Max Abelson | The New York Observer

Harper's Bazaar's Valerie Salembier Gets a Bargain at UN Plaza

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:16:08 -0500

As the magazine industry dies a very slow death, its leaders continue to buy up lovely little Manhattan homes. Condé Nast heir Samuel I. Newhouse IV just bought a $2.5 million Tribeca loft (with "a sensual zen-like" master bedroom), while Vice magazine co-founder Suroosh Alvi paid a tad less for an East Village place (with modern kitchen, backyard and in-floor heating).

And, according to a deed filed Monday, Harper's Bazaar publisher Valerie Salembier bought an...

The Last Swaggerers: A Hearty Bunch Keeps Pricing Like It’s 2007

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:58:23 -0500

This September, after a summer of solemn hand-wringing over just how far Manhattan’s luxury real estate market had fallen, the annual batch of post–Labor Day listings was supposed to be modest and humbled. It wasn’t. One corrugated-cardboard magnate, for example, cut the price of his duplex to only $29.5 million, still $14 million more than he’d paid for it.

Even as the year crawls to a close, outdated swagger lives on.

Last week, an apartment at...

Despite Troubles at Gramps’ Condé, Si Newhouse IV Gets ‘Sensual’

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:54:05 -0500

On Nov. 5, Condé Nast mogul Si Newhouse auctioned his spectacular Giacometti sculpture, L’Homme Qui Chavire, for $17.2 million, though he reportedly paid around $20 million for it. Still, the piece—which translates to “the falling man” or “the man who capsizes”—sold for a lot more than its $8 million to $12 million estimate, meaning that Mr. Newhouse knowingly risked losing many millions. His leap of faith left gossip types wondering if Condé Nast’s capsizing...

Burning Questions

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:34:24 -0500

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8.5 Bathrooms, Seven Bedrooms, $1 M. Off

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:44:36 -0500

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Rothschild Manse, Almost Woody Allen's, Hops from $15 M. to $35 M. to $25.5 M.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:55:16 -0500

Five and half years ago, the Century Foundation's enormous brownstone at 41 East 70th Street nearly sold to Woody Allen and his wife, until he decided that renovating the place from offices into a house would take too much work. The house was asking $15 million.

Since then, the price of the townhouse--which Paula Del Nunzio, probably the most powerful townhouse broker in Manhattan, is calling the Rothschild Mansion, after its builder--has seesawed from $25...

Bond Girl Melanie Lazenby Sells $1.85 M. Co-Op

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:59:31 -0500

Melanie Lazenby, the 36-year-old Elliman broker whose father, George, starred in the wildly wonderful On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, finally has an apartment all her own. According to a deed, she just sold off the $1.85 million West Ninth Street co-op she owned with her mother, the Gannett publishing heiress Christina Matser, then bought a smaller condo at the new Superior Ink.

Ms. Lazenby, who The Times described as “tall, impeccable and fair-haired” in an...

Enigmatic Arriviste Marco Stoffel Loses West 12th House to Sheriff

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:53:34 -0500

Marco Stoffel is a mysterious man.

His 24-foot-wide West 12th Street townhouse, on a lovely cobblestone block, has been home to peculiar not-for-profits like the Borderline Personality Disorder Research Foundation and the Third Millennium Foundation, which partnered with Al Gore’s Current TV for a contest called “Seeds of Tolerance.” According to a press release, the winner was announced at an event with Mr. Stoffel, Mr. Gore, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Lindsay Lohan. The foundation’s International...

Doug Von Allmen, Big Scott Rothstein Investor, Wants $18.45 M. for Condo

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:24:47 -0500

Earlier this month, a very wealthy and very Republican slice of Florida society was thrown into a very sweaty panic when the multimillionaire attorney Scott Rothstein was accused of running a Ponzi scheme that could total more than a billion dollars. Even though Mr. Rothstein, a spiky-haired and alligator-shoed Lamborghini driver, has said he was born in the Bronx (to a condom salesman), the scandal probably won't hit Manhattan as hard as Madoff's.

But one...

Sharon Baum Bids Farewell to Her Vespa, Returns to Rolls-Royce

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:01:11 -0500

Back in February 2008, when the doyenne real estate broker Sharon Baum announced that she'd no longer be driving a hunter green Rolls-Royce Silver Spur--upholstered in camel-colored leather, and blessed with her famous "SOLD 1" custom license plate--it was an early sign that the Upper East Side's long era of sparkly glitz was ending.

