Max Abelson

On the one hand, the news today that President George W. Bush has bought a 1.13-acre, 8,501-square-foot house in Dallas for $2.07 million must surely be raising some resentment in a nation where nearly one in four homeowners with mortgages currently owe more on their mortgage payments than their homes are worth. After all, Mr. Bush's post-presidency abode (above) not only has a 1,150-square-foot garage, 896-square-foot servants' quarters, and a bonus 240-square-foot storage space, but his next-door neighbor is literally a billionaire.

But, on the other hand, if Mr. Bush had chosen Manhattan as his post-White House place of residence, $2.07 million would barely buy him a condo the size of his new garage. Even with the market suffering, according to a gander at listings on StreetEasy, $2.07 million is just enough for a 1,091-square-foot Turtle Bay condo; a 1,612-square-foot place on West 58th Street; or a 1,743-square-foot condo on West 100th.

A few months ago, Candy Spelling decided to trade in her 56,500-square-foot French chateau-style home (with a gift-wrapping room) for a $47 million condo at the still incomplete Century condominium in Los Angeles. Her 16,500-square-foot place will spread over the building's top two penthouse floors.

But this Monday, the trustworthy and hilariously named Web site Real Estalker had a little post reporting that Ms. Spelling, whose TV mogul husband, Aaron, died two years ago, "has backed out" of the purchase. Her publicist denied the rumor yesterday (telling the site that Ms. Spelling's plans "have not changed"), and so has a spokesperson for the Century's developer, Related, who told The Observer today, "Just completely untrue."

But why would there be rumors about Los Angeles' biggest-ever condo deal? "No idea," the spokesperson said.

In the wonderful imaginations of wild-haired, politically active college sophomores everywhere, the chief executive officers of multinational corporations meet in volcanic caverns lit by candelabra, drink good port, snicker about the foolish masses and sell one another their 24th-floor Manhattan condos with handshakes.

In reality, CEO-to-CEO deals really do happen, even during horrendous economic slumps, though volcanic caverns are not involved. According to city records, the much-celebrated Xerox chief Anne M. Mulcahy sold her apartment at the Grand Beekman on East 51st Street last month to Rober Pelzer, the new chief of Novartis Corp., the North American entity of the gigantic Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Novartis.  read more »

On July 16, Loews Corporation co-chairman Jonathan Tisch, whose father and uncle founded the multibillion-dollar conglomerate, paid a record $48 million for a co-op at the legendarily tyrannical 2 East 67th Street.

Loews’ share price hit $44.13 that summer day, and the Dow was over 11,308.

At the end of this Monday, Loews’ stock closed at $23.48, and the Dow was around 8,149.

But surely the economic downturn doesn’t matter to people at such a high-gated co-op; what matters is that the most recent sale at 2 East 67th (a building so overconfident that its natural Fifth Avenue address is shrugged off) was $48 million, which theoretically means all the neighboring spreads, even the ones on lower floors, could and should fetch something similar, downturns be damned.  read more »

The only real estate investor who flips vintage local properties outfitted with, say, reflecting ponds and bamboo walls, but who also flips massive thickets of self-storage spaces, and has been called “dreamy” by Gawker, is Adam Gordon. “I told my wife that before we were married,” he said this week about the blog’s compliment. “It may have closed the deal.”

They met when he opposed her application for a restaurant on Bond Street: “She got a much a better location, which turned out to be Double Crown,” the new colonialism-inspired eatery on the Bowery that just got two stars from Frank Bruni.  read more »

By the time 2008 ends, there will be two kinds of high-end brokers left in New York. Most will outwardly panic, and the sturdier will force their dread to simmer beneath a slightly clenched smile that says, “Everything is quite fine, thank you.” After all, a tiny (and dwindling) group of only wealthy people are willing to make real estate deals, at least the kind of big real estate deal that New York prides itself on.

