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‘Now It’s the Happiest Room in the House.’ Wallpaper Converts Share Their Stories.

The idea of wallpaper elicits so much apprehension in homeowners, New York designer Francis Toumbakaris purposely uses the term “wallcovering” when speaking to clients about it. Yet decorating websites and media accounts teem with instances of the stuff. “It transforms a room and gives it personality,” said Casey Keasler, founder of design studio Casework, in Portland, Ore.

So what keeps folks from hanging the gorgeous material, and how do homeowners get over these wallpaper willies? Here, some case studies of conversions.

Hangup: It’s too pricey.

Budget concerns can hamstring homeowners. Home-services company Angi estimates that wallpaper can cost as much as $12 a square foot for labor and materials, while painting tops out at $6. “If the wall surface needs work beforehand, prices go up,” said Bethany Adams, an interior designer in Louisville, Ky. And Keasler notes that paper can cost as much as $400 a roll.

Antidote: Baby steps

New York designer Tara McCauley says homeowners can get more hang for their buck by using paper strategically. In an apartment in Brooklyn whose homeowners sweated the bottom line, she coated only the hallway with a dark-blue pattern inspired by Portuguese tiles. “It added so much impact,” McCauley said of the modest use. The designer adds that another way to save money is by hanging what she calls the gateway drug to wallpaper: patternless grass cloth. With no need to align a motif, the material goes up quickly and costs less to install, she says, “but it adds visual depth in a way plain paint never could.”

Hangup: I’ll get sick of it

A fear of commitment stops many would-be wall paperers, who worry about having a change of heart later. Erik Perez, a design publicist with his own firm in Los Angeles, campaigned hard for what he thought was the perfect old-Hollywood look for his and his husband’s dining room—a maximalist, leafy green wallpaper made famous by the mid-20th-century decoration of the Beverly Hills Hotel. His husband, Paul Hardoin, a voice-over actor, resisted. “Is it going to go out of style? Will I tire of it? Will it affect resale value?” he worried.

Erik Perez, right, and his husband, Paul Hardoin, in their Los Angeles dining room, clad in CW Stockwell’s Martinique paper. Photo: Julie Goldstone for WSJ

Antidote: Low-use spaces

Infrequently used rooms can carry a bold choice long-term. Of the Brooklyn hallway she wrapped in blue, McCauley noted, “It’s a pass-through, so you don’t get overwhelmed by a bold pattern.” Ditto powder and dining rooms, like that of Perez, who said, “We only used that room when we were entertaining and it was too cold to be outside.”

It took three years, but Hardoin caved when the banana-leaf pattern became available in blue. “I thought it looked cool,” Hardoin said. He took the leap, knowing his sister Annette Moran (a wallpaper enthusiast) would be their DIY installer. “Now it’s the happiest room in the house,” he said.

Hangup: It’s dated

When Sarah and Nate Simon bought a historic home in Louisville, Ky., the walls sported oppressively dark patterns, including big, repeating medallions set in a grid. Sarah recalls thinking, “ ‘Not this! What’s the opposite of this?’ In my mind that would be paint.” Even for folks who haven’t pulled down awful examples, “the word ‘wallpaper’ can take them back to flowery patterns of the ’50s and ’60s that feel very dated,” said Toumbakaris.

Antidote: Modernity

“Wallpaper does not mean what it used to. It can be meandering, abstract, ombre or sisal,” said Simon’s interior designer, Bethany Adams. She suggested a sophisticated Chinoiserie that New York designer Miles Redd, in a collaboration with Schumacher, updated with an aqua colorway. Adams explains that like most Chinoiseries, this pattern doesn’t repeat for more than 8 feet. “You get a peripatetic design that keeps the eye engaged,” she said. “It’s looser.” Said Simon of her dining room today, “It’s a complete transformation, like art on my walls.”

Stereotypes of fusty florals and pitiless patterns fall away when designers present homeowners with contemporary picks. Still, sometimes the conversion takes time. One of Keasler’s clients, gun-shy after removing old paper, came back a year later, ready. “We chose a clean classic style that was graphic and minimal for a modern edge in the bathroom,” said the designer.

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‘Stealth wealth’ takes on new meaning for a Sydney family firmly focused on a sustainable lifestyle

From the Spring 2024 issue of Kanebridge Quarterly. Order your copy here.

Clinton Cole is what you might call the thinking person’s architect. While most people looking to build or renovate are understandably focused primarily on budget and aesthetics, the motivations of his clients tend to run to deeper roots.

Take, for example, this house in the Sydney suburb of Manly.

With uninterrupted ocean views in one direction and national park in the other, the temptation for the owners was to do as their neighbours had done and build a multi-storey mansion that directed all attention to the water.

An extraordinary site with almost endless possibilities, it sits on a larger parcel of land owned by the Catholic Church and sold as a longhold lease. When the owners bought the lease, there was a small 1960s cottage on the site that was inadequate for the needs of the family of four. Its position sandwiched between bushland and the surf also meant it is within a wildlife corridor and bushfire risk zone.

The clients, who are originally from Austria, wanted a home that would not only take in the ocean view, but make them and their tween-age daughters feel a part of the natural environment, all with an overlay of luxury.

They were also interested — very interested — in making the house as environmentally sustainable as possible, both in its construction and its ongoing functioning.

So when they discussed the brief with Cole, director of CplusC Architects + Builders, rather than talk about bedrooms and bathrooms or European appliances, they expressed how they wanted to experience spaces.

“They’re outdoorsy — it’s kayaks, bikes, paddle boards, bushwalking,” Cole says. “They talked about, at that first meeting, how they really loved the experience of walking through a shallow creek, the canopy of the trees hovering over the creek, that dappled light and the light reflecting off the water and how beautiful that was. I said: great, there’s your concept.”

The little cottage had to go. In its stead, Cole conceived a three-storey, four-bedroom house with study, a spacious eat-in kitchen packed with integrated storage and multiple living areas, including a rumpus room, of sorts.

“They talked about it more as an art room or entertainment room, but the entertainment was more just listening to music and occasionally watching TV,” says Cole.

“It was really a room for doing craft and art — a very craft-driven, rather than an entertainment-driven, rumpus room.”

The site enjoys incredibly views over Manly.

A lower ground garage next to the entry and partially dug into the site provides storage for the family EV, as well as e-scooters, e-bikes, surfboards and two storage batteries to make maximum use of the energy generated from the 66 solar panel, 24.5kw system.

“Initially they only had one battery but they were gifting so much power to the grid that he said, ‘now I’m getting two’.

“They don’t pay a power bill,” says Cole. “There’s also a 15,000L rainwater storage underground next to the pool.”

Key to the concept was the indoor and outdoor spaces becoming one, allowing for abundant natural light and optimum but controlled air flow, as well as a family pool that relies on natural processes for filtration.

“It’s a natural pool so there’s no chlorine,” he says. “There’s frogs and fish in the pool.

“The frogs are having the time of their lives, as are the bandicoots — the site is in a bandicoot corridor as well.”

Placing the pool alongside the living areas — pool fencing regulations notwithstanding — was not just about providing somewhere for the clients to swim, and even fish, when the mood takes them.

“This was an opportunity (to create a space) where they described that dappled light and that feeling of walking up against the flow of a creek,” says Cole. “It was just obvious to put a body of water as the outlook (for the house), and have it on the north side.

“Then you get light dancing on the ceilings and refracting through glass at all different times of year.”

The natural pool is a haven for local wildlife, including bandicoots, birds and frogs.

That desire to refract light also influenced the decision to install coloured glass in the double height living space, creating dynamic interiors that change with the passing of the sun over the day. It reiterates Cole’s position that how you live in your home day to day is often not about the most obvious view.

“Views are great when you walk into a house when you buy it but as time goes on, it’s less important,” he says. “I think Harry Seidler made me aware of this when he designed his own house. He designed his dining room table so he and his wife sat at the pointy end of the table and all the guests sat around looking out to the view.”

After researching the options, they chose to pour the slab using a low carbon concrete called Envisia, by Boral.

“It has about 30 percent of the embodied carbon of normal concrete and it doesn’t cost any more,” he says. “It also has a higher plasticity and a longer curing time. The higher plasticity is beneficial in terms of its slightly better waterproofing qualities.”

Because his team were also responsible for constructing the house, once the foundations were laid, the rest of the house was built from timber.

“We are a carpentry-based team so our workers have those skills to erect structures of that nature — and you can’t get a lower embodied energy than timber,” he says.

The initial plan was to demolish the old cottage and deal with the materials on site, but after careful consideration, it was decided it was not a feasible option.

“The plan was to crush that little house up, crush up the rock that was on the site and then use that for the walls of the landscaping, retaining walls and the garage wall below,” says Cole. “It turned out that retaining that onsite and getting the crusher to do that was about $50k. The (owners) did consider it but if we brought in crushed material, it was about $5k.

“It was a beautiful idea of doing it onsite but the practicalities of storing it and bringing in this 50 tonne crusher didn’t add up.”

Thanks to its position next to national park, the house was also subject to a Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) of 29. While not the highest rating, it meant that all external timbers had to be fire resistant hardwoods.

