The headquarters of American International Group (AIG), near Wall Street, is being turned into pricey condominiums. Read the Full story @ PropgoLuxury

Madonna has bought a Manhattan mansion with 13 bedrooms for $US40 million, the New York Post reported on Tuesday.

The paper noted that despite the high price tag, the 26-room mansion on the Upper East Side still shook from the nearby subway trains.

However, Madonna evidently overlooked this inconvenience in favour of having such rare New York amenities as a two-car garage, a 3,000sqm garden, nine fireplaces, an elevator, a wine cellar with a grotto, 13 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms.

Skyloft Penthouse in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood has become the most expensive condominium ever sold in downtown Manhattan.

Conceived by James Carpenter Design Associates, the modern duplex loft with distinctive glass constructions sits on top of a building dating from the 1920s and offers panoramic views of the city from the 14th floor.

The interior of the 145 Hudson Street loft is the work of Roger Marvel Architects and is meant to bring together the inside and outside spaces, for instance through the presence of glass doors leading onto terraces.

Just before the week end, I wanted to show you guys one of my dream apartment :

Located on the 73rd floor of a Manhattan building, the apartment is a pied-a-terre overlooking Central Park designed by E Benqué for a private client in 2006.

The interior design is primarily structured by different relations to the view and the urban landscape.

The furniture elements can be moved around on the window frames and allow to sit right against the floor to ceiling windows and experiment the thrill of altitude.

The design principle throughout the apartment is to imagine the reflections of the objects in the windows. Everything is designed and chosen according to the image it will create, day or night, mixed with lights of the city.

A restaurant in New York is offering something special to customers with expensive tastes - a $1,000 omelette.

Diners at Norma’s in Le Parker Meridien hotel can now order the “Zillion Dollar Frittada”, a Spanish omelette with lobster and 10oz (280g) of caviar.

Restaurant manager Steven Pipes said it began as a lesser dish, but his chefs “decided to have some fun with it”. “We thought we should really make something that would be a spectacular feast for a celebration,” he said.

Who said anything about a recession? Sometime between the government bailout of Bear Stearns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that America lost 80,000 jobs in March, Lee Tachman spent roughly $50,000 last month on a four-day jaunt to Miami for himself and three close friends.

The trip was an exercise in luxuriant male bonding. Mr. Tachman, who is 38, and his friends got around by private jet, helicopter, Hummer limousine, Ferraris and Lamborghinis; stayed in V.I.P. rooms at Casa Casuarina, the South Beach hotel that was formerly Gianni Versace’s mansion; and played “extreme adventure paintball” with former agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Mr. Tachman, a manager for a company that executes trades for hedge funds and the owner of “a handful” of buildings in New York, said he has not felt the need to cut back.

“I always feel like there’s a sword of Damocles over my head, like it could all come crashing down at any time,” he said. “But there’s always going to be people who are trading, and there’s always going to be a demand for real estate in New York.”

He is hardly alone in his eagerness to keep spending. Some businesses that cater to the superrich report that clients — many of them traders and private equity investors whose work is tied to Wall Street — are still splurging on multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartments, custom-built yachts, contemporary art and lavish parties.

Buyers this year have already closed on 71 Manhattan apartments that each cost more than $10 million, compared with 17 apartments in that price range during all of 2007. Last week, a New York art dealer paid a record $1.6 million for an Edward Weston photograph at Sotheby’s. And the GoldBar, a downtown lounge, reports that bankers continue to order $3,000 bottles of Rémy Martin Louis XIII Cognac.

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Read this “Ultra” interesting article on nytimes