin’s contribution to the US superluxury market segment:

‘”He’s a whale’s whale,” said property appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel. “In my career, I’ve really never run into somebody that singularly has dominated a segment of the market in so many different places. He’s a prolific buyer of full retail-price real estate.”’

‘“He didn’t create the superluxury market but he emboldened more participants to buy higher sooner”’

‘“With all this activity, he appears to—I don’t know if we can say like the attention—but he doesn’t seem to have any problem with it,” Miller said.’

The Actual Final Thought – Tariffs are actually lowering investment in manufacturing. That’s how damaging these tariff tantrums are to the US economy. My goodness, this is all so dumb.

Tariff Talking, Podcast Squawking

Boroughs & Burbs, The National Real Estate Conversation Podcast

– Episode 179 Tariffs and Industry Impacts The conversation was excellent from all angles – I joined a former Goldman Sachs bond trader, a luxury home builder, and real estate agents, as well as my buddy Noah Rosenblatt of Urban Digs, a real estate analytics firm.