Choosing to take a wholly sustainable approach came with a higher price tag but not only were the clients willing to pay, they fully understood why they were doing it. Now retired, one of the owners is a former member of the executive team of a global software company that prides itself on achieving a high level of corporate responsibility and he carried that ethos of ESG into this project.

Cole says the clients were intentionally engaged in every aspect of the design and build process, which resulted in more than 30,000 emails being exchanged over the course of the two-year project to nut out the details.

“It meant there was no room for confusion,” says Cole.

Managing light was a key element in this project, with the owners taking close interest in the exact colour of the glass.

While Cole admits it’s one of the toughest projects he has worked on, he says it has also been the most satisfying, creating opportunities to explore ideas and methods and refine notions about sustainable design and building practices.

“It’s as close as we have ever come to getting everything right, because we were pushed by the client, to be honest,” he says. “We had the time and we were allowed to do the research to get it to this point. Even if it cost more, even if there was a supply issue, we were able to provide the client with an informed choice.”

While the house looks and feels like an extension of the environment as it transitions from bushland to sand and surf, it’s every inch a luxurious environment. Perhaps because of the owner’s tech background, the house has been fully automated, from thumbprint entry and touch free lighting to thermal monitors and sensors to control plant watering. Other aspects are decidedly low tech and old school, like carefully placed louvred windows to manage sea breezes and the built-in thermal mass that naturally regulates heating and cooling. Additional temperature control is via a hydronic system embedded in the slab using heat pump technology.

Cole says, with the right approach, it is possible to create a home that is both sustainable and luxurious.

“There’s not many clients who can put luxury and sustainability together,” he says. “Most people think it’s either/or. The architectural industry itself has historically promoted big expensive houses where sustainability is absolutely unimportant. That’s what they think luxury is — and it’s not luxury.”

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Meet the HENRYS: The Six-Figure Earners Who Don’t Feel Rich

Fifteen years ago if you’d told April Little that she’d make $300,000 a year, she would have pictured a life free of financial stress.

“The white picket fence—I have the whole visual in my head,” says Little, 38 years old, a human-resources executive turned career coach in Rochester, N.Y. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but when I got to that proverbial mountaintop I realised there’s a lot of expenses. And I still don’t own a home.”

So go the plush-but-not-too-plush lives of the Americans who qualify as HENRY—high earner, not rich yet.

Little makes multiple six figures running her own business but carries $90,000 of college and grad-school debt. Child care and education for her three children would be so costly that she and her husband decided the better option was for him to leave his radio job to parent and home-school full time.

New census data show 14.4% of U.S. households bring in $200,000 or more a year, a near record. Yet the money doesn’t have the buying power those earners wish it did, partly due to the rising prices hammering us all and partly due to the supercharged costs of things like houses and cars. HENRYs describe feeling stuck on a hamster wheel—a nice one that other hamsters envy—but running in place nonetheless.

Oh come on, you’re thinking . You’re asking me to feel sympathy for Audi-driving, Chase Sapphire-loving, Whole Foods-shopping consultant types with kids in private school?

Well…not exactly. But what they’re feeling is a version of what a lot of Americans at every income level face—making more money but not feeling like there’s a surplus. The essence of being a HENRY is feeling a gap between what you have and what you think you need to be comfortable.

What these high earners consider essentials might be termed luxuries (or nonsense) by the rest of us, but it’s also true that it takes more money to feel rich these days. And their great fear is becoming a HENRE: high earner, not rich ever .

Short of expectations

Attorney Joshua Siegel doesn’t expect sympathy as he motors around Los Angeles in his Lexus SUV. He just figured at age 40, having risen to partner and chair of the transactional tax group at Albrecht Law, that he might be driving from a house he owns to a country club where he’s a member.

Instead, his occasional golf outings take him from his rental home to a public course. Raising three kids in one of the country’s most expensive cities has been a reality check, he says. He’s also realised that a lot of people with jobs like his come from wealthy families where trust funds and down-payment assistance give them financial head starts.

The son of an electrician and a dental assistant, Siegel is making his own way in the white-collar world.

“It really just feels like treading water,” he says.

Monique So, a 40-year-old financial consultant, says she and her husband, a software engineer, have a net worth in the mid-seven figures. But she likely won’t breathe easy until, or if, they accumulate an eight-figure net worth. Daycare for their 2-year-old takes a $30,000 bite out of their family budget.

“I have this scarcity mindset that is very common,” she says.

What it takes to feel rich

Caitlin Frederick, director of financial planning at Ullmann Wealth Partners in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., says many of her mid career clients are less affluent than their salaries suggest. She advises a lot of prototypical millennials who racked up student loans in hopes of vaulting into high-paying jobs. They delayed buying houses and starting families while climbing professional ladders.

The first part of their plans worked, she says. The degrees led to hefty incomes. Now that they’re having kids, shopping for real estate and wishing to upgrade their Camrys, they’re discovering that many of life’s major expenses shot up faster than the overall rate of inflation.

Lifestyle creep is a factor too, she says, noting clients who overspend on trips and restaurants.

“It is easy for people to just continue to increase their lifestyle every time they get a promotion,” Frederick says.

Then again, they watched their slightly older co-workers spend freely, and buy lake houses, too. The good life requires more money than it used to, she adds.

In 2009, the median home price was $220,900, according to the Federal Reserve, and a new car cost an average of $23,276, according to the Energy Department. Had prices increased at the rate of the consumer-price index, the average house would cost $322,000 today and a car would cost $34,000. Instead, the Fed reports an average house goes for $412,000 today, and a typical new car is $48,000, according to Kelley Blue Book.

The national going rate for a babysitter 15 years ago was $10.50 an hour, according to Care.com. Now it’s $18.38, 20% more than if the cost had tracked the consumer-price index.

Budget-conscious HENRYs tell me it’s often hard to find mid tier options in, well, anything, as companies push luxury versions of everything from high-end water bottles to $1,000-a-night hotel rooms .

Another big-ticket item

Another financial curveball comes up frequently in my conversations with high earners: school costs.

Nearly half of American private schools increased enrolment in the last academic year, according to the Cato Institute. Parents who originally planned to send their children to public school tell me they’ve gone private for reasons that include pandemic learning disruptions, public schools’ difficulty retaining good teachers and budget problems . Some say they’re convinced private schools are the only places their kids will thrive, though more than 80% of American kids attend public school.

Brad Gyger and his wife shuttle their three children around in a 2014 GMC Yukon with 130,000 miles—not exactly the late-model, luxury ride he expected to own as a three-time chief revenue officer in the tech sector. Then again, he didn’t anticipate annual private-school tuition payments roughly equivalent to the price of a new, fully loaded Cadillac Escalade.

Gyger, now an independent sales consultant in California, says he didn’t consider private education until a few years ago, when he and his wife concluded their oldest child would thrive in a more academically challenging environment. The school could also accommodate their second child’s learning needs. And how could they leave out the youngest?

Gyger, 46, says his family is fortunate to even have education options. The trade-off is living more modestly than his résumé might suggest.

He gave up gym and tennis-club memberships, opting to stay fit on the cheap by cycling and lifting dumbbells in his garage. And forget about upgrading from the home the couple bought in 2015.

“We’re probably never moving,” says Gyger. He hopes they’ll remodel the kitchen. Someday.

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People Without Kids Are Leaving Money to Surprised Heirs

Charities, distant relatives and even pets are benefiting from surprise inheritances. They can thank people without children.

Not having children is becoming more common, both among millennials and older people. A July Pew Research Center analysis found that 20% of U.S. adults age 50 and older hadn’t had children.

And many of these people don’t have wills. An AARP survey found half of childless people age 50-plus who live alone have a will, compared with 57% of others that age. Those without wills have less control over what happens to their money, which often ends up in the hands of people who don’t expect it.

This phenomenon of a surprise inheritance is common enough that it has a name: the laughing heir .

“All they do is get the money and go, ‘Ah ha ha, look at that,’ ” said Michael Ettinger , an estate lawyer in New York.

Kelley Gilpin McKeig, a 64-year-old healthcare-industry consultant in Ridgefield, Wash., received a phone call several years ago saying her cousin Nick Caldwell left behind money in a savings account. They hadn’t been in touch for 20 years.

“I thought it was a scam,” she said. “Nobody else in our family had heard that he had passed.”

She hunted down his death certificate and a news article and learned he had died about a year and a half before in a workplace accident.

Caldwell, who was in his 50s, had died without a will. His estate was split among cousins and an uncle. It took about two years for the money to be distributed because of the paperwork and court approval involved. Gilpin McKeig’s share was $2,300.

Afterward, she updated her will to make sure what she has doesn’t go to “just anybody down the line, or cousins I don’t care about.”

Who inherits

There are trillions of dollars at stake as baby boomers age.

Most people leave their money to spouses and children when they die. A 2021 analysis of Federal Reserve survey data found that 82% of heirs’ inheritances came from parents.

People with no children say they want to leave a greater share of their estates to charity, friends and extended family , according to research by two Yale law professors that surveyed 9,000 U.S. adults.

