By Max Abelson

January 5, 2009 | 2:30 p.m

The late Araxia M. Buckhantz's two-bedroom sprawl at the massively proper 834 Fifth Avenue is the kind of perfect little chunk of New York real estate that can make a very important and normally staid uptown broker cackle with excitement. "I absolutely am wild about this apartment," one agent who auditioned for the listing told The Observer last month. “I’d do anything to handle it."

Back then, three sources had said the auditioned brokers included, "Brown Harris Stevens’ Ann Jeffery (once a Harper’s Bazaar editor); Corcoran’s Leighton Candler (who is listing the Brooke Astor duplex); Serena Boardman at Sotheby’s (listing Aby Rosen’s $75 million limestone mansion); Stribling’s bow-tied Kirk Henckels (listing a floor of the old Nelson Rockefeller triplex at 810 Fifth Avenue); and Caroline Guthrie (reported to be taking co-ownership of Edward Lee Cave’s boutique brokerage, where she’s president)."

Reached on the phone just now, Buckhantz's daughter told The Observer that the estate has found its broker: Ms. Jeffery. "I met with a lot of wonderful realtors. I don't want to comment negatively about anybody else," she said, when asked why she made the choice. "No, I don't want to get into this. I don't want to."

According to her Brown Harris Stevens profile, Ms. Jeffery lives on Park Avenue and has a house in Water Mill, and is "a member of the administrative board of the society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center," a member of Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, the Bathing Corporation of Southampton, and New York's Colony Club. In other words, she's proper enough to handle an apartment that until recently belonged to the 101-year-old Buckhantz, cousin to the monocled oil magnate Nubar Gulbenkian (pictured).

Buckhantz's daughter said a price, rumored to be around $30 million, has not yet been picked. Ms. Jeffery, who last year sold Patricia Kennedy Lawford's apartment at One Sutton Place South--which resulted in this writer receiving a mysterious letter--couldn't be reached for comment today.