Ms. Baum, who dated Michael Bloomberg after Harvard Business School, sold a record $40 million townhouse, and is known for wearing a...

When Only a $9.5 M. One-Bedroom at the Sherry Will Do

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:58:47 -0500

Earlier this year, the investor Christopher H. Browne put his 515 Park Avenue duplex on the market for $32.5 million, even though the place was basically a one-bedroom apartment. There was a guest room, to be fair, but it was smaller than the master suite’s walk-in closet.

The duplex was taken off the market in September, leaving a gaping hole in New York’s inventory of wildly expensive one-bedrooms. The house-hunter who wanted to spend an...

Sloane Mansion’s $25 M. Price Slide: ‘Owners Have a Real Need to Sell’

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:54:03 -0500

The 104-year-old, 36-foot-wide, 17-bathroom, 15-bedroom, 11-fireplace mansion at 18 East 68th Street was the most expensive house in New York when it was listed last year for $64 million. Even when that tag came down in January to $54 million, the price was still higher than any Manhattan mansion had ever sold for.

It was pulled from the market in July, but is being re-listed this week with a new broker at a very new...

Rare and Well-Done

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:53:55 -0500

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Walt Disney's Grandniece Finally Sells West End Co-ops, But Loses Millions

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:34:33 -0500

Back in April 2008, Abigail Disney, the mogul's grandniece, put her two 300 West End Avenue apartments on the market for a combined $13,445,000. It was an ambitious thing to do, considering that a year and a half earlier she'd paid the singer Harry Belafonte just $10.75 million for them.

The pair of nine-room co-ops, listed with mega-agent Dolly Lenz, got less pricey as the economy drooped--though the combined tag was cut only to $11.95...

A Slow Slide from ‘Ridiculous’: West 67th Condo Chopped Mightily to $8.97 M.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:53:33 -0500

Everything that comes up must come down, even the price tags for apartments with telephone-programmed air-conditioning, six-head steam showers, motorized refrigerator shelves, heated towel bars, master suite sitting rooms and 1,100-square-foot entertaining terraces.

Earlier this month, the asking price of a four-bedroom apartment at 45 West 67th Street fell to $8,975,000, two years after it was listed for $14 million. “That was a ridiculous price,” said Robby Browne, its current broker.

But the ridiculousness was fixed...

Awesome and Disappointing: The Meaning of Big Deals at 838 Fifth, Chupi and Beyond

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:48:01 -0500

The software magnate Marty Sprinzen’s $24.5 million, 4,552-square-foot, seven-room apartment at 838 Fifth Avenue, the kind of place where there’s museum-quality lighting, Venetian plaster and heated Portuguese limestone floors in the entrance gallery alone, went to contract last month, according to its Brown Harris Stevens listing.

By itself, that news wouldn’t mean much. After all, signed contracts don’t always lead to actual deals: Last month, listing information shows, an eighth-floor apartment at the supremely fancy...

Stiletto Gatsby

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:16:02 -0500

“My mind doesn’t stop thinking,” the 29-year-old model and real estate entrepreneur Jodie Fanelli said last month, driving in her Porsche SUV to Bensonhurst. “I could wake up in the middle of the night and I come up with crazy things that I’m, like, I have to write it down right away, and I want to try and pursue it.”

“The first business we were ever in together,” her identical twin, Diane, said, “we sold...

Go Ahead and Stair

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:42:08 -0500

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Vice Founder Gets Backyard; Currin Gets Penthouse; Bourgeois Gets House

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:52:29 -0400

Vice is cooler than your cool uncle’s cool uncle. It has photographs of naked polyglot brunettes, impeccably cruel music reviews, crueler Dos and Don’ts, columns on video games and heavy drugs (“I like swimming through a sea of warm blankets fresh from the euphoria dryer as much as the next person”), plus fiction by Ann Beattie and Jim Shepard. It smells like Parliaments, looks like Al Goldstein and reads like Ryszard Kapuściński.

So it might...

Bust Out the Sand Chair! Ratner Buys Long Beach Spread for $2 M.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:46:22 -0400

Bruce Ratner went modest this year.