In the past few weeks, The Observer has written about the children of a Texas natural-gas billionaire, a Gulf & Western co-founder, a Berkshire Hathaway billionaire and a Turkish billionaire all buying up Manhattan real estate.  read more »

“Never having a real speaking role before, I’ve been having to work on my, you know, my enunciation, my articulation, things like that,” said 27-year-old Matthew Risch, the luckiest ex-understudy in New York City. It was the last day of November, and he was sitting in front of a bulb-lined mirror in his new dressing room at the Roundabout Theatre’s Studio 54.

Nine days earlier, the actor Christian Hoff, 13 years Mr. Risch’s senior and poised for a breakthrough as the star of the retooled Rodgers and Hart mega-musical Pal Joey, injured his foot during a performance, according to an announcement issued by the theater.  read more »

“You can’t make somebody buy something. You just can’t make them. They’re not handing out shotguns to brokers yet,” the tall, blond, Georgia-bred, 47-year-old real estate broker Leighton Candler complained earlier this month. She was sitting in the wood-paneled library of a 14-room duplex penthouse at 1020 Fifth Avenue. “And to push is wrong, to be controversial is wrong, to be confrontational is wrong. It really is. These are very sophisticated people.”

Ms. Candler has several tectonic listings to worry about, including this penthouse, which she’s marketing for $46.5 million, down from last year’s $50 million tag. There’s the late Brooke Astor’s duplex on Park Avenue, for example, or a smaller penthouse at 1040 Fifth Avenue, for which a zinc magnate and his estranged wife are asking $43 million.  read more »

Now that the American real estate crisis has leaked into once immune New York, surely the most pressing national housing question is whether Park Avenue’s executives, the ones who have been Goldman Sachs chairmen or at least board members at gigantic tobacco companies, will be able to sell off their pristine co-ops. And then, when the deals finally happen, will the spreads sell for anything close to asking price?

Robert C. Almon and John C. Whitehead can both rest easy. According to city records, both sold off some Park Avenue real estate last week, getting more or less what they had wanted for their posh spreads.  read more »

Coldplay, that quartet of droopy-eyed, arena-filling balladeers, may not be around after the end of next year. “I’m 31 now and I don’t think that bands should keep going past 33,” lead singer Chris Martin told the Daily Express this month, which led to rampant breakup rumors, which in turn led to The New Yorker’s wondrous and normally non-curmudgeonly music writer Sasha Frere-Jones to write, “As if Obama winning wasn’t enough good news.”

If Coldplay does die off, and Mr. Martin retreats with wife Gwyneth Paltrow to raise their funny-named offspring in, say, some Nordic cabin, New York City may be hosting the band’s lead guitarist.  read more »

If Dolly Lenz did not exist we would have to create her. The woman is a real estate mega-broker of mythological proportions: She has said that she has done $7 billion in sales, has personally owned 70 to 80 properties, and currently keeps 12 BlackBerrys; her name is in the news weekly, especially in the Post’s real estate column; her old falling-out with ex-protégé Michael Shvo is still realty’s juiciest feud; Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, a client, nicknamed her “Jaws.”

So imagine the gasps echoing around upscale Manhattan this month when the annual Real Estate Top 200, an objective ranking (by sales volume and what’s called transaction sides) sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, Real Trends and Lore Magazine, didn’t have Ms.  read more »

Coldplay is a band so spectacularly mediocre that not even Brian Eno, practically the best producer on Earth, could have saved their last album, Viva La Vida, from being both bland and pompous. But they're also so spectacularly mediocre that the album sold more downloads than any in the history of digital sales--all in two weeks.

And that means they get to live well.

According to city records, guitarist Jonny Buckland (whose name, bless his soul, is spelled like that on the deed) just paid $3.4 million for a condo at 21 Astor Place, a 116-year-old commercial building that was converted into 50 luxury loft condos. According to the listing, which calls the apartment "an opportunity for a true connoisseur," the place has 2,107 square feet, five rooms, two bedrooms, and two (and a half) bathrooms. More to come in tomorrow's Observer...

Remember 2006? When New York City was in the middle of its giddiest real estate run in the history of giddiness? Remember that the Corcoran Group's holiday party was set in a faux-Roman palace, decorated with lightly-dressed actors in vintage costumes? Around 900 people drank up and patted each other on the back and talked shop and smiled.

