Reports Grub Street:

McNally vacated the apartment in 2002 in order to move into a West Village townhouse he had purchased two years prior. He turned it over to his then-17-year-old son Harry, who went to college the next year and returned in 2005. That year, Thompson Realty got permission from the New York Civil Court to take the apartment back from the elder McNally on the basis that it was no longer his primary residence.

Rent-stabilized West Village apartments are such a hassle. This is why we don't bother.