Rebecca Fornwalt, a 33-year-old writer, created a trust after landing a book deal. While her heirs are her parents, her backup heirs include her sister and about a half-dozen close friends. She set aside $15,000 for the care of each of her two dogs.

Susan Lassiter-Lyons , a financial coach in Florence, Ariz., said one childless client is leaving equal interests in her home to her two nephews. Another is leaving her home to a man she has been friends with for a long time.

“She broke his heart years ago and she feels guilted into leaving him property,” Lassiter-Lyons said.

A client who is a former escort estranged from her family is leaving her estate to two friends and to charity.

Lassiter-Lyons, who doesn’t have children, set up a trust for her two dogs should she and her wife die. The pet guardian, her wife’s sister, would live in their house while taking care of the dogs. When the dogs die, she inherits the house.

In the Yale study, people without descendants—children or grandchildren—intended to give 10% of their estates to charity, on average, more than triple the intended amount of those with descendants.

The Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, which manages $1.3 billion of assets, a few years ago added an “heirless donors” section to its website that profiles donors and talks about building a legacy.

“Fifteen years ago, we never talked about child-free donors at all,” said Lew Groner , the foundation’s vice president for marketing.

In the absence of a will, heirs are determined by state law . Assets can wind up in the state’s hands. In New York, for example, $240 million in unclaimed funds over the past 10 years has arrived from estates of the deceased, not including real estate, according to the state comptroller’s office. In California, it is $54.3 million.

Hard questions

Financial advisers say a far bigger concern than who gets what is making sure there is enough money and support for a comfortable old age, because clients without children can’t call on them for help.

“I hope there is something left to leave,” said Stephanie Maxfield, a 43-year-old therapist in southern Colorado. “But if there isn’t, I think that’s OK, too.”

She said she would like to leave something to her partner’s nieces and nephews, as well as animal shelters and domestic-violence shelters. Her best friend is a beneficiary.

Choosing an estate executor and who would handle money and health decisions on your behalf can be difficult when you don’t have children, financial advisers say. Using a promised inheritance as a reward for taking care of you when you are older isn’t a good solution, said Jay Zigmont , an investment adviser focused on childless people.

“Unfortunately, it is relatively common to see family members who are in the will decide to opt for cheaper medical care (or similar decisions) in order to protect what they will be inheriting,” he said in an email.

Kirsten Tompkins, who is from Birmingham, U.K., and works in consulting, along with her husband divided their estate among their dozen nieces and nephews.

Choosing heirs was the easy part. What is hard is figuring out whom to ask for help as she and her husband get older, she said.

“A lot of us are at an age where we are playing that role for our parents,” the 50-year-old said, referring to tasks such as providing tech support and taking parents to medical appointments. “Who is going to do that for us?”

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Why Do Grand Hotels Fail? These 5 Examples Offer Some Answers—and Much Mystery

Many luxury hotels only build on their gilded reputations with each passing decade. But others are less fortunate. Here are five long-gone grandes dames that fell from grace—and one that persists, but in a significantly diminished form.

The Proto-Marmont |

The Garden of Allah, Los Angeles

A magnet for celebrities, the Garden of Allah was once the scene-making equivalent of today’s Chateau Marmont. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s affair allegedly started there and Humphrey Bogart lived in one of its bungalows for a time.

Crimean expat Alla Nazimova leased a grand home in Hollywood after World War I, but soon turned it into a hotel, where she prioritised glamorous clientele. Others risked being ejected by guards and a fearsome dog dubbed the Hound of the Baskervilles. Demolished in the 1950s, the site’s now a parking lot.

The Failed Follow-Up |

Hotel Astor, New York City

The Astor family hoped to repeat their success when they opened this sequel to their megahit Waldorf Astoria hotel in 1904. It became an anchor of the nascent Theater District, buzzy (and naughty) enough to inspire Cole Porter to write in “High Society”: “Have you heard that Mimsie Starr…got pinched in the Astor Bar?”

That bar soon gained another reputation. “Gentlemen who preferred the company of other gentlemen would meet in a certain section of the bar,” said travel expert Henry Harteveldt of consulting firm Atmosphere Research. By the 1960s, the hotel had lost its lustre and was demolished; the 54-storey One Astor Plaza skyscraper was built in its place.

The Island Playground |

Santa Carolina Hotel, Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique

In the 1950s, colonial officers around Africa treated Mozambique as an off-duty playground. They flocked, in particular, to the Santa Carolina, a five-star hotel on a gorgeous archipelago off the country’s southern coast.

Run by a Portuguese businessman and his wife, the resort included an airstrip that ferried visitors in and out. Ask locals why the place was eventually reduced to rubble, and some whisper that the couple were cursed—and that’s why no one wanted to take over when the business collapsed in the ’70s. Today, seeing the abandoned, crumbled ruins and murals bleached by the sun, it’s hard to dismiss their superstitions entirely.

The Tourism Gimmick |

Bali Hai Raiatea, French Polynesia 

The overwater bungalow, a shorthand for barefoot luxury around the world, began in French Polynesia—but not with the locals. Instead, it was a marketing gimmick cooked up by a trio of rascally Americans. They moved to French Polynesia in the late 1950s, and soon tried to capitalise on the newly built international airport and a looming tourism boom.

That proved difficult because their five-room hotel on the island of Raiatea lacked a beach. They devised a fix: building rooms on pontoons above the water. They were an instant phenomenon, spreading around the islands and the world—per fan site OverwaterBungalows.net , there are now more than 9,000 worldwide, from the Maldives to Mexico. That first property, though, is no more.

The New England Holdout |

Poland Springs Resort, Poland, Maine

The Ricker family started out as innkeepers, running a stagecoach stop in Maine in the 1790s. When Hiram Ricker took over the operation, the family expanded into the business by which it would make its fortune: water. Thanks to savvy marketing, by the 1870s, doctors were prescribing Poland Spring mineral water and die-hards were making pilgrimages to the source.

The Rickers opened the Poland Spring House in 1876, and eventually expanded it to include one of the earliest resort-based golf courses in the country, a barber shop, dance studio and music hall. By the turn of the century, it was among the most glamorous resort complexes in New England.

Mismanagement eventually forced its sale in 1962, and both the water operation and hospitality holdings went through several owners and operators. While the water venture retains its prominence, the hotel has weathered less well, becoming a pleasant—but far from luxurious—mid-market resort. Former NYU hospitality professor Bjorn Hanson says attempts at upgrading over the decades have been futile. “I was a consultant to a developer in the 1970s to return the resort to its ‘former glory,’ but it never happened.”

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Does a ‘Status Handbag’ Still Have Status in 2024? We Investigate.

LIKE MARVEL VILLAINS, most fashion writers have origin stories. Mine began with a navy nylon Prada purse, salvaged from a Boston thrift store when I was a teen in the 1990s. Scuffed with black streaks and sagging, it was terribly beat-up. But I saw it as a golden ticket to a future, chicer self. No longer a screechy suburban theatre kid, I would revamp myself as sophisticated, arch, even aloof. The bag, I reasoned, would lead the way.

That fall, I slung it against my shoulder like a shotgun and marched into school, where a girl far more interesting than I was called out, “Hey, cool bag.” After feigning apathy —“I don’t know, you could use a Sharpie on a lunch bag and it would look the same”—we became friends. She introduced me to a former classmate who worked at a magazine. That woman helped me get an internship, which led to a job.

Twenty years later, I still wonder how big of a role that Prada purse played in my future—and whether designer bags can function as a silent partner in our success. Branded luxury bags took off in 1957, when Grace Kelly posed with an Hermès bag in Life magazine. (Hermès renamed that bag “the Kelly” in 1973.) The term “status bag” was popularised in 1990 by Gaile Robinson in the Los Angeles Times, describing any purse that projects social or economic power. Not surprisingly, these accessories are costly. Kelly bags cost over $10,000; ditto Chanel’s 11.22 handbag. Some bags by Louis Vuitton and Dior command similar price points. The cost isn’t repelling customers—both brands reported revenue surges in 2023. But isn’t there something dusty about the idea that a branded bag carries meaning along with your phone and wallet? How much status can a status bag deliver in 2024?

Quite a lot, said Daniel Langer, a business professor at Pepperdine University and the CEO of Équité, a Swiss luxury consulting firm. Beginning in 2007, Langer showed a series of photo portraits to hundreds of people across Europe, Asia and the U.S., then asked them 60 questions. Those pictured carrying a luxury handbag were seen as “more attractive, more intelligent, more interesting,” he said. The conclusion was “so ridiculous” to Langer that he repeated the studies several times over the next decade and a half. The results were always the same: “Purchasing a ‘status bag’ will prepare you to be more successful in your social actions. That is the data.”

Intrigued, I gathered various Very Important Purses—I borrowed some from friends, and others from brands—to see if they could elevate my station with the same unspoken oomph as a “Pride and Prejudice” suitor.

First, I took Alaïa’s Le Teckel bag—a narrow purse resembling an elegant flute case and carried by actress Margot Robbie—to New York’s Carlyle Hotel on a Saturday night. The line for the famous Bemelmans Bar stretched to the fire exit. “Can I get a table right away?” I asked the host, holding out my bag like a passport before an international flight. “It’s very busy,” he said in hushed tones. “But come sit. A table should open soon.” I sank into one of the Carlyle’s lush red sofas and sipped a martini while waiting—a much nicer way to kill 30 minutes than slumped against a lobby wall.

