The supertall Central Park Tower, the latest addition by Extell Development to Midtown Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row, had more recorded sales in October, including two full-floor aeries. But both of them, like other recent transactions in the new building, closed well below their asking price.
At Central Park Tower, at 217 West 57th Street, an apartment on the 109th floor sold for just under $48 million; it had been listed for $78.1 million. A similarly sized unit three floors above, with a $63 million price tag, was acquired for $40.8 million.
Both sales were among the month’s most expensive closings in New York City, though not the biggest. At the nearby limestone-clad 220 Central Park South, where resales go for a premium, an anonymous buyer paid $66 million for a duplex in the villa portion of the complex and a studio in the tower. The sale was roughly $15.6 million more than what the seller had paid in August 2020.
The high demand at 220 Central Park South — opposite the park near Columbus Circle and just outside Billionaires’ Row — largely boils down to location, said the appraiser Jonathan J. Miller of Miller Samuel. “Billionaires’ Row is a premiere location, but it’s not equivalent to directly on the park,” he said, adding that resales at other luxury skyscrapers along the row have not held their value. “Prices in general for Billionaires’ Row peaked in 2015-16, and since then, they have fallen 25 to 50 percent, depending on the building.”
This includes Extell’s skyscraper at 157 West 57th Street, a.k.a. One57, once the record-holder for the highest price paid for a single residence in the city, at nearly $100.5 million. It was surpassed by a $240-million sale at 220 Central Park South.
In other notable October closings, all on the Upper East Side, Clive Davis, the music industry impresario, sold one of his apartments; Suzy Welch, the wife of Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, bought a mansion; and the townhouse where Eleanor Roosevelt lived her final years sold. In estate sales, buyers were found for the apartments of the art collector and philanthropist Carol Feinberg and the book publisher Joan Bingham.
The biggest co-op closing, at $35 million, was an opulent triplex on Fifth Avenue sold by the real estate investor Rafael Nasser and his family, which made a fortune in textile manufacturing.
The month’s top sale, at $66 million, is a duplex on the 11th and 12th floors of the 18-story, 10-unit villa building at 220 Central Park South, which is adjacent to the main tower and directly facing the park.
The apartment, one of three duplexes in the villa building, encompasses 4,820 square feet inside and comes with a 1,685-square foot terrace. There are three bedrooms, four full bathrooms and a powder room. The studio apartment, which was part of the deal, is on the 19th floor of the tower and is 388 square feet.
The seller was identified only as CPS Realty Partners LLC, while the buyer made the transaction using the limited liability company 220 CPS V10.
The top closed apartments at 217 West 57th Street, a.k.a. Central Park Tower, which sold for $48 million and $40.8 million, are each 6,700 square feet, with five bedrooms, five full bathrooms and one half bath. The more expensive of the two apartments, taking up the 109th floor, also comes with a 318-square-foot terrace; it was bought through the limited liability company Simatai. The other purchase was made through Neal Investors Holdings LLC.
Other closings in the building included an apartment on the 36th floor that sold for nearly $12.3 million, below its $14.7 million asking price. It extends 2,649 square feet and contains three bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms. A two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom unit on the 54th floor, with 1,435 square feet, sold for around the asking price, at $8.7 million.
The Central Park Tower, about a block from the park between Seventh Avenue and Broadway, has been billed as the world’s tallest residential building, rising 1,550 feet. Designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the tower was completed in 2020. Sales were first recorded earlier this year.
The biggest co-op sale, a triplex acquired for $35 million, took place at the Rosario Candela-designed apartment house at 990 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of 80th Street. The sprawling penthouse, perched on the top three floors of the prewar limestone building, was fully renovated yet maintained many original architectural flourishes, like its hand-carved moldings, decorative ceilings and fireplaces.
The 14-room home has five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, plus a library and family room. There is also a wraparound terrace on the top floor, off the primary bedroom, that provides stunning treetop views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.
The triplex was on the market more than two years ago for $52 million. Mr. Nasser’s parents had reportedly bought it in the 1980s, then gifted it to their family.
Mr. Davis got $4.2 million for a duplex at 465 Park Avenue, a.k.a. the Ritz Tower, an Emery Roth-designed building at 57th Street where he owns other apartments.
He had combined two units, on the 13th and 14th floors, that he bought in 2015 for a total of $3.4 million. The revamped home was then put up for sale two years later for $7.8 million, and it has been on and off the market, with a few price cuts.
The co-op apartment, with around 2,800 square feet of space, has three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms.
Mr. Davis’s long, storied career in the music industry includes four Grammy Awards and entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer. Over the years, he has been an active player in New York’s real estate market, and in early 2021, paid $4.6 million for an apartment at 108 Leonard Street, the ornate, white-marble structure formerly known as the Clock Tower Building.
Ms. Welch paid almost $22.8 million for a 40-foot-wide house with a two-car garage and a sprawling rear garden on East 81st Street; the purchase was made through a trust.
The four-story structure has eight bedrooms, eight and a half bathrooms, a family and living room with soaring 21-foot ceilings, a wood-paneled library, mezzanine balcony, and four fireplaces. And according to the listing with Compass, the landscaped garden, 48 feet deep, is “big enough for a real soccer match.”
The home is currently configured with a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth level. It was sold by John and Bridget Macaskill.
Ms. Welch, an author and TV commentator, was married to Mr. Welch, the longtime chief executive of G.E., from 2004 until his death last year.
The former Roosevelt residence, nearby at 55 East 74th Street, was sold for $13.5 million by Meera Gandhi, a noted humanitarian and social activist who founded the nonprofit Giving Back Foundation. It had been on the market for three years, with an original asking price of just under $20 million.
The ornate limestone rowhouse, five stories high, had been home to the former first lady from 1959 until her death in 1962. Roosevelt reportedly lived on the bottom floors while her longtime friends and co-owners of the house, Edna and David Gurewitsch, were on the upper levels. Ms. Gurewitsch sold the home for $4.3 million to Ms. Gandhi and her former husband, Vikram Gandhi, in 2000, after which it underwent major renovations.
The neo-Renaissance-style house, part of the Upper East Side Historic District, was designed by the architects Buchman & Deisler and built in the late 1890s. It has around 8,500 square feet of interior space and features terraces on the roof and fifth floor and a rear garden. There are also six bedrooms, five full bathrooms and two half baths.
The buyer made the purchase through the limited liability company NYC UES 2021.
The estate of Ms. Feinberg, who died in 2019, sold her duplex penthouse at 895 Park Avenue, at 79th Street, for $24 million, about a year after it was first listed for $29.5 million. She and her husband, Maurice Feinberg, a wine and spirits importer who died in 2002, had bought the co-op from the composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia, in 1974.
The unit, on the 19th and 20th floors, encompasses roughly 6,300 square feet, and also includes around 700 square feet of outdoor space that provides panoramic cityscape and park views. It has six bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms and five wood-burning fireplaces.
The purchase was made through the Park Avenue PHA Trust.
A few blocks away, the estate of Ms. Bingham, who died in November 2020, sold her home at 39 East 79th Street, a three-bedroom, three-bathroom co-op on the 14th floor. The price was about $4.7 million, which was $1 million more than what Ms. Bingham had paid for it in 2007.
The new owners were listed as Thomas and Laura Hexner.
Ms. Bingham, who also had a home in Washington, had served as the executive editor of the Grove Atlantic publishing house, which during her nearly three-decade tenure had acquired and produced several prestigious titles, including Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss” and collections by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Kay Ryan.
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
