# Art and apartments

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2015-04-21

apartments, architect-this-city, asset-management, asset-manager, atc, athiscity, blackrock, condos, construction, global-investment-vehicle, high-rise, household-income, housing, investment, laurence-fink, london, median-home-prices, new-york, real-estate, towers, uncategorized, vancouver

---

![Photograph Vancouver by Marc M on 500px](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/c143dabb35dc083cd350a44500f0737f.jpg)

_Image Source:_ [_Vancouver by Marc M on 500px_](https://500px.com/photo/65394641/vancouver-by-marc-m)

According to [a recent Bloomberg article](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-21/new-york-apartments-art-top-gold-as-stores-of-wealth-says-fink), this is where the rich are putting their money today:  

> _“The two greatest stores of wealth internationally today is contemporary art….. and I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean that as a serious asset class,” said_ [_Fink_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_D._Fink)_. “And two, the other store of wealth today is apartments in Manhattan, apartments in Vancouver, in London.”_

In case you wondering, Laurence Fink is the founder and CEO of [BlackRock Inc.](https://www.blackrock.com/), which today is the largest asset manager in the world. They have over $4.77 trillion in assets under management according to [their website](https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/en-ca/about-us). That’s a mind boggling number.

And if you read the Bloomberg article cited above, you’ll see that this interest in both art and apartments represents a shift away from gold as the de facto safe haven.

> _“Historically gold was a great instrument for storing of wealth,” the chairman of BlackRock Inc. said at a_ [_conference_](https://gmc.credit-suisse.com/singapore/index) _in Singapore on Tuesday. “Gold has lost its luster and there’s other mechanisms in which you can store wealth that are inflation-adjusted.”_

What’s interesting and probably most relevant to the Architect This City community though is this investment focus on apartments.

When people talk about a possible housing bubble in Canada they often cite [house prices to median household income](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-s-housing-2nd-least-affordable-in-world-1.2505524) as a key ratio. The question then becomes: How can house prices be such a high multiple relative to local incomes?

That’s relevant, but it’s not the entire story for cities like New York, London, and Vancouver. That ratio alone assumes that real estate isn’t a global investment vehicle. And for some people people it is exactly that.

---

*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/art-and-apartments)*