Wondering if this was a one-time thing, I called up Desta, the mononymous “culture director” (read: gatekeeper) who has worked for Manhattan celebrity hide-outs like Chapel Bar and Boom, the Standard Hotel bar that hosts the Met Gala’s official after party. “Sure, we pay attention to bags,” he said. “Not too long ago at Veronika,” the Park Avenue restaurant where Desta also steered the social ship, “we had one table left. A woman had a Saint Laurent bag from the Hedi Era,” he said, referencing Hedi Slimane , the brand’s revered designer from 2012 to 2016. “I said, ‘Give her the table. She appreciates style. She’ll appreciate this place.’”

Some say a status bag can open professional doors, too. Cleo Capital founder Sarah Kunst, who lives between San Francisco and London, notes that in private-equity circles, these accessories can act as a quick head-nod in introductory situations. Kunst says that especially as a Black woman, she found a designer bag to be “almost like armour” at the beginning of her career. “You put it on, and if you’re walking into a work event or a happy hour where you need to network, it can help you fit in immediately.” She cites Chanel flap bags made from the brand’s signature quilted leather and stamped with a double-C logo as an industry favourite. “People love to talk about them. They’ll say, ‘Ohhh, I love your bag,’ in a low voice.” They talk to you, said Kunst, “like you’re a tiger.”

For high-stakes jobs that rely on commissions—sports agents or sales reps, for instance—a fancy handbag can help establish credibility. “It says, ‘I’m succeeding at my job,’” said Mary Bonnet, vice president of the Oppenheim Group, the California real-estate firm at the centre of Netflix reality show “Selling Sunset.” As a new real-estate agent in her 20s, Bonnet brought a fake designer bag to a meeting. To her horror, a potential buyer had the real thing. “I work in an industry where trust is important, and there I was being inauthentic. That was a real lesson.” Now Bonnet rotates several (real) Saint Laurent and Chanel bags, but notes that a super-expensive purse could alienate some clients. “I don’t think I’d walk into [some client homes] with a giant Hermès bag.”

Hermès bags are supposedly the apex predator of purses. But I didn’t feel invincible when I strapped a Kelly bag around my chest like a pebbled-leather ammo belt. The dun-brown purse cost $11,800, a sum that prompted my boyfriend to ask if I needed a bodyguard. Shaking with “is this insured?” anxiety, I walked into a showing for an $8.5 million apartment steps from Central Park. I made it through the door but was soon stopped by a gruff real-estate agent asking if I had an appointment. No, but I had an Hermès bag? Alas, it wasn’t enough. The gleaming black door closed in my face.

“What went wrong?” I asked Dafna Goor, a London Business School professor who studies the psychology behind luxury purchases. “You felt nervous,” she replied. “That always makes others uncomfortable, especially in a high stakes situation,” like an open house with jittery agents. Goor said recognisable bags from Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior are also often faked, which can lead to suspicion if not paired with “other signals of wealth.”

“You can’t just treat a bag as a backstage pass,” said Jess Graves, who runs the shopping Substack the Love List. Graves says bags are more of a secret code shared between potential connections. “I’ve been in line for coffee and a woman will see my Margaux [from the Row] and go, ‘Oh, I know that bag.’ Then we’ll chat.” Graves moved from Atlanta to Manhattan in 2023, and says she’s made some new, local friends thanks to these “bag chats.”

I had my own bag chat that night, when I brought Khaite’s Olivia—a slim crescent of shiny maroon leather—to a house party thrown by a rock star I’d never met. In fact I knew hardly any guests, but as I stood in the kitchen, a woman in vintage Chanel pointed to my bag and asked, “How did you get that colour? It’s sold out!” Before I could tell her my name, she told me the make and model of my purse. Then she laughed about her ex-boss, a tech billionaire, and encouraged me to buy some cryptocurrency. The token I picked surged nearly 30% in about a week. Now I was onto something—a status bag that might bring not just status, but an actual market return.

Thanks to their prominence on social media, certain bags have gained favour among Gen Zers. “TikTok and Instagram make some luxury items even more visible and more desirable to young people,” said Goor. I experienced this firsthand on a stormy Saturday morning, when a girl in a college hoodie pointed at my Miu Miu Wander bag as I puddle-hopped through downtown New York. The piglet-pink purse is a TikTok favourite seen on young stars like Sydney Sweeney and Hailey Bieber. “Your bag is everything!” yelled the girl from the crosswalk. “Thanks, can I have your umbrella?” I shouted back. She laughed and left. My Wander had made a splash—but it couldn’t keep me dry. I ran to the subway, soaked. The bag looked even better wet.

Changing the Status Bag Quo

Everyone loves an ingénue—fashion insiders included. Perhaps that’s why at Paris Fashion Week in September, newer handbags from Bottega Veneta and Loewe jostled for space and street-style flashbulbs.

“These bags, especially ones by independent labels like Khaite, are quieter signals of cultural access,” explained Goor. “Everyone knows what an Hermès Kelly bag is. So now there need to be new signals” beyond traditional status bags to convey power.

Sasha Bikoff Cooper, a Manhattan interior designer, says there’s a less cynical explanation for why these bags have captured celebrity fans—and more important, paying customers. “They’re fresh and also beautiful,” she said. “Hermès is always classic. It’s like a first love. But you want newness, too.”

The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.

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Property of the Week: Woodside, 55 Blessington St, St Kilda

Just knowing a formidable artist has once live in a home gives a property plenty of creative clout, but having two celebrated artists as former residents really takes the cake. And the cherry on top at this recently listed Melbourne residence is that the presence of those legendary homeowners are still tangible today.

Woodside in St Kilda was once owned, at different points in history, by celebrated expressionist painter Albert Tucker AO and his wife Barbara, then was later home to contemporary artist David Bromley.

Across from the lush St Kilda Botanical Gardens on Blessington St, the landmark Victorian-era villa is a testament to artistry, creativity, and architectural heritage all within reach of the bustling waterfront esplanade. George R Johnson – the mastermind behind the stately Collingwood and Daylesford town halls – designed the four-bedroom period property in the 1860s.

The Blessington St house was owned by six-time Archibald Prize finalist Bromley between 2008 and 2011. During his time there, Bromley painted a uniquely raunchy mural in the dining room which remains in place today. The Tuckers lived there from 1979 to 2008, during which time they created an artist’s studio out the back.

Tom Staughton of Kay & Burton Boroondara is marketing the 1177sq m property today with a price guide of between $8.4 million and $8.95 million through an expressions of interest campaign closing on October 29.

Thoroughly modernised, Woodside still retains a number of historic features from the high ornate ceilings and lead light windows, to multiple marble fireplaces and stately archways.

There are both formal and informal entertaining zones with either picturesque bay windows, or French doors leading out to a choice of front or rear alfresco areas.

In the impressive kitchen, high-end Miele and Liebherr appliances firmly set the home in the 21st Century and a spacious butler’s pantry makes it an avid entertainer’s ideal space. For outdoor dining there is also a bluestone-paved courtyard with pizza oven and barbecue as well as a wisteria-covered patio.

The palatial primary bedroom suite houses dual built-in wardrobes and a marble ensuite, while the remaining bedrooms each feature big built-ins and fireplaces and share a grand family-friendly bathroom.

Additionally, a large study in the main house is a perfect work from home space and the freestanding two-storey guest house – formerly the original stables complete with a combined living and dining room, a full kitchen, upper level bathroom and ensuite – is another option for work, rest or play. The Tuckers’ inspired studio space in the backyard offers yet another spot for creative reflection.

Woodside is a slice of St Kilda history with carefully considered modern touches like hydronic heating, ducted air-conditioning, a basement wine cellar, and a 10,000-litre rainwater tank.

The property is near vibrant Acland St, the local botanical gardens, cafes, restaurants, schools, and the St Kilda Marina.

Woodside, at 55 Blessington St, St Kilda is on the market with Tom Staughton of Kay & Burton Boroondara and Darren Lewenberg of Kay & Burton Stonnington with a price guide of $8.4

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Money Buys Happiness, Even if You’re Already Rich

A big raise provides significant boosts in happiness even at household incomes of $500,000, according to a new research report.

A wealth of research has long shown that more money makes a big difference to people with low pay, moving them from insecurity to stability. Above that level, the effect is often assumed to be much smaller.

But according to a paper by Matt Killingsworth , a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the bonuses and leaps in income high earners reap are so large that they keep adding to well-being in the same way that smaller pay bumps do at lower tiers of earnings.

“I think of this as a ladder across society. The rungs are separated by more and more dollars, but exactly the same amount of happiness,” said Killingsworth, who published his report on his Happiness Science website.

An academic paper in 2010 popularised $75,000 as the salary threshold beyond which earning more money didn’t make people any happier. More recent research indicates that there is no such plateau.

Killingsworth and other researchers stress that many things influence human happiness, including your relationships, your job and the country you live in.