There will be no faux-Roman palaces this year.

"We decided not to have a holiday party quite a while ago," Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman told The Observer yesterday. "It's just not a responsible way to act right now."  read more »

Two months back, when this reporter visited 11 Spring Street, Corcoran's Robby Browne was listing the 19th-century horse stables for $39.8 million.

(Actually, the 4,600-square-foot penthouse cost $17.95 million, the triplex downstairs was $15.15 million, and a flat in between, where this reporter saw his first-ever dual-flush toilet, cost $6.7 million--thus the $39.8 million total.)

But, according to a new listing, things have changed. Mr. Browne, one of the only uber-powerful New York real estate brokers who happens to be genuinely charming, seems to have lost the townhouse. Instead, Core has a new $36.5 million listing, a $3.3 million price cut. (Never mind that Caroline Cummings, a real estate heiress in her late 20s, paid only $12 million two years ago to buy the place from Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan.)  read more »

Manhattan’s high-heeled real estate market is excruciatingly gloomy these days: One top-ranked broker was reached via cell phone on Monday while on a run in Florida, explaining that it was important to stay away from the metropolis’ fiery awfulness for the time being. It’s a different kind of gloom than in the rest of the country, where nearly one in four homeowners with mortgages owe more on payments than their houses are actually worth. But it’s gloom nonetheless. And prim Upper East Siders are doing gloomy things.

Consider Karen Fleiss, a hedge fund manager and former Barnard trustee, and her husband,

 read more »

If you lean back, close your eyes, switch on some easy listening and forget that high-heeled Manhattan real estate has slowed to a crestfallen crawl, maybe you’ll be able to pretend things are just as good as they were back on June 19, 2007.

That’s when Fortress Investment Group cofounder and COO Randal Nardone, three months removed from a Forbes billionaires list that ranked him as the world’s 557th richest man, signed a $22 million contract for a glass-walled duplex “skyhome” at the new Tribeca condo 101 Warren Street. (The 5,769-square-foot, five-bedroom apartment, with a 2,386-square-foot terrace, happens to actually be above the units listed as penthouses.  read more »

When an $80 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West came off the market late last month, it left a depressingly big hole in New York's super-luxury apartment market. (As it happens, an 18th-floor duplex in the building is being quietly offered for $75 million, while Courtney Sale Ross' sprawl at 740 Park is asking "over $60 million," but neither are official listings, so they don't quite count.)

Not that anyone actually keeps track of such things (actually, of course they do), but a relatively unthrilling penthouse at The Mark was, thanks to its $60 million tag, briefly the most expensive apartment on the market in New York.  read more »

In what must surely be a bit of good news for super-luxury Manhattan real estate--but, then again, must also be a bit of bad news--Hugh Jackman has closed on the Hudson River triplex that The Observer wrote about last month. It's a reason for jittery brokers to sigh, considering that two sources said last month it was "possible" the actor would walk away from his deal.

He didn't walk away, but one of those sources said the final sales price was between $20 and $23 million--lower than the $25 million-plus he was reportedly going to be paying. Maybe Mr. Jackman is a good haggler? Or maybe it's that every super-expensive apartment in New York is going to be open to negotiation for the foreseeable future.  read more »

Barely two weeks ago, The Observer wrote about Sheridan Mitchell Lorenz (daughter of Texas natural-gas billionaire George Mitchell), Alice R. Gottesman (daughter of Warren Buffett's billionaire friend David Gottesman) and Roy Judelson (son of Gulf & Western co-founder David Judelson) all buying new Manhattan real estate. And who could forget January's news that Hummer magnate Ira Rennert would be paying over $60 million for two Park Avenue co-ops for two daughters?

Children of Turkish billionaires are getting in on the fun, too. According to city records, young Murat Ozyegin, whose father Husnu Ozyegin is one of the 250 richest people on the planet, just paid $6.  read more »

David Turner, a soft-spoken and very kind-faced 51-year-old Westchester real estate broker, stood in his black fleece Columbia vest and Merrell shoes in something called the Love Temple, a pavilion in the perfectly manicured southwest section of a 64.6-acre estate.

