The mansion at 9 East 67th Street sold this January for $25 million. Even though you were its broker, the commission went to Richard Steinberg, who’d had the listing before you. You quarreled in the press over it; he called you a liar. Have you talked since?
Certainly I respect his work, and if there was business for us to do together, we would do it.
You just sold 99-year-old Bunny Mellon’s townhouse at 165 East 70th Street to Morgan Stanley chief John Mack and his wife for $13.5 million. Its entire first floor is a 12-car garage; she had used the house for storage. Did that make it a hard sell?
Eight offers in the first week on the market. It was not a hard sell. Eight real offers.
A couple like that probably could have spent a lot more on a house, but they ended up buying what was basically the Mellon family’s storage space. Is modesty in?
High-net-worth individuals right now all want to be low profile. … They do not want a high-profile purchase, and they’re looking for a reason to explain it.
Won’t that change?
For new money it will, yes—any new money, people who haven’t been burned yet.
mabelson@observer.com
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