“No single factor, including money, dominates the equation,” Killingsworth said.

Previous studies on money and happiness have consistently demonstrated two things: that richer people are happier, and that it takes progressively more money to keep generating a well-being boost of a given size.

Killingsworth says that many people draw the wrong conclusion from that latter finding. They assume that money makes the biggest difference on Americans’ happiness at lower levels of income.

His paper suggests this assumption is wrong. That is because earnings surge exponentially across the income distribution, offsetting money’s diminishing returns on happiness even at the high end.

The lowest-earning 20% of U.S. households on average brought in about $23,000 before taxes in 2021, and the middle 20% earned about $87,000, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office. The top 20% averaged roughly $418,000, with the very highest earners making significantly more than that.

“It could be entirely reasonable for an individual to continue aspiring to climb one more rung in the income ladder” to pursue happiness, Killingsworth writes in his paper.

Even Americans earning a lot of money wish they could do just that. Last year, survey respondents with incomes of $200,000 or more said that the median income they would need to be happy and less stressed was $350,000, according to data from the financial-services company Empower.

More money doesn’t guarantee more happiness. The side effects vary. Some who receive big raises later report big letdowns. Others who voluntarily take a pay cut say they are glad they did.

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Why city CEOS crave life on the farm — and how they’re making it work

From the Spring issue of Kanebridge Quarterly magazine, on sale now. Order your copy here.

During the week, CEO Nick Keenan is a corporate king, working long hours and juggling the parenting of their three children with his wife Jodie from their East Malvern home in Melbourne. But on the weekend, he swaps tailored suits for jeans and work boots and heads 3.5 hours to his farm in the Victorian Alps. A desire to replicate his childhood growing up on a cattle and wheat farm in central NSW and give his kids—Jackson, 16, Jodi, 14, and Jessie, 11—a taste of great outdoors fuelled the purchase of a block of land near the country alpine town of Myrtleford in 2016. Today, their “hobby farm” features three-bedroom completely off-grid homestead, horses and truffle-producing oak trees. The Keenans have done the bulk of the work themselves in their spare time and during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when their new project also became a sanctuary.

“I wear a suit during the week and I’m a farmer on the weekends,” the CEO of media agency Publicis Groupe says.

“When I need to clear my head, it’s my dirty Hilux ute I jump into, not my latest European cars— the BMWs and Mercedes Benzs— you should see the looks I get from some other CEOs.”

The rise of a new crop of farming families. People making the shift are growing in numbers, with hobby farming a plausible option for those weary of city life and an unexpected way for suburban families to find more time together away from the cities—if only on weekends.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows 66,000 hobby farms in Australia, with more and more city families swapping their nine-to-five for the outdoors, driven by a desire to escape the rat race and show their kids another side of life.

Those who can afford it are discovering that farming comes with its own pros and cons, but financial decisions are key. The living farm fantasy among the well-heeled often means small-scale producers must accept they may never be able to sell their wares at a profit. While a successful hobby farm can become a profitable sideline, it should not be the main source of family income.

Jodie and Nick Keenan wanted to provide their kids with an idyllic bush childhood. 

“I just really wanted to show the kids a little bit of what dad grew up with,” says Keenan. “My family had 1000 breeders and 28 bulls, so I wanted to replicate that on a minor scale. And then I wanted to put in a windbreak, and I discovered French Holly Oaks that can be inoculated with truffles.”

“We developed this over a year; I had these romantic notions of wandering out from the kitchen and grabbing a truffle to use in cooking. Essentially, it wanted to escape from the city but we didn’t want it to be a money pit either. I think we have nailed the lifestyle balance.”

The Keenans now have 330 truffle trees which, after just three and a half years, are already producing truffle, which they plan to sell on a small scale in the future. Despite the early success of their truffle farm, the Keenans make enough from their media company and not from hobby farming itself to even cover the Airbnb to keep the lights on.

The Keenans have up around 20 percent of their land, the equivalent of about two football fields, given over to a patch of the grazing truffle inoculated oak trees. They’ve planted another 30 around the outside of the house as a windbreak. But the truffle farm is just a sideline for the Keenans who have no desire to become full-time farmers, only to make a bit of money on the side for their personal use.

Bee farming is now Australia’s most popular hobby farm, according to the Department of Agriculture and Forestry. More Australians are finding bees easier and more economical to keep in their backyards than poultry or other small-scale farm animals. In fact, around 80 percent of all beehives in Australia fall into the category of hobbyists, says Mike Allerton of Amateur Beekeepers Australia.

“All sorts of people are attracted to beekeeping—lawyers, academics, students, retirees, dentists—you name it,” says Allerton, who has 10 beehives on three acres in the Blue Mountains.

“There are a lot of backyard beekeepers; some people have just one hive to make enough honey for themselves and give away to family and friends, and some have up to 50.”

Mike Allerton from Amateur Beekeepers Australia says the industry attracts a wide range of professionals.

Allerton says different councils have different restrictions on beekeeping, particularly if you keep hives in urban or built-up areas, and bees are classified as livestock. And in his area there is a requirement that the relevant Department of Primary Industry is in your yard.

Additionally, beekeeping must abide by the National Bee Biosecurity Code of Practice which dictates things like you cannot feed honey to bees and calling the Department of American Foulbrood, a bacterial disease for bees found in Australia, that can destroy a hive.

Hobby farmers need a few hundred dollars to start with beehive boxes, a smoker, and hive tools, and more ongoing funds to maintain them.

With farming come a few hurdles and hobby farmers who are new to it, as well as keeping up the stringent biosecurity standards and welfare of animals—and of course, as in breaking even. And you do not need agricultural genes or herb school.

“Our farm has been a lot of work, but it’s probably the most rewarding experience we’ve had,” Keenan says. “There’s nothing we love more than seeing the kids outside, swimming, kayaking, and running around the backyard in the fresh air.

“In my opinion, country kids have the greatest gift of all—the great outdoors.”

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Live Next Door to Prince William and Kate Middleton for £20,000 per Week

Living next to British royals comes at a premium, and in this case, the price is £20,000 (US$26,527) per week.

The London apartment, which neighbours Kensington Palace, home to Prince William and Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, hit the rental market on Tuesday.

Its exclusive Palace Green address also puts it near Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park.

The home is 4,126 square feet.
Courtesy of Harrods Estates

“Palace Green is famous for its privacy and security, with some of the most prestigious homes in the city,” Sarah McIntyre, head of rentals at Harrods Estates, said in a statement. “The area combines luxurious amenities, lush green spaces, and a rich sense of history, making it one of the most sought-after addresses in Prime Central London.”

Courtesy of Harrods Estates

Located on the second floor—accessible via elevator—the apartment spans 4,126 square feet. It has four en-suite bedrooms and an additional room that could serve as either a fifth bedroom, a home office or a more informal living space, according to the listing with Harrods Estates. The spare room features a half-bath.

Interior details include parquet flooring, crown mouldings and a sleek modern kitchen. The home also has an air-cooling system—a rare amenity in the U.K.—and a spacious private terrace.

Courtesy of Harrods Estates

In addition to the plethora of green spaces the Kensington neighbourhood offers, the building has communal gardens for residents. It also has underground parking and 24-hour concierge services.

“The building was the first project in London to introduce hotel-style concierge services to apartment living when it was built in the 1990s,” McIntyre told Mansion Global.

Kensington has a history of notable residents, including Winston Churchill and Freddie Mercury , and it consistently tops the list for London’s priciest areas.

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Building approvals fall as high rise apartment development languishes

Building approvals fell 6.1 percent in August after a rise of 11 percent in July, mostly driven by the apartment sector, new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed. Figures released yesterday show the number of total dwellings approved in the last month of winter was 13,991, with the biggest decline in NSW and South Australia, both at -11.5 percent, seasonally adjusted. However, approvals for private dwellings excluding houses — townhouses and apartments — saw a 16.5 percent drop on the same time last year. 

The fall has been attributed to the drop in approval for high density apartments blocks more than nine storeys high. Figures show there were 1,214 apartments approved in August 2024 compared with 2,504 in July.

Property Council of Australia Group Executive Policy and Advocacy Matthew Kandelaars said the numbers were disappointing.

“We need to increase the number of homes approved and ensure a strong pipeline of apartment supply, to drive towards our housing targets at scale,” Mr Kandelaars said. 

“But the reality is that it has never been more difficult and costly to get apartments out of the ground.” 

He said ‘apartment-killer’ taxes and planning systems had had a negative effect on housing supply at a time when the country is struggling to deal with a housing crisis. 

“Over the past year, we approved nearly 9,000 fewer apartments and townhouses across the country than in the preceding 12-month period,” he said. 

“We need that number to increase month on month to build the homes Australians need.” 

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In a Florida Town Ravaged by Storms, Homeowners All Want to Sell

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—Kellen Driscoll bought his home here in 2019, settling in the coastal enclave of Shore Acres. It flooded for the first time four years ago after tropical storm Eta dumped more than 3 feet of water.

Hoping it was a fluke, Driscoll tore out the affected drywall and started fresh. After all, the four-bedroom home built in 1960 had no flood history.

