Monaco, the tax haven on the French Riviera, is experiencing a luxury-housing boom that includes the world’s most expensive penthouse as developers prepare for an influx of millionaires and billionaires escaping higher taxes or a loss of banking privacy.
The Tour Odeon, a double-skyscraper being built by Groupe Marzocco SAM near Monaco's Mediterranean seafront, will contain a 35,500 square-foot penthouse with a water slide connecting a dance floor to a circular open-air swimming pool. The apartment may sell for more than $400 million when it goes on the market next year, French magazine Challenges reported. That would make it the world's most expensive penthouse, according to broker Knight Frank.
“We think we can get a little bit more,” Daniele Marzocco, a director at the company, said in June. So far, the developer has found buyers for 26 of the 36 luxury homes that have been offered for sale.
“What we sell is Monaco,” commercial director Niccolo Marzocco says during a viewing of the skyscraper, which is costing more than $798mmillion to build, excluding the land. He cited security, stability and the convenience of living in a city-state about two-thirds the size of New York’s Central Park.
The most expensive part of Monaco, centred on the Golden Square and The Casino de Monte-Carlo made famous in James Bond films, is already the world’s costliest property location ahead of Hong Kong. For $1 million, you could buy about 160 sq ft of space, Knight Frank estimates.
The principality’s residents, who include Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev and pop singer Shirley Bassey, don’t pay taxes on income. The French have to pay taxes there, with certain exceptions dating back more than 50 years.
The Tour Odeon will be Monaco’s first high-rise since the 1980s. A quarter of the apartments sold on the open market by Groupe Marzocco have gone to expatriates from the former Soviet Union, the company said, without disclosing where they’re based.
The lower floors were sold to Monaco’s government for use by local citizens, who will enter the building through a separate entrance.
* Bloomberg News
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