Like with our Real Estate Word of the Year, there were many contenders for that one number that encapsulated the rapidly diminishing annum of 2014. For instance, we might've chosen 53,000—that's the number of new housing units Mayor Marty Walsh wants to create in Boston in the next 15 years or so. An astute reader even nominated 2024, the year the Olympics might land in the Boston region, animating so much long-term planning development- and traffic-wise. Finally, various rental vacancy and condo inventory measures were bandied about. But none of these really wrapped the year in a nice little bow for posterity.
This number did: 37,500,000. That is the total number of dollars which developer Millennium Partners is asking for the topmost, approximately 13,000-square-foot, under-construction penthouse at the game-change-y Millennium Tower in Downtown Crossing. The news of the titanic asking broke in October, touching off a race to explain its significance: biggest single residential asking price in Boston history; pricier even than the tags for estates in places such as Weston and Newton; if it closes for anywhere near its asking it will be the biggest home deal in Greater Boston's history; it presages the Manhattanization of the region's housing market; yada yada. It is, without a doubt, then, the most memorable real estate number of 2014. Count it.
· Curbed Boston Awards '14: the Real Estate Word of the Year [Curbed Boston]
· Boston Housing Plan: Incentivize Developers, Cross Fingers [Curbed Boston]
· Millennium Tower's Floor-Through Penthouse Asking $37.5M [Curbed Boston]
· Our complete Millennium Tower coverage [Curbed Boston]
· Our Curbed Boston Awards archive [Curbed Boston]