But then it happened again, and again. Like many others in the community, he put his home up for sale in the spring of this year. After seeing little interest, he cut the asking price.

On Friday, Hurricane Helene deposited more than 6 feet of storm surge in the neighbourhood. The rushing waters ripped the “For Sale” sign off his front lawn, and etched a waterline that reached halfway up his front door, just underneath the doorbell. He reduced the asking price for a fifth time.

“We flooded here four times in the last four years,” said Driscoll, as he threw his television sets, furniture, appliances and other belongings to the curb. “I’m just hoping I can sell the house. It’s a good neighbourhood for sure, but dealing with the floods is horrible.”

When Kellen Driscoll purchased his home in 2019 it had no flood history. Since then his home, built in 1960, has flooded four times in the past four years. Photo: Deborah Acosta/WSJ

In the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, which includes St. Petersburg, a real-estate boom nearly doubled median home values from 2018 to June of this year, according to Redfin data. Young people flocked to the region, looking for a coastal lifestyle at a relatively affordable price.

The Tampa Bay metro area was the fifth most popular relocation destination in the country, according to an analysis by Redfin last year. The population has soared to more than three million.

But as Shore Acres’s young residents sorted through the storm’s wreckage, only one thing was on their minds: selling.

Ballooning home insurance costs and the perennial threat of violent storms are starting to undermine housing markets throughout much of the state. But in few places has the turnaround been more dramatic than in low-lying communities up and down the coast of Florida that frequently flood.

The Tampa Bay housing market had been softening even before Helene struck. While prices have been flat, the area experienced a 58% increase in supply in August compared with a year ago, and a 10% decrease in demand, according to Parcl Labs, a real-estate data and analytics firm.

About half the homes listed for sale in Tampa experienced price reductions as of Sept. 9, the third highest share of all U.S. major metropolitan areas.

“Tampa was already heading in this direction before the hurricane hit,” said Jason Lewris, co-founder of Parcl Labs. “This hurricane may compound the market dynamics that have been occurring there over the last few months.”

While Tampa escaped a direct hit from the eye of the hurricane, it was the worst storm to hit the area in a century. The hurricane also plowed into landlocked towns well north, causing heavy damage in the Carolinas where people were just beginning  to absorb the scope of ruin.

‘Let’s roll the dice’

Bradley Tennant’s home flooded last year. But to avoid all the competition, he was waiting a year to put it up for sale.

“We saw the glut of homes for sale in the spring and thought, ‘What are the chances it’ll hit again the next year?’” said Tennant, as he cleared out the soaked contents of his waterfront home. “We went 50 years without a storm that flooded the house. So we thought, let’s roll the dice.”

While he paid around $350,000 for the house about seven years ago, Tennant says he received offers as high as $800,000 during the height of the market—before last year’s storm hit. Now he’s hoping to sell as soon as he’s able to renovate.

The area’s affordability, once a large part of its appeal, is also waning as insurance premiums soar. Jacob McFadden was paying $880 a year to insure his home when he bought it in 2020. That amount has since almost quadrupled, to $3,300.

Premiums will likely increase again now. Property damage from last week’s Category 4 storm could be as high as $26 billion, according to estimates from Moody’s Analytics.

“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to do this waterfront living,” McFadden said, standing in front of his home with a wheelbarrow and his home’s contents scattered around the front yard. “This may be the end.”

Dustin Pentz bought his home 10 years ago, and was one of the lucky few to avoid flooding. That is until Hurricane Helene. When police blocked his car from entering the neighbourhood, he paddleboarded his way home to assess the damage.

His fridge was knocked over, and the water reached up as high as his mattress. Unfortunately, his flood insurance doesn’t cover the contents of his home. A tree in his backyard fell over and hit the corner of his roof, but he was unsure that the damage would hit his $8,500 wind deductible.

“This neighbourhood’s amazing, great schools. But no one wants to deal with this all the time,” said Pentz. “It sucks because no one wants to live here anymore. There are so many houses for sale and no one’s buying.”

Working class squeezed

Down the street, Domonique Tomlinson and her husband, Leon Tomlinson, filed a claim for items they lost in last year’s flood. They didn’t want to go through the headache of filing another claim for the contents of their home this year, with a separate $5,000 deductible.

Two days before Hurricane Helene hit, they rented a moving van to haul many of their belongings to a storage unit. She bought her home four years ago for around $199,000. Because property values have increased so much in her area, she hopes to break even. But now she says she’s not so sure.

Tomlinson, who is a teacher, and her husband, who works as a manager at a grocery store, worry that people like them will be priced out of the area because they can’t afford the preventive measures and insurance.

“Basically the only people that are going to be able to live back here are rich people who can build up,” she said.

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China’s Housing Glut Collides With Its Shrinking Population

China’s real-estate bust left behind tens of millions of empty housing units. Now that historic glut of unoccupied property is colliding with China’s shrinking population , leaving cities stuck with homes they might never be able to fill.

The country could have as many as 90 million empty housing units, according to a tally of economists’ estimates. Assuming three people per household, that’s enough for the entire population of Brazil.

Filling those homes would be hard enough even if China’s population were growing, but it’s not. Because of the country’s one-child policy , it is expected to fall by 204 million people over the next 30 years.

“Fundamentally, there are not enough people to fill the homes,” said Tianlei Huang, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Some unused real estate will be bought up and lived in, especially if more government support—which economists have been calling for —convinces Chinese buyers that values will rise again. Big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen will almost certainly absorb their excess housing, given their dynamic economies and migrant inflows, which have helped keep their populations growing.

The problem is much harder to solve in smaller cities, which often have weaker economic prospects and declining populations. In China, researchers informally group cities into tiers, and many of the nearly 340 cities classified as third-, fourth- and fifth-tier—with populations from few hundred thousand to several million people—are struggling economically.

Young residents are leaving. At least 60% of China’s third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities saw their populations shrink from 2020 to 2023, according to Wall Street Journal calculations based on official data.

Those cities have more than 60% of China’s housing inventory, according to Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff . Many encouraged developers to build more—even when their populations were falling—because land sales and construction boosted economic growth and fattened local governments’ wallets.

Figuring out what to do with unneeded property is becoming more urgent as China’s economy languishes . In May, Beijing unveiled a rescue package in which the central bank would provide up to $42 billion in low-interest loans for Chinese banks to lend to state-owned firms, which would then buy empty properties and turn them into affordable housing.

By the end of June, banks had only used 4% of that quota. Economists say that even with cheap loans, it doesn’t make sense to convert empty properties, because the rents would be too low for firms to earn a profit.

Beijing recently ramped up measures to support the ailing economy and the property market, including cutting interest rates, lowering down payments for second homes and allowing home buyers to refinance their mortgages . However, economists said that more is needed to pull China’s economy out of the rut.

China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the State Council Information Office didn’t respond to questions.

Robin Xing , chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, said China’s government should introduce a more comprehensive bailout that involves buying up excess inventory in China’s 30 to 50 largest cities and turning it into public housing , without worrying about profit. Estimated cost: $420 billion.

That wouldn’t include empty homes in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier Chinese cities. Putting more money into those units, many economists say, wouldn’t make sense because there aren’t enough people to live in them anyway.

Many will become long-term burdens to cities and investors who get saddled with assets they can’t sell and which have lost their value, yet still must be maintained. Some will just wither away, economists say.

Cheap as cabbage

An abandoned development called State Guest Mansions, on the edge of Shenyang, a city in northeastern China, gives an idea of what that could look like. Construction stopped years ago, with more than 100 half-built villas in the style of grand European homes.

During a recent visit, goats roamed the complex. Grandeur Place, the building that used to house the sales showroom, looked like a post-apocalyptic opera house , with a dilapidated chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It remains unclear what will be done with the complex, whose developer has defaulted on its debt.

Shenyang at least has a growing population. In Hegang, a frigid city near China’s border with Russia, the population has declined to 940,000 from 1.09 million in 2010.

A few years ago, when Hegang’s market was hot, property enthusiasts posted online messages touting homes they said were as cheap as cabbage.

Prices now are even lower, according to an online property broker, and sales have stalled. Hegang’s inventory of unsold homes more than doubled from 2019 to 2022. Assuming a typical home size of around 1,200 square feet—the average in China in its 2020 census—only 534 residential homes in Hegang sold in 2022, according to official data on total square feet for residential real estate sold.

A 650-square-feet apartment in the city centre was recently listed for just under $9,300.

Zhou Yongzhi, a part-time stock trader who grew up there, said most high-rise apartment buildings in the city centre are dark at night. “Hegang is my hometown, and I want to see it flourish. But I don’t see much hope for it in the next 10 to 20 years,” he said.

Hegang’s government didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Rogoff, the Harvard professor, said he believes there will be some cities in China in which a quarter of the housing is empty.

In such places, “it is very hard to maintain law and order, even probably in China,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a big social and governance problem in the future.”

Complex issue

China’s property glut developed over a years long construction boom that ended in 2021, when Beijing, worried about a bubble, tightened credit for builders. It quickly became clear that developers had overbuilt  .

