Seems to me it's the same group of people bidding on all the apartments. They are getting snapped up which is great for the A team but is it because of real demand or speculation. I currently hold 3 apartments but only because I had a top three i wanted and because of they way they were spaced out I had to buy my third choice, then my second choice, then my first choice.
A great deal is down to speculation, we know one player was bidding on several shops (and got them) because they were after one in particular with the others as backup. Speculation has been the way EU has worked for a long time, lots of shops were empty in the Malls when they were introduced on Calypso and found their way back onto the auction at an increased price shortly after. I would imagine all the Ark property is currently owned by old Calypso players because we usually have deeper pockets as we already know how the system works - buy it first or pay vastly more later. You would need a serious financial crash in EU to have newbie Ark players buying property or MA allowing Ark to release property as quickly as they have allowed Calypso in the past. But even though I am an player I think the chances of my owning property even a minimum level apartment is nil if they only appear on auction in small quantities. (tbh I'd only use it as a storage locker anyway)
