There's nothing better than coming home to a fresh meal on the table, a clean apartment right after a good workout – and maybe a short shopping spree. Such is the lifestyle of residents at the 39-story Miraval Living spa-condo complex on 72nd Street, which just opened a mall on its 28th floor.

The new commercial add-on is the developments way of pushing sales beyond the 40 percent absorption mark in two and a half years. Now, the developers have dipped into the unorthodox, "So, the brokers brought in about a dozen boutique retailers with names like Haute Hippie and Flutter, to lure female condo hunters (a male-oriented event is in the works)," according to a report in the New York Observer.

The mall concept is to fulfill the developers' concept of "healthful living" under one roof. Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, the marketing firm hired to take over sales and promotion wants to draw suburban dwellers back to downtown. "The previous firms pretty much only marketed on the Miraval Spa. It was all about the spa, and it wasn't that much about the real estate," senior managing director James Lansill told the Observer.

"The building is attracting people moving back from the suburbs; brokers advertise the units as replacing the need for a second home," says the Observer. "This building happens to suit that highly revised way that people are pursuing things."

And that can be accomplished with pricing starting in the $700s and moving up to $5.5 for a 5 bedroom suite.

Published: June 1, 2009

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Mr. Carr is an award-winning real estate broker in Northern Virginia and authored "Real Estate Investing Made Simple: a commonsense approach to building wealth." He also contributed to Donald Trump’s book, "The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received," and is an active trainer and coach of top producers in the Washington DC market. As a sought-after expert on real estate, Mr. Carr has been featured on CNN, various broadcast outlets and was the former real estate editor for The Washington Times. He accepts questions at his blog www.RealEstateOlogy.org.