Rain fell. Wild turkeys shuffled by. An owl hooted. It was like a Victorian novel, except Victorian novels end with marriages, and the main story at this infinite estate, Holly Hill, ended when the regal philanthropist Brooke Astor died here last year at age 105. She was survived by one son, Anthony Marshall, a handsome ex-ambassador who has pleaded not guilty to a 16-count indictment accusing him of stealing his mother’s fortune while she suffered from Alzheimer’s.  read more »

In an absurdly ideal New York City, 13-room co-op spreads overlooking pretty Upper East Side blocks would be reserved for public school teachers and organ donors, but executives who have recently sold their power plant companies to Bear Stearns would politely be forced to live more modestly.

But that’s not the way things are. According to city records, Dean Vanech, whose New Jersey-based Delta Power Company was acquired by Bear Stearns subsidiary Arroyo Energy early last year, bought a five-bedroom apartment at 33 East 70th on the day before the election. He and his wife, Denise, paid $14.8 million.  read more »

Even during these dreary times, the ambition that carries on in Manhattan real estate is practically Shakespearean. People who spend many millions of dollars on a chunk of luxury property one day seem to believe that chunk will be sellable the next for many millions more.

On Aug. 11, a limited liability corporation controlled by Charles Yassky, a developer and real estate investor, paid $13.2 million for a 36-foot-wide red-brick mansion at 122 East 78th Street.

The building, split into two floors of offices and three floors of small apartment units, went on the market two weeks ago for $18.  read more »

Leighton Candler, the Corcoran mega-broker who has the listing for Brooke Astor's Park Avenue co-op, just listed a full floor, nine-room, three-bedroom, 5,894-square-foot apartment at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South for $35 million. It's an ambitious listing for three reasons, but mostly because it's hard to sell anything expensive nowadays (especially if there are $8,770 monthly maintenance fees and $8,770 monthly taxes.)

Then there's the fact that the Ritz-Carlton doesn't have the social cache of 778 Park Avenue (Astor's building) or 1040 Fifth (where Ms. Candler is listing the penthouse for $46.5 million).

But consider that the apartment was bought only three years ago by one of the building's developers, Christopher M.  read more »

Location: This is a horribly anxious time to be in New York real estate, especially if you’re one of the city’s biggest builders. What keeps you up at night?

Mr. Sciame: I like to say that I sleep like a baby: I sleep for two hours and I cry for two hours. Only kidding. … Any major builder in this town in 2008 is having a very good year. And we’re having a very good year.

How is that possible? It’s been incredibly unsteady; apartments are going unsold.

It has been, but as the builder, we are building that building, and the apartments that you’re trying to sell have been paid for … which is why my year has been good.  read more »

Days after Donald Trump sued his lenders to extend a massive construction loan for his unfinished Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago (on account of the "unprecedented financial crisis"), the big-haired billionaire has a little good real estate news to brighten his week. According to a press release, his Trump SoHo has "completed its final construction pour," which means the 46-story, 449-foot-tall glass monolith has been topped off.

A slightly misspelled press release quotes Mr. Trump saying, "We are thrilled that Trump SoHo has topped off. As the area’s tallest building, it has unparalled [sic] panoramic views of the New York City skyline including the Hudson River, Statue of Liberty, and Empire State Building."  read more »

It's hard out there for a super-gigantic real estate conglomerate. The Realogy Corporation, whose franchises include the Corcoran Group, Sotheby's International Realty and Coldwell Banker, just posted a hefty loss for the third quarter. "The current economic conditions of this country are weighing heavily on consumer confidence and thus on the housing industry," CEO Richard Smith said. "We are not immune."  read more »

CNN called it for Obama, and Times Square broke out in celebration. Strangers started hugging one another.

There's a back escalator one can use to crash the state Democrats' party at the midtown Sheraton's ballroom, and some Danish politicos may or may not have used it.

