Where the Mediterranean Sea once met land now stands a vast building site. Cranes, excavators and steels are strewn across a six-and-a-half hectare reclaimed plot of land that extends to the Monte Carlo beach. The €3bn Anse du Portier development, also known as Mareterra, will increase the principality’s landmass by an estimated 3pc and is scheduled for completion in 2025.
Some 120 luxury apartments, 10 villas and a seaside promenade will be built in what will rank among one of the world’s most sought after residential districts, with prices to match.
Properties are expected to sell for around €150,000 per square metre – this compares with £30,000 per square metre in London’s upmarket Mayfair or Belgravia districts. Manhattan “ultra prime” residential properties average £20,000 per square metre.
So, that freedom from personal taxation gets capitalised into land prices, does it?
It’s the inverse of the most extreme version of the Georgist argument, that all profit and thus all taxes eventually devolve down to land and rents. Even, in a way, it’s Ricardian.
And to put it less extremely. If you have to pay tax to live somewhere then some part of that tax impacts upon the value of land which you can live on. That seems safe enough to state as a truth, rather a lot of weight hanging on that “some” of the part.
Presumably the ones who previously were on the seafront, and the ones who had their views obscured can’t get a tax discount on nothing.
€150,000 per square metre is also about 3 x the average prime residential price in Monaco, so this development is particularly high end.
You can sell the land to a greater fool. There is no such option with tax you have paid.
Hope the seas don’t rise!
London prices were boosted by the non-domiciled tax breaks, effectively making it a giant Monaco. The odd one out is Manhattan – why do people pay top dollar to live there?
But I though we are all going to die due to ‘climate emergenc’y and the rise in sea levels that will engulf all coastal communities
Within ten years…..
Starfish has a point (or five). Obama will be mortified that he didn’t get first dibs on a property that, like his other property, is a complete waste of money because of GLOBAL WARMING, sorry, I mean CLIMATE CHANGE.
Yes. One notices Brandon has an extensive beachside retreat, as well. Currently undergoing a massive security upgrade at public expense. Presumably to keep the rising waves & marauding sharks at bay.
Andrew M
“……Manhattan – why do people pay top dollar to live there?”
Because it is somewhere reasonably safe to park your money – cf. W.Central London. Vast buckets of cash departing China, and lesser regimes, where the CCP is quite likely to say, “I’ll be having that” to your bank account.
“And to put it less extremely. If you have to pay tax to live somewhere then some part of that tax impacts upon the value of land which you can live on. That seems safe enough to state as a truth, rather a lot of weight hanging on that “some” of the part.”
With a few exceptions where people want to live despite higher taxes and vice cersa, you can observe this in Switzerland where income tax varies massively per canton and per municipality. If you’ve got similar locations close to each other but the taxes differ, the real estate and rental prices vary inversely.
Comparis, the biggest comparison/aggregator site in Switzerland incorporates this, so you can see what a move from X to Y will cost you, accommodation and taxes combined. Which is cool.