Journal / Market · 12 Sep 2026 · 6 min read
Why the top floor is never listed
Fewer than one penthouse in five reaches the open market. Here is where the others go — and how to be in the room when they change hands.
Most penthouses are sold before anyone outside a small circle knows they are for sale. Owners want discretion, developers keep the crown for their best clients, and families pass them on.
The buyers who see them are the ones already known to the brokers, architects and family offices that sit around these deals. That is the whole business of a private collection.
In New York, eleven of the last fourteen sales above $50M were never published. In Monaco, all of them.
“The best view in the city is the one nobody else can see.”
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