Anna Ebbesen, a 28-year-old brunette from Copenhagen, who last year was the head of press for Denmark’s Social Liberal Party, said, “We’re here to get inspired." She pointed out that her 35-person group signed up in advance, though their tickets didn't work out.

American campaign tactics "are more advanced," said Ms. Ebbesen, who now works as a Web strategist. The Danish party crashers included members of Parliament and other Danish politics types, she said.

At 9:53, I spoke by phone with author Robert Caro from a party he was at in the Fifteen Central Park West home of former JFK aide Ted Sorensen. Mr. Caro said the party wasn't gleeful yet.

“I’ve seen too many early calls go the wrong way,” Mr. Caro said.

When asked about the party, Mr. Caro said “it’s an historic evening. Forty-three years ago, Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act and today an African-American may become president. It’s in the blink of an eye—the blink of history’s eye.”

On Thursday, The Observer’s Web site reported that the city’s most expensive listing, an $80 million, 5,276-square-foot, 14-foot-tall, 9.5-room penthouse at Fifteen Central Park West, had come off the market. But the death of a gargantuan Fifteen Central Park West listing always means a fresh one has sprouted.

According to two sources, an 18th-floor duplex bought this March for only $23.5 million, with about 5,870 square feet indoors and 1,112 square feet of terrace space, is quietly asking $75 million. It’s next door to the better-known duplex that a biotechnology venture capitalist reportedly put on the market this year for $90 million.  read more »

During a week that’s so colossally momentous, what else is there to do but waste time perusing high-end real estate brokers’ Web sites, browsing for newsworthy new listings?

On Monday, this reporter was looking at independent broker Joanna Cutler’s site, where her biography says she “can be found dining with Mariska Hargitay, Maria Bello, or Lisa Marie, hanging out with Naomi Campbell, Carol Alt or Jennifer Aniston.” The site says she owns homes in the Time Warner Center, One Beacon Court and 15 Central Park West; but it was at the Plaza where she made headlines, claiming in February to have been stuck in a garbage room for seven hours, bloodying her hands “trying to claw her way out.  read more »

Anxiety has slowly crept into the normally high-chinned little world of Manhattan luxury real estate, though that doesn’t mean the very rich trying to unload very expensive New York apartments are actually getting desperate to sell. But maybe desperation is around the corner.

Consider Ramesh Singh, an executive at the huge Swiss-based bank UBS, who now has two huge Park Avenue apartments on the market—both listed at enormous discounts.

He’s spent years as the global head of mortgage-backed securities, the financial instrument that has more or less strangled the economy. Last month, after serious mortgage-related losses, UBS agreed to a multibillion-dollar government bailout.  read more »

One of Manhattan real estate’s most famous divorcées has a mammoth new penthouse, though the sprawl happens to be less than one-third the size of her ex-husband’s record-setting mansion.

According to a deed filed late last month, Bella Sapir, the ex-wife of billionaire Tamir Sapir—and the mother of Alex Sapir, president of the eponymous family real estate organization—just closed on a $8,895,000 penthouse at the new Veneto on East 53rd Street.

The 4,511-square-foot sprawl (not counting 1,095 square feet of outdoor space) was originally considered two units on offering plans. There are two hefty terraces: One, 51.5 feet long, is off the gargantuan living room/dining area (an NBA basketball court is just 50 feet wide); the second, about 27-by-11, has doors leading to a TV room and to an L-shaped master bedroom.  read more »

Tonight, on a lower floor of the haute new mega-condo Fifteen Central Park West, in a three-bedroom, 3,444-square-foot apartment that deific Ted Sorensen and his wife Gillian bought last November for $10.75 million, people who are smarter than just about everyone currently alive in New York City will be gathering to privately celebrate tonight's election.

"I've spent my life writing books about political power," the godly 73-year-old biographer Robert Caro said earlier today, "and for me, there's no one on the face of the earth that I'd rather be watching an election night with than Ted Sorensen, with the exception, of course, of Lyndon Johnson.  read more »

Bravo chief Lauren Zalaznick helped nationalize obsessiveness over real estate consumption--or at least her New York Times Magazine cover story this weekend said so: "Zalaznick’s innovation was to make the actual narrative itself about people selling stuff, and buying it too, whether it’s clothing, as on 'Real Housewives,' or real estate, on shows like 'Flipping Out.'"

