Secret luxury apartments for the help

The Floating Seahorse home on the waters of The Dubai World in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Amid New York city’s luxury penthouses and sprawling duplexes is a stash of secret rooms: one-bedroom and studio apartments that will never appear on public listings or the open market.

These bijoux crash-pads — known as accessory apartments — are available only to elite families who have already bought (much larger) homes in the building.

Realtor.com reports that among one development’s 200 units are six small apartments — starting at around 500 square feet for $1.26 million (Sh126 million) — and offered for sale solely to existing buyers; four are already spoken for.

So what’s the appeal of these tiny, secret apartments? Quite simple actually: They are mainly for the help. “The competition to hire, and keep, the best staff — a personal assistant, nanny, butler or house manager — has got way more intense over the last 10 years,” explains Caspar Harvard-Walls, a partner at Black Brick in London (where the trend first gained traction). “So the way they are housed has changed enormously.”