- Real estate in Greenland's biggest cities is booming, reported Candace Taylor for The Wall Street Journal.
- Several factors, including President Donald Trump's recent comments about buying Greenland, are fueling the fire, Taylor wrote.
- But Greenland's appeal also lies in its exclusivity, from its remote location to property-buying challenges.
- It correlates to the shifting interests of luxury real-estate buyers and travelers worldwide — they want an experience that's hard to obtain for others.
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Greenland may be cold, but its real-estate market is anything but.
Prices in the country's largest cities, like Ilulissat and Nuuk, its capital, are rising, reports Candace Taylor for The Wall Street Journal. They're most expensive in Nuuk, she wrote, where luxury housing starts at $589,000 and the highest-priced home sold for $1.25 million in 2018.
The increase in attention and the price hikes stem from a variety of factors, Taylor wrote: people leaving Greenland's smaller towns for better opportunities; an increase in Airbnb rentals (though the company disputed that it affected costs); and President Donald Trump's recent comments about wanting to buy Greenland. Interest is also coming from international buyers, she added.
But Greenland's exclusivity also holds a major appeal.
It has one airport, limited developable land, and areas so remote that some places "are reachable only by boat, plane, or dogsled," Taylor wrote.
That's not to mention the country's air of mystery. "They think we ride polar bears and live in igloos," Kenneth Mortensen, a Nuuk real-estate agent, told Taylor.
It's all indicative of a shifting interest among luxury real-estate buyers, who look not only for aesthetics or a high price tag, but an experience that others can't buy.
Luxury is about experience and exclusivity
In a June interview with Mansion Global, the New York-based designer Andrew Kotchen, the founding principal of the architecture and design firm Workshop/APD, said that luxury was more about experience than being a place, thing, or product.
And experience can take many forms. In the case of luxury condo developers in the US, pouring money into "well-being" amenities is now the trend. The Los Angeles condominium 1030 Kings, for one, has an outdoor yoga deck; Arbor18 in Brooklyn, New York, boasts not only a Zen garden but also an infrared sauna with built-in chromotherapy.
For others, experience as a luxury revolves around heading to unknown destinations.
"There's no more formality in luxury and hotels need to understand our guests," Jenni Benzaquen, the vice president of luxury brands in Europe for Marriott International, told Deanna Ting of Skift. "They want what's unforgettable and unique, and they have a thirst for the unknown and they are going to markets where their friends haven't been before."
It's the same thing affluent travelers seek: an exclusive experience. As Business Insider's Lina Batarags previously reported, the elite "want personalized experiences that are either inherently unique or specifically tailored to them."
Between its far-flung location and its scenery, Greenland real estate is the perfect exclusivity-meets-experience combination that luxury buyers and luxury travelers are seeking.