If you live in Manhattan, co-ops are a little different then the one's you had back in college, where all the hippies hung out. Apartment co-ops in New York often mean tough scrutiny by fellow members of the housing board (i.e. your potential neighbors) before you're even given the key to the building. It's like college admissions: except even daddy's money won't guarantee you a spot on the waiting list.

Just ask Lou Reed: just because he's a famous aging rock star doesn't mean that he's on good terms with his neighbors over at his penthouse digs overlooking the West Side highway. In fact, they invariably complain about the Velvet Underground's slew of personal assistants and their all-access pass to the otherwise lock-and-key building.

Sound fun? Slap a $60 million price tag on that baby, and you have the most exclusive digs in New York City's history. Available (not to you) for a limited time only.

This week Courtney Ross, widow of the funeral parlour director-turned legendary Time Warner entertainment mogul Steve Ross, quietly put her 32-room apartment in 740 (Park Av) on the market for in excess of $60m (£37m).
The Ross apartment, while not considered the most elegant, is the largest in the building. But scraping together $60m plus is no guarantee of entry. Under New York's co-op vetting system, applicants will have to go undergo rigorous background checks. At a minimum, a buyer must put at least half down in cash and prove he or she is liquid to at least three times the total value of the sale - and that's even before a stringent social evaluation is undertaken by the building's board members.

But hey, didn't New York's housing bubble, like the rest of the country, burst already? Who could possibly pony up that much cash? Not to worry: the people handling Ross' estate have vetted 10 applicants, no more, no less, that they deem appropriate for the area. And they are optimistic about the pricing too! "It's not going to be 'at least' $60m," said Cave "it will be over $60m."

Who's betting on some foreign money injection into the the building that was once only for Rockefellers and Vanderbilts?