In June, the Atlantic Yards developer conceded that Frank Gehry won’t be designing any of his 22-acre, $4.9 billion site’s 17 buildings; cheaper alternatives replaced the architect’s plans, and, among other things, shrunk the arena slated for his basketball team.

In September, Mr. Ratner sold an 80 percent stake in that team, the Nets, plus a 45 percent interest in the arena to Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s richest man, for $200...

Outside and Proud

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:41:44 -0400

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Chupi Victory? Schnabel Sells Triplex Penthouse to Bill Brady

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:19:01 -0400

Palazzo Chupi, the semi-pink wonderland built by the yellow-spectacled artist Julian Schnabel, has finally sold off its triplex penthouse. Way back in early 2008, when Chupi was still West 11th Street's frothed-over mega-castle, Mr. Schnabel wanted $32 million for the unit, and $27 million for the duplex below.

The latter is now asking only $12.95 million. And the penthouse, according to a deed filed Friday, just sold for only $10.5 million. That's less than a...

Morgan Stanley's Ex-Vice Chair Wants $34 M. for 998 Fifth Sprawl

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:08:10 -0400

Earlier this year, ex-Morgan Stanley vice chairman Bruce D. Fiedorek quietly wanted around $45 million for his enormous fifth-floor sprawl at the enormously fancy co-op 998 Fifth Avenue.

For one reason or another, Mr. Fiedorek was not quite ready to publicly list the apartment, or talk about it: "I have no reason to discuss any of this, thank you," he said. Kathy Sloane, the marvelously serious high-end broker, invited a group of agents to see...

Billy Joel Sells Perry Street House to Ex-Wife Katie Lee for $3 M.

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:10:37 -0400

Anyone who's listened to Billy Joel's pleasant soft-rock piano ballads knows that life is hard, love dies, divorce is expensive, and material possessions like nice West Village real estate eventually crumble into sand. Earlier this year, Mr. Joel--who is either an evil overlord of sentimental schlock, a spoiled brat behind bulging eyes, or a genius with astonishing self-deprecation considering that he happens to be the sixth best-selling recording artist in history--announced his divorce from...

$42.5 M. Wildenstein Lair Quietly Asks $37 M.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:18:25 -0400

When the 29-foot-wide mansion at 11 East 64th Street was sold off last July for $42.5 million, it was one of the biggest and strangest sales of 2008. And it’s getting odder: According to two sources, the buyer is quietly willing to part with the house for only $37 million.

The mansion’s broker, both sources said, is Corcoran’s Carrie Chiang. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know anything about it,”...

Steve Madden Buys $2.2 M. East Side Co-op, Shoe Closet Not Included

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:13:32 -0400

If you can sell lots and lots of mid-priced footwear to teenage girls, you’ll have a lot of money to spend on overpriced New York real estate.

This month, the Far Rockaway–born shoe salesman Steve Madden bought a $2.2 million, two-bedroom apartment at 175 East 73rd Street, a townhouse divided into co-ops. Considering that the unit needs work, and has just one normal bedroom (plus a small one), the price was high. “Staggering number—oh, staggering!”...

Spare a Thought for the Penthouses

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:46:38 -0400

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Goodbye, Views! Bank of America Sells Off Its Pricey Time Warner Apartment

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:14:57 -0400

On Friday, just after Bank of America announced a billion-dollar loss in the third quarter, a deed in city records showed that the massive firm had sold off its corporate apartment in the Time Warner Center for $7.2 million. On the bright side, it cost $6.35 million to buy three years ago.

Especially on a dark afternoon like this one, you stare up at the twin-towered, 53-story, 2,800,000-square-foot, sharp-edged, nefariously shiny Time Warner Center and...

Daniel Radcliffe Buys a Sea Captain's $5.65 M. West 12th Street Brownstone

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:08:36 -0400

Harry Potter has a nice new West Village house.

According to city records, a brownstone on West 12th Street that was apparently built 162 years ago by a sea captain, was just sold for $5.65 million to the same limited liability corporation that owns Daniel Radcliffe's apartment at Jean Nouvel's 40 Mercer Street. The 20-year-old actor's mother is listed on the deed.

According to a listing with Sotheby's International Realty, which is the kind of fancy...