Either God really does exist or a clerk at the New York City Department of Finance's Office of the City Register has a divine sense of humor, because on Friday afternoon, just as that cover story was starting to get read, a two-year-old deed for Ms. Zalaznick's $3.25 million apartment was filed in city records. The co-op, at the huge Stewart House on East 10th Street, has seven rooms, four bedrooms, an oversized formal dining room, a "large dramatic formal reception gallery," and a south-facing terrace, according to an old listing.

Normally, real estate sales are filed with the city within a month or so of the actual deal, though sometimes there are oddities--like two weeks ago, for example, when a March 2006 deed for National Review president Thomas L. Rhodes' $8.3 million co-op at 930 Fifth Avenue was suddenly filed.  read more »

"Tiger has a brand-new lair," a huge New York Post cover story blared in March, "a $65 million estate in the Hamptons where he can send his chip shots flying into the ocean." That week, the listing agent for the 13,200-square-foot Colonial Revival mansion (there was also a 7,500-square-foot guesthouse and four-car garage) denied the Tiger Woods report to Newsday: "It is hilarious," she said. "I don’t know where this comes from." In that article, Post editor-in-chief Col Allen said, "We stand by our story."

Meanwhile, the golfer's representatives told Radar the report was "dead wrong." There was no correction from the Post.  read more »

Remember when Penthouse 40B at Fifteen Central Park West was such a gloriously shiny token of our breathtaking real estate bubble? A certain foreigner--maybe a London-based investor--signed a contract in 2005 for the 5,276-square-foot, 14-foot-tall, 9.5-room, four-bedroom penthouse, and closed at the end of this April for $21.5 million. He took out a $14.5 million mortgage with JPMorgan Chase that same day, records show, which means it only cost $7 million cash. And within a few weeks the sprawl was on the market with Brown Harris Stevens for $80 million, just about four times the price of the condo.

It was the most expensive residential listing in New York City.  read more »

Last October, a few months after the 81-year-old fashion designer turned real estate executive turned Showgirls producer Charles Evans died, his penthouse triplex at 895 Park Avenue went on the market for $29.5 million.

And it almost sold for the full asking price.

One year and three weeks later, after a second relatively excruciating near-sale, Mr. Evans’ 14-room, four-bedroom sprawl, already cut to $25 million at the end of May, is about to be cut again to $20 million, according to a source. As of this Tuesday, the listing on Stribling’s Web site—where floor plans show four fireplaces; four walk-in closets (plus a dressing room); two levels of massive terrace space; a master suite with its own bedroom-size study; one wet bar off the upstairs media room; and another bar off a downstairs gallery—had not yet reflected that price change.  read more »

Call up a posh uptown broker, the kind who actually rides to appointments in a chauffeured sedan, and ask how she’s coping with this financial trudge. She’s likely to pause thoughtfully, let out a polite but exasperated little sigh, and say that one can’t ever tell for sure what will happen, can one? Then comes a longer pause and she’ll tell you, with that slight Southern twang brokers all use, that it’s surely comforting there’s still one group of buyers willing to make awfully serious New York deals at this awfully uncertain time.

That group is not the massively wealthy; it’s the children of the massively wealthy.  read more »

You’d think that a broker with a $12 million listing would be slightly neurotic about selling it in this epically uneasy month, especially if that broker’s family happened to own the apartment. But Deborah Kern, a Corcoran broker who put her eight-room Majestic co-op on the market for $12 million last week, sounds calm.

“I’m not anxious,” she said Tuesday, reached at her office. “Honest to God, I’m not anxious.”

According to city records, she and her husband, James Kern, a former senior managing director at Bear Stearns, paid just $5.2 million in 2005 for the place, plus $160,000 for a maid’s room on the first floor of the twin-towered building.  read more »