Case Study #3.

During the 1980s Gold Rush which brought to the American financial frontier names like Henry Kravis and Saul Steinberg, comparing her Astor Foundation fortunes to their new money, Brooke Astor took to calling herself the Nouveau Poor.

But it is all relative, of course, and Mrs. Astor was neither nouveau nor poor, as we learn from the battle that continues to this day over her estate.

Her 14-room Manhattan apartment was put on the market with a $46 million price tag. Today (11/2/08) The New York Times reports it has been marked down to $34 million, a 26% reduction. "Not even Park Avenue appears to be immune from these tougher times," said Women’s Wear Daily, in an earlier report.

Mrs. Astor’s celebrated Albert Hadley-designed red lacquer library

Meanwhile, the rich aren’t giving up the ship, so to speak. Courtney Sale Ross is reported to have put her Park Avenue pad on the block for $75 million and the maisonette of the late Bill and Pat Buckley—in the same building as Mrs. Astor’s—is for sale $24.5 million. Ask their son Christopher Buckley for more details. 

Case Study #2.

For a mere $55 million, you can make Goldman Sachs’ Jon Winkelried’s day. Thanks to the influx of rich CEOs in recent years paving paradise and putting up their pleasure domes on the island of Nantucket, the cost of real estate has escalated beyond belief. Not surprisingly, some of the island’s landowning high-rollers are, thanks or no thanks to the financial crisis, finding it necessary to sell their properties.

Most recently, Goldman Sachs’ co-chief operating officer and co-president Jon Winkelried, ranked eighth in Fortune Magazine’s 2007 listing of Highest Paid Men, has put his 5.9 acres of waterfront splendor up for sale for the extraordinary price of $55 million, reports the Taunton (Mass) Daily Gazette.

The record biggest real estate sale to date on Nantucket is $26.5 million for 9.5 acres in August 2007.

“He’ll never get $55 million in this financial crisis,” says one beloved Nantucket doyenne.

Winkelried may not, unless he unloads to a rich Russian. Sounds like a certain sequel idea in the making. Anyone remember the film, “The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming?”

Case Study #1

Let them east…chauffeurs?

Something called the Hampton Luxury Liner is a bus service—comfortable but not exactly as grand as the name sounds—to and from Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton and other villages on Long Island’s honeyed, moneyed East End.

The bus line has a no cell phone policy. Anecdotal research indicates that the only people who disregard this courtesy to their fellow passengers are the spoiled rich who find themselves, at least in seasons past, stuck on the Luxury Liner when, say, the airport is fogged in.

So here, on a very clear day without a smidgen of fog, was an expensively dressed lady taking her calls regardless of the no cell phone policy, annoying everyone around her. Her voice was especially loud…no stage whisperer here…and the majority of the calls seemed to be coming from her social secretary helping to arrange any number of hair and makeup and medical maintenance appointments.

Into this thicket of cell yell came a personal call.

“Can you hear me?” our rich lady bellowed down the phone line. “Can you believe it? I am on a bus. Yes, a bus! I’ve gone from riding in a chauffeur-driven Rolls to riding on a bus to the Hamptons!”