Icahn, Icahn! Son's $2.9 M. PH, Lawyer's $4.2 M. Condo

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:32:06 -0400

One can assume that it would be exceedingly upsetting to be close with Carl Icahn, the 43rd wealthiest man in the world. Fellow billionaire Wilbur Ross once said that the activist investor is “especially good at terrorizing people.” And Mr. Ross is a friend.

The flip side is that you live very luxuriantly. According to city records, his son Brett just bought a $2.9 million penthouse duplex at the Piano Factory, a co-op on West...

Eloise Victories! Suit Won; Klum's Sire Finds Renter for $65K Sprawl

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:25:35 -0400

Of all the huge indignities suffered by deluxe pieces of Manhattan real estate this past year, not even Julian Schnabel’s fuchsia Palazzo Chupi has had more to put up with than the Plaza. There was the Russian oligarch who sued over his $53.5 million penthouse’s low ceilings and ugly drainage grates; the broker who said she got trapped overnight in a 14th-floor garbage room and “cut her fingers to shreds trying to claw her...

Caviar Vus

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:20:15 -0400

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$37 M. and Still a Hike to the Bathroom

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:33:39 -0400

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The Plaza's Dictatorial Spread

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:16:11 -0400

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Cronkite’s Companion to List His UN Plaza Co-op; ‘It Looked Like Walter’

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:29:47 -0400

Anytime an important New Yorker leaves behind a nice home, real estate agents wonder aloud about how they might nab the listing. “You find out who the estate attorney is,” the director of Stribling Private Brokerage once said, “and you write them.”

After Walter Cronkite died this July at age 92, it was sad to think that brokers would be clamoring for an apartment that had belonged to someone with such cosmic grace and gravitas....

Marty Richards' Old River House Razzle Dazzle

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:37:15 -0400

By the rules of New York real estate, the greatness of any apartment saga is measured by its eccentricity, length and weight. So a furious but short-lived fight over a condo is trumped by a run-of-the-mill but lengthy feud over a co-op, which is trumped by an epically long, cinematically peculiar struggle over a rococo duplex.

When you’re lucky, rabbis and red ants are involved, like at the Apthorp; or it’s a Jordanian princess fighting...

Tough Field

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:52:01 -0400

Location: What was your childhood like?
Ms. Field: Very Middle America; perfect; ideal; Donna Reed … My mother wore the apron; president of the PTA; had a baking day, had a shopping day; Ashtabula, Ohio.

You were a Pan Am flight attendant in the late ’70s, when you married. Where did you meet your husband?
Four twenty-nine East 52nd Street, it was a new rental building called River Court. I, and a lot of...

The Prisoner of Park Avenue! Neil Simon Buys Again in Ritz Tower

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:50:42 -0400

Neil Simon has another apartment to write in. He and his fifth wife, Elaine, have paid $1,225,000 for a two-bedroom apartment at their building, the Ritz Tower on Park Avenue. Broker Jaar-mel Sloane, whose listing says the "exquisite" co-op is in "mint condition," would not comment.

The seller is Gloria Hirtz, who's listed in records as a retiree. "Why should I talk to you about my life there? It was just a plain, prosaic life,"...

Are the Good Times Back? 15 Central Park West Penthouse Sells for $37 M.

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:31:27 -0400

These are anxious days for very expensive, wildly high, overly plush New York apartments. On the one hand, it's so common for fancy sellers to be losing money on their real estate deals that no one's really shocked when a Jean Nouvel condo sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars less than it was bought for--or when a Central Park South sprawl loses millions. On the other hand, there are increasingly frequent signs that...

Have Mercer! Condo at Nouvel’s Castle Sells at a Loss for $4.22 M.

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:18:50 -0400

The world of expensive Manhattan real estate is an outstandingly weird one. When proper Upper East Side brokers don’t get an exclusive listing they were hoping for, sometimes they’ll complain to you: “She’s a bitch with fake blond hair, one kidney and a bad nose job.” On Sept. 29 alone, city records showed that a man named Stuyvesant P. Comfort bought a $5.9 million apartment on Park Avenue, and Mr. Lloyd Plenty paid $4...

Curtains on Eloise! Vavilov Exits Long, Strange Plaza Penthouse Trip

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:53:49 -0400

One of the genuinely great fracases in Manhattan real estate history has finally ended, but with a whimper. Andrei Vavilov, the Russian oligarch who sued the Plaza last year over a duplex penthouse and triplex penthouse he was supposed to buy there for $53.5 million, has finally left the building.

