With the announcement of a Sex and the City reboot, our expert explores the on-the-market properties Carrie and her friends would choose now.
From Park Avenue penthouses to Upper East Side apartments, our property expert looks at where Carrie and co might call home CREDIT: Shutterstock
They’re now in their 50s, one woman down (so long, Samantha) and New York, their playground, has seen dramatic change. But Manhattan’s most famous fast-living, fashion-loving BFFs (on screen, if not in real life), the Sex and the City gang, are back with a spin-off series And Just Like That…, 23 years after they first appeared on our screens.
Set to air later this year, the very prospect of their return provides the perfect opportunity for New York’s property brokers to ponder “Where would they be now?”.
When we left the formidable foursome at the end of the TV series in 2004, lawyer Miranda – married with a baby – had bought a brownstone in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighbourhood. PR supremo Samantha had found her tribe in the trendy Meatpacking District before moving to LA. Charlotte, an art dealer, was sharing her swanky Park Avenue apartment with her husband Harry, and newspaper columnist Carrie was pacing around her Upper East Side apartment, waiting for Mr Big.
In real life, Kim Cattrall (Samantha) has recently put her two-bed, waterfront cottage in the Hamptons up for sale for $2.9m. Cattrall bought the property as her escape when first filming Sex and the City, but two decades on has found a new sanctuary on Vancouver Island and resolutely vowed never to return to the series.
Cattrall’s fictional, sex-crazed alter ego, however, would most likely have returned from LA by now, but she’d be done with the Meatpacking District too, thinks Kate Meier, broker at Christie’s International Real Estate in New York.
“It has evolved from a cutting-edge area to an overcrowded and clichéd tourist trap,” comments Meier, who predicts that Samantha’s life would now be glamorously split between the vibrant East Village, “where the quiet daytimes but energetic night scene are reminiscent of her life as a career-driven, party bon vivant,” plus homes in Ibiza and Lyford Cay in the Bahamas.
Emily Sertic at Douglas Elliman real estate agency puts her money on Tribeca in Lower Manhattan, an old industrial area whose cobbled streets are now lined with cool boutiques and trendy loft conversions. “Samantha would have taken her impeccable taste south to Tribeca and live in a luxury glass tower such as 111 Murray Street,” says Sertic, certain that the tower’s 20,000 sq ft of amenities, including a Turkish hammam and America’s only private residential Drybar hair salon, would appeal to the character’s love of pampering.
“And she remains within walking distance of the chicest restaurants in Downtown Manhattan,” adds Sertic, who is clearly confident that PR has sealed Samantha’s fortune as she suggests home might be this panoramic, four-bed apartment at 111 Murray Street costing $6.25m.
Tribeca is spot on for Samantha at this stage of life, agrees Jeanne Bucknam, associate broker on the Field Team at Sotheby’s International Realty. “But Samantha would not settle for anything other than the best, which is Four Seasons 30 Park Place, 50D ,” says Bucknam, who proposes this three-bed, 50th floor duplex, priced at $6.6m.
Synonymous with glamour and scandal, the historic Waldorf Astoria hotel – which is now home to private residences, The Towers of the Waldorf Astoria – might also be a perfect fit for Samantha, thinks Lori Bender from Douglas Elliman. “Samantha would have jumped at the chance to move into an iconic building with so much buzz and history in Midtown,” says Bender, who is marketing the residences from $1.7m for a studio apartment.
Obviously, Carrie and her friends would embrace the new-look New York. And although the High Line – the 1.45-mile long linear park set on a former railway line that cuts through the west side of Manhattan – didn’t exist when the quartet were last at large, it is now one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions, and would most likely be on view from the window of Carrie’s new West Chelsea penthouse, thinks Kate Meier.
“This is now an internationally recognised art gallery district, and Carrie would probably live at The Fitzroy, whose art deco-inspired terracotta blocks embody Old New York style,” says Meier, who is ready to sell Carrie a two-bed, high-ceilinged apartment costing $4.95m, with designer fittings throughout, a copper bath tub, and a yoga and pilates room for residents.
Ellie Johnson, president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New York Properties, is assuming great career success for Carrie, but possibly a return to the single life as she sees the character as now owning “a large one-bed apartment in Lenox Hill, the heart of the Upper East Side,” says Johnson. “Attracted by the neighbourhood vibe, she appreciates being a mere block away from Madison Avenue’s designer boutiques.”
Sotheby’s Jeanne Bucknam, however, is confident that Carrie would still live in wedded bliss with the elusive Big (the couple married in 2008’s Sex And The City: The Movie). They would now be happily installed in this downtown penthouse at 240 Park Avenue South , complete with their own rooftop pool, relying on Big’s shady financier’s fortune to afford its $30m price tag.
Miranda, meanwhile, bought wisely all those years ago, with Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighbourhood now a mecca for independent boutiques and flea markets. “It has doubled in population and prices have nearly tripled,” says Kate Meier.
Miranda and husband Steve would have stayed in Brooklyn, but upgraded from their fixer-upper to “a historic brownstone in highly picturesque Brooklyn Heights,” thinks Ellie Johnson.
It’s that, or migration back to Manhattan for Miranda, quite possibly joining Samantha in Tribeca. Johnson envisages “a full-floor converted loft with a private rootop garden”.
Jeanne Bucknam agrees, imagining the flame-haired workaholic as now living in a Tribeca penthouse such as this one at 129 Duane Street for $5.25m. “She would have missed Manhattan’s glitz and the shorter commute, and this duplex penthouse offers remarkable architectural features and breathtaking natural light and views,” says Bucknam.
And what of Charlotte? It’s Upper East Side all the way for her, says Bucknam. “She found it to be the best neighbourhood to raise her family in.” But the group’s old-fashioned romantic would have upgraded to the historic landmark, the Sherry Netherland on Fifth Avenue, making the most of full hotel services from her $9.95m, two-bed apartment with views over Central Park. “The Art Deco residence with spectacular park and city views would speak to her artistic background,” adds Bucknam.
With husband Harry now one of the city’s top divorce lawyers, though, Charlotte may have crossed the park to the Upper West Side and live in a suitably showy apartment with panoramic park views. “Charlotte has done very well for herself,” assures Emily Beare, a broker at Core, who imagines her happily settled in this $35m residence at 15 Central Park West 9A.
Wait a few months to find out if any of them are right…