It’s hard to determine exactly how big the problem is. China doesn’t provide an official count of empty units, so economists must devise estimates using vacancy rates, building permits and other data sources. They estimate the number is in the tens of millions—including several kinds of empty properties, each with its own challenges.

Of the up to 90 million units that are unoccupied, as many as 31 million were fully or partially built but never sold. Such properties could be bulldozed, but many are tied up in litigation related to developers’ bankruptcies. In many cases, cities and developers hope to finish them.

Another 50 to 60 million units were bought but remain empty. Many Chinese, lacking other good ways to invest their money, poured excess cash into speculative properties—often in smaller cities, where prices were cheaper—without any intention of living in them.

Approximately 74% of Chinese households in first- and second-tier cities owned more than one home across China, while nearly 20% owned three homes or more, according to a recent survey by Citi Research.

These homes are potentially more difficult to deal with because their owners still hope for appreciation. Many are in partially occupied buildings that can’t be torn down.

An additional 20 million units were sold but were left largely unbuilt by developers due to cash-flow problems and poor market conditions. The owners still want them, but developers don’t have money to finish them.

Venice on the Sea

Many builders set their sights on smaller cities when times were good. Bigger cities were getting expensive, and investors seemed willing to buy anywhere so long as prices kept climbing.

Smaller cities embraced the activity. Many issued robust population-growth forecasts, despite evidence China’s population was peaking, because it helped them secure more resources from provincial governments and justify more building projects.

In Qidong, where the Yangtze River empties into the East China Sea, local officials struggled for years to lure major investments such as factories. Selling land to developers helped them meet growth targets. Qidong’s land sales revenue more than doubled from $932 million in 2017 to $2 billion in 2021, according to data compiled by Shanghai-based Wind Information.

Developers, in turn, marketed Qidong as an ideal bedroom community for Shanghai, a two-hour drive away.

The city’s population peaked at 1.1 million in 2020 and has declined for three consecutive years. The number of local jobs has been declining since 2007.

One of the new projects, Venice on the Sea, has 40,000 units, an artificial beach and a five-star resort. Residents can enjoy faux Venetian canals and pathways dotted with Greek and Roman statues.

Xiang Dayu, a property agent there, remembers feverish demand during peak years. Some buyers openly discussed buying apartments for mistresses. Others were willing to pay without inspecting homes in person.

But most people—many from Shanghai—bought homes as investments and left them empty, Xiang says. Now, most units sit unoccupied much of the year, with occupancy rising to only around 60% during peak summer months.

Many owners are trying to sell, with dozens of units listed on auction websites or marketed on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. In one video recently posted to Douyin, a landlord showed a property agent around a 1,030-square-foot unit, which the owner said he bought in 2016 for around $101,000 after a beach trip to Qidong with friends.

“I thought the unit had a nice view, so I bought it there and then. I never lived here, not even once, and bought it completely for investment purposes,” he said in the video. He is now trying to sell the place for around $63,100.

Venice on the Sea was built by now-bankrupt China Evergrande Group. To the north sits another massive, largely empty residential complex built by defaulted developer Country Garden . To its south is an unfinished compound developed by China Sunac Group , which also defaulted. To its west: acres of farmland.

Local government officials didn’t respond for comment.

Ghost cities

In other countries that have had overbuilt property markets, it has sometimes taken years for excess supply to be absorbed—if ever.

In Japan, a 1990s real-estate bust and a shrinking, ageing population left millions of empty homes. Tearing them down proved hard due to legal hurdles, such as when the owner can’t be located. The number of empty units grew to 9 million last year from 8.5 million in 2018, with houses littering Japan’s landscape.

In China, many owners of empty properties are likely to keep maintaining their units, since management fees in China are low and property taxes are only levied in special cases. Tough personal-bankruptcy rules in China make it hard to walk away from properties, and many want to hang on to them for a possible market rebound.

Still, some economists fear a negative spiral in which declining home prices spur more owners to try to unload empty units, depressing values for everyone.

Prices for new and existing homes in major Chinese cities fell 5.7% and 8.6% in August from a year earlier, respectively, according to National Bureau of Statistics data.

Property prices in most cities have returned to 2017 and 2018 levels, said Yi Wang, head of China real-estate research at Goldman Sachs. If prices drop to 2015 levels, many more owners might choose to sell unoccupied properties. That’s because 2015 was the beginning of the last boom, and owners who bought early won’t want to see their units’ values fall below what they paid, Wang said.

That might be inevitable, though, given China’s falling population.

“I don’t think the housing oversupply problem has a solution, really,” said Huang, of the Peterson Institute. “Fundamentally, it’s the problem of declining demographics. Ghost cities will remain ghostly.”

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From zero to hero: how street art got a makeover

From the Spring issue of Kanebridge Quarterly magazine, on sale now. Order your copy here.

When Zoe Wilson and her husband moved into their two bedroom terrace on Newtown’s Dickson Street in December 2020, one of the first things on their agenda was a paint job: not the inside or the front of the house, but the side wall, facing onto a graffiti-covered laneway. It was big and white — and heavily tagged. The couple called the council — who cleaned it off — but before long, the wall had been tagged again. And so began a seemingly endless cycle of tagging and clean-up — the same cycle plaguing councils across Australia, and costing more than $2 billion annually to remove.

In Wilson’s case, there was a circuit breaker: she applied to the Inner West Council’s Perfect Match street art program, which pairs residents, businesses and property owners with artists to create murals on public walls. She and her husband were matched with David Cragg, an artist of Irish, Scottish, Bundjalung and Biripai ancestry who had grown up in the area. The resulting landscape mural, which now covers the house’s laneway wall, pays tribute to the site’s history as a tributary feeding into the Gumbramorra wetlands and Goolay’yari (Cooks River) and features native flora and fauna, including a giant kookaburra.

“My daughter is three, and when she talks about what to do if she ever gets lost, she’s like, ‘I’ll just say I live in the kookaburra house!’ It’s sort of known now around here,” says Wilson. “I’ll be inside or out the front and see people stop and take photos — and it’s just a really nice chance to have a chat and meet more people in the community.”

It seems to have solved the tagging problem, too: the wall has been tagged just once in roughly 18 months since the mural was unveiled in 2023, and its waterproof coating is designed to make graffiti removal quick and easy in the event it happens again.

Owners Zoe and Andy Pedashenko and their daughter Maggie (left) smile with artists Karla Hayes and David Cragg in front of the mural David created.

No wonder, then, that Perfect Match has proved a hit. Since the program started in 2014, applications by residents have increased a whopping 926 percent, and now outstrip the council’s funding pool. What started as a graffiti removal initiative has turned into a bona fide public art program, with council paying artists ­— many of whom started out in illegal graffiti — to create more than 170 works on walls. Similar inner city programs, such as StreetWORKS in Melbourne’s Maribyrnong LGA, have also proved popular.

These initiatives are emblematic of a diversification of government policies over the last three decades, as the criminalised subculture of graffiti, once seen as a the scourge of inner city neighbourhoods, evolved into a broader, more palatable genre called “street art” — and thence from the margins to the mainstream. At this point, street art has been collected and exhibited by museums, co-opted by luxury brands and advertising agencies, and embraced by high end hotels such as the Hilton, which commissioned pioneering Melbourne street art collective Juddy Roller to paint the facade exterior of its Little Queen Street outpost.

In Victoria, state and local governments have shifted from the “zero tolerance” and “rapid removal” policies of the 80s, 90s and 00s to embrace graffiti as a fundamental part of their identity. Hosier Lane, once a grungy testing ground for young graffiti artists, is now a major tourist attraction, drawing 1.4 million visitors annually. The Wimmera Mallee region is attracting visitors from overseas and interstate — and particularly grey nomads — with its silo art trail, which Visit Victoria spruiks as “the country’s biggest outdoor gallery”.

Street art has become a welcome addition to walking trails, including Dave’s Tours Sydney, which focuses on the craft drinks scene. Image: Destination NSW

For street artist Helen Proctor, who cut her teeth in the illegal graffiti scene but now paints commissioned street art murals in Sydney’s Inner West, the silo art movement represents a tipping point. “Every time I speak to someone over 70, they ask ‘Have you painted a silo?’ Getting that demographic interested in street art is amazing — they were the ones yelling at us (when we were teenagers) to put down the spray can! But they have an appreciation (for the silo murals) because of the size and the technique that goes into it, and it’s a subject matter that they can relate to.”

Top: A colourful mural by Helen Proctor in progress.

The slippery politics of taste is at the heart of graffiti culture in Australia: what is art to some people is vandalism to others, and treated accordingly. The government-led graffiti wars have not ended — they’ve simply shifted territory and tactics, in line with changing demographics and community taste, and with the rise of the “creative cities” theory, which ascribes economic value to creative culture. Painting or spraying anything on the walls of a building you don’t own without permission remains illegal in every state, punishable by prison. But councils, who are on the frontline of maintaining the “clean community”, take a more nuanced view.

In the past year, the City of Melbourne has removed roughly 112,000 square metres (equivalent to five MCGs) of graffiti, focusing on tags, but they leave street art strongholds such as Hosier Lane alone. “They’re places of cultural significance and heritage,” says City of Melbourne Councillor Jamal Hakim. “There’s a social licence [(or artists to paint there illegally).” Even when councils are removing graffiti elsewhere, they can see it’s not working.