In January, he ended up buying the duplex as a compromise, then put it on the market immediately. According to a deed filed in city...

Second Time's a Charm? Plaza Relists State Suite for $39 M.

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:46:48 -0400

In June, The Observer warned that the Italian businessman Luigi Zunino had been desperately trying to come up with the money to close on his $45 million–or–so deal for the Plaza's gargantuan third-floor sprawl. A year earlier, there had been reports that Mr. Zunino was looking to sell his place for $100 million, but that was wishful thinking: Before he could sell, he would have to own it outright.

That hasn't happened.

A new listing on...

Bulletproof Class

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:52:04 -0400

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The Princess and the Pincuses

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:39:25 -0400

On Nov. 3, 2003, Lionel Pincus was standing in a tuxedo in the New York Public Library’s Astor Hall. It was the Library Lions gala, and everything was lovely. The venture capitalist’s longtime companion, Princess Firyal of Jordan, was there, and so were Lord Conrad Black, Veronica Hearst and Henry Louis Gates. Trumpets called guests into the dining room, where there was cinnamon in the branches by the tables.

“Smile!” a photographer told the...

Another 834 Fifth Listing! Charles Schwab Selling Penthouse

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:07:34 -0400

It was just this Wednesday that The Observer reported that the 81-year-old Hal Prince is asking $33 million for his apartment at 834 Fifth Avenue, a godly co-op where apartments are supposed to never be available. "Why would you move out of 834 unless you’ve died?” a neighbor once asked.

But according to a source, billionaire brokerage kingpin Charles Schwab's small penthouse--15a, which neighbors part of Rupert Murdoch's triplex--is now available for around $14...

Kingly Co-op! Tony-Laden Hal Prince Lists 834 Fifth Duplex for $33 M.

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:31:11 -0400

If an Upper East Side real estate broker tells you in her nice North Carolina drawl that one of her new listings is “a dreamy apartment,” that she “wouldn’t change a hair” and that it’s got a “beautiful terrace overlooking the park, you look down and watch the polar bears play, it’s just heavenly—heavenly,” it’s best not to believe her. Fancy real estate, even the brass-gated kind, is rarely what it’s cracked up to...

The Goldilocks Listings: When $28 M. Post-Lehman Seems Just Right

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:56:01 -0400

Even though luxury real estate brokers are all horribly optimistic by nature, this summer there was a lot of stoic head-nodding about Manhattan’s fall from absurd exuberance back to reality. They called it the adjustment.

“Everybody likes to make money,” the broker A. Larry Kaiser IV sighed last month, “but you become realistic.”

So the big annual batch of post–Labor Day listings was supposed to be exceedingly humble. The thinking went that if even Julian Schnabel...

Cardboard Mogul Gets Slightly Serious, Cuts Duplex Tag to $29.5 M.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:01:06 -0400

Just over one year ago, Westchester's very own corrugated-cardboard magnate, Dennis Mehiel, put his 10,350-square-foot duplex condominium at the Carhart Mansion on the market with mega-broker Dolly Lenz for $35 million, even though he and his wife had bought the place in September 2005 for $15.5 million, way less than half that. "The $35 million is where the market is today," Ms. Mehiel said in a short interview then, before hanging up, "so...

Madoff Penthouse Listed, Finally

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:10:17 -0400

Last Wednesday, The Observer reported that the brokers Anne Corey and Serena Boardman would be marketing Bernard Madoff's penthouse. But it wasn't until late Friday that their $9.9 million listing finally came online.

The thing is a doozy.

Under the headline Sophisticated Penthouse Duplex, the brokers describe the villain's lair thusly: "Perched atop a distinguished white-glove prewar cooperative, this 9 into 7 room duplex penthouse affords spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline. The beautiful residence boasts an...

Afghanistan Buys $4.2 M. Trump Condo (with 'Peacefulness and Views')

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:48:54 -0400

The Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations has a lovely new apartment. According to two deeds filed Friday, the group spent $4,235,000 on a 2,840-square-foot apartment at Trump World Tower, plus a $5.4 million commercial space at 633 Third Avenue.

H.E. Zahir Tanin, whose title is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations, is listed in the deeds. "We did purchase a residence for...