Evangelist's Daughter Paid $9,100 for CPW Co-Op, Sells For $2.95 M
Back in 1948, the radio bandleader Harry Salter and his wife Roberta Semple Salter, daughter of the scandalous California evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, moved into a rental at 322 Central Park West. About 15 years later, when the building went co-op, they paid $9,100 for the space.
Roberta died this January at age 96; and her family sold the six-room, 1,850-square-foot apartment for $2.95 million, according to deeds filed in city records this month.
“She decided to buy it against all advice,” Roberta’s daughter Victoria told The Observer last week. “Brokers, lawyers, friends, everybody said, ‘Roberta, you’re crazy’--because the Upper West Side was going to hell in a hand basket!” It turned out to be a good investment.
Speaking of hellfire, Roberta (at age 15) briefly preached at her mother Aimee’s L.A. church when Ms. McPherson disappeared. A month later, the mother surfaced in Mexico, saying she’d been kidnapped.
Roberta ended up marrying outside the faith. “My father was Jewish, and my mother came from this highly charged fundamentalist background,” Victoria said. But the Central Park West apartment was peaceful. “It was almost Zen-like, an extremely calm apartment… You felt warm and fuzzy about it.”
On the other hand, Roberta handled the mail for her husband Harry’s famous radio show, Name That Tune. “She hired a staff of people and set up a mini-production line in our dining room to pile through this mail,” Victoria said. “I think at one point we were getting 50,000 pieces of mail a week.”
Nowadays, that space is “finely appointed,” according to the Corcoran listing.
43 CLARKSON
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13% Return on investment is good, but not that spectacular.
probably could have done better staying in at as a rent controlled resident and investing the $9,100 and the money she would have saved on property tax and maintenance cost. She probably would have only been paying $500/month in rent.
Roberta Semple Salter was a friend of mine whom I loved very
much. She had qualities of both of both her mom, Aimee
Semple McPherson; and her dad, Robert James Semple. She will
always have a very special place in my heart.
I used to live in 322 CPW before it was co-opped. The rent-controlled price on the six room apartents, 1850 sf, was under $200 per month.
I've been computing things a bit and it's actually just a little over a 14% annual return on the $9,100 purchase price in 1963. That is a spectacular annual return.
However I do agree with Anonymous2 that owning a condo/co-op/home is not always a good investment. There's a lot of costs over the years. Most people don't figure the time it takes to supervise the repairs. Time is money.
The $9100 purchase price in 1963 for an 1850 square foot apartment is unbelievable. That computes to $4.91 a square foot. My parents bought a new home in 1964 and paid $21.00 a square foot in a small town 1,000 miles from NYC.
The average square footage for a new home in 1963 was around 1300 square feet. A 1300 square foot house today is considered very small.