“We can’t do that forever, it doesn’t actually solve the problem,” says Cr Hakim. “It’s a never-ending cycle.”

Shannan Whitney, who has seen the shift in attitudes over the last three decades as an inner city Sydney resident, real estate agent and co-founder of BresicWhitney, says that although homebuyers don’t necessarily see graffiti or street art as a value add yet, they — like councils — recognise it as a part of the cultural tapestry of certain suburbs.

“(Today in Newtown) I was in a $10 million building that was covered in (illegal) graffiti…it was allowed because the people who own it see that as being suitable for the environment they live in, and they like it.”

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Even in Its Priciest Neighbourhoods, Buying in Rome Remains a Bargain

Gianluca and Selene Santilli have all of Rome at their feet.

Their four-storey penthouse apartment in an early 20th-century villa sits atop a hill in the Italian capital’s Parioli district. With 360-degree views from sitting rooms and outdoor areas, the property provides glimpses of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, residential Parioli’s towering pine trees and the winding course of the Tiber River.

The 4,010-square-foot home has free-standing pavilion-like spaces that suggest an urban compound more than an individual apartment. Now, after nearly two decades in the custom-designed space, the couple have listed the four-bedroom unit with Italy/Sotheby’s International Realty. It has an asking price of $6.1 million.

A similar level of luxury in Milan, Italy’s financial and fashion capital, would cost a lot more, says Gianluca, a 67-year-old attorney. “Rome is cheap,” he says, of both the homes for sale and for rent.

Gianluca and Selene, a 64-year-old office manager, priced their home at just under $1,500 a square foot. In Milan, by comparison, a smaller three-bedroom, 2,750-square-foot unit in a decade-old high-rise, with lavish views and similarly upscale fittings, is listed for $6.445 million, or about $2,350 a square foot.

Roman-style luxury was once associated with the gargantuan villas of ancient emperors and the frescoed palaces of Baroque-era princes, but these days it conjures up another phrase: a bargain.

Affordable Luxury

Rome’s average home prices, as of August, were about $350 a square foot—less than Italy’s Florence and Bologna, and around a third less than Milan, according to Immobiliare.it, a real-estate website.

Prices in Rome peaked in 2007, and the city has been slow to encourage new development and investment, says Antonio Martino, the Milan-based real-estate advisory leader for PwC Italy. In Milan, on the other hand, an increase in supply has been outpaced by a greater increase in demand, he says.

A one-bedroom apartment in Rome is far more affordable than the average for major European cities, coming in below Barcelona, Amsterdam and Vienna, according to an affordability index compiled by Savills, the international real-estate company, which analyzed apartments outside of the historic city centres.

An average-earning Roman might need only four years’ salary to buy the apartment, while a Parisian would likely need more than twice that, according to Savills.

Rome’s luxury sector is showing new signs of life, outpacing the rest of the market, says Danilo Orlando, managing director of Savills Residential Italy. Comparing 2023 sales of homes over $1.1 million with prepandemic 2019 levels, he says, prices in Rome have increased 4% while the number of luxury-level transactions has risen 3.6%. Overall real-estate transactions were up 3% in the second quarter of this year, compared with a year earlier, says PwC’s Martino.

Orlando says that residential luxury sales in Rome are traditionally concentrated in three nearby areas that are the city’s most expensive: The Centro Storico, or the historic center, is where centuries-old palaces are often broken up into lavish multi-bedroom apartments. Parioli is a hilly district known for its Midcentury Modern flare. And a short walk away is Trieste, which has clusters of early 20th-century apartment buildings that vie in splendour with their Baroque counterparts down in the centre.

Centro Storico and Trieste

Centro Storico is by far the most expensive, says Orlando, with average prices in the premium sector reaching $1,493 a square foot in 2023. Luxury units in Parioli average about $950 a square foot, while those in Trieste are about $900 a square foot.

Tourists may flock to Centro Storico’s celebrated sites, like the Trevi Fountain, or make their way through the Villa Borghese, a massive landscaped garden that serves as a green space for both Parioli and Trieste. But they are likely to miss the three districts’ prime residential areas, which can seem discreet, if not outright hidden.

Centro Storico’s Via Giulia, running just east of the Tiber, and Via Margutta, tucked under Piazza del Popolo, are hard-to-find streets if you’re not looking for them. Via Giulia was once the address of choice for Roman nobles, and it can still lay claim to being one of the city’s most prestigious streets. A two-bedroom Via Giulia triplex, located in a building dating back to the 16th century and outfitted with vintage coffered ceilings, is listed with Italy/Sotheby’s, with an asking price of $2 million.

The centrepiece of Trieste is the Coppedè quarter, a neighbourhood of towering 1910s and ’20s apartment buildings, decorated with Moorish arches and ghoulish gargoyles, and built around a storybook-like frog fountain. Conceived by an eccentric Florentine-born architect named Gino Coppedè, the quarter combines Art Nouveau elements with a range of historical styles.

Exclusive RE/Christie’s International Real Estate has a well-maintained, four-bedroom Coppedè listing for $3.56 million. Original details in the 3,770-square-foot home include stained-glass windows, mosaic tile floors and painted ceilings.

Parioli and Pinciano

Parioli, with its many steep streets, is a bit more remote, while Trieste is flatter and more urban. For many luxury-minded Romans, a fine compromise is Pinciano, a neighborhood beneath the heart of Parioli that is as rarefied as its hilly neighbour but as accessible as Trieste.

In 2007, Dr. Claudio Giorlandino, a Roman gynaecologist, created a sprawling family home in a Pinciano building that had been commissioned just before World War I, he says, by a member of the House of Savoy, then the Kingdom of Italy’s ruling family. Designed by a noted Venetian-Jewish architect and decorated with marble recovered from a Palladian villa in northeast Italy, the building has a small number of units, with Giorlandino’s 6,200-square-foot apartment taking up a whole floor.

“I love the elegance and the extremely refined, aristocratic atmosphere,” Giorlandino, now 70, says of his neighbourhood, which borders the Villa Borghese.

Now that two of his three children are grown and living on their own, he has listed the home with Exclusive RE/Christie’s for $6.89 million.

Rome’s three most expensive districts can seem like a self-contained world, with residents moving around between them. Giorlandino, who relocated from the Centro Storico to Pinciano, is now thinking about moving back to the historic centre. The Santillis, who moved to Parioli from Trieste, are considering looking for a more compact rental still in Parioli, which they say feels insulated from the Italian capital’s notorious traffic.

“We have the historic centre nearby, but we are not in the chaos of the centre,” says Gianluca Santilli, adding that he considers “the jewels” of his unique penthouse to be the home’s three parking spaces.

Vatican views

American buyers, traditionally drawn to the Centro Storico, are also open to Parioli and to the Aventine Hill, a very steep, purely residential area on the edge of the historic centre, says Diletta Giorgolo, head of residential at Italy/Sotheby’s.

Known for its jaw-dropping views of the Vatican and for its sedate, almost suburban quality, the Aventino, as Italians call it, may be Rome’s most elusive address. Premium listings rarely come up for sale.

Lionard Luxury Real Estate currently has a ¼-acre Aventino compound, with an early 20th-century 10,800-square-foot villa, listed for $22.2 million.

Mother-daughter apartments

A new Centro Storico development proved too good to pass up for Delphine Surel-Chang, a U.S.-born student studying business in Rome, and her French mother, former actress and investor Francoise Surel, who will also relocate.

The two are putting the finishing touches on their new homes in the Palazzo Raggi, where 21st-century details are being installed in a renovated 18th-century palazzo situated between the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. This summer, Surel purchased a 1,460-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment for herself, and Surel-Chang says her parents helped her buy a 645-square-feet one-bedroom. The units cost $1.88 million and about $944,000, respectively. They are set to move in later this year.

Surel-Chang, 20, says she loves how the project’s contemporary elements—which she and her mother, 60, are augmenting with kitchens and bathrooms from Italy’s sleek Boffi brand—are housed in a classical setting. And she appreciates amenities like a concierge and home automation, allowing residents to control temperature, lighting and appliances via app.

She was able to customise her unit’s interiors, she says, by drawing inspiration from her two favorite local hotels, the Bulgari Hotel Roma and Six Senses Rome. She plans to furnish the unit, where she says they will stay for at least three years, with Italian Midcentury Modern pieces.

The duo bought the apartments—which are a five-minute walk from Via Condotti, Rome’s premier shopping street—for between $1,200 and $1,500 a square foot, using Italy/Sotheby’s, which also helped develop the project.

The apartments can seem like a bargain compared with similarly situated units in other major cities. For instance, a two-bedroom, 2,025-square-foot apartment in London’s Mayfair district—a five-minute walk from Bond Street, Via Condotti’s U.K. shopping district equivalent—is asking nearly $10,000 a square foot.

Affordability played a part in their choice of the Eternal City, says Surel-Chang. They considered relocating to Paris, she says, but soon realised that “for the price of an apartment in Paris, we can afford two in Rome.”