Enjoy the view, have a cigarette if you want.

Although Brooklyn may be the hottest place for the modern luxury seeker, Alberto Weisser was clever to buy in the Flatiron District. After all, we're not sure how well the C.E.O. of agribusiness giant Bunge Limited would have done in the locavore-obsessed borough.

Mr. Weisser, who is not likely to be shilling his livestock feed and edible oil at the Fort Greene farmer's market (alas!), has forked over $12.5 million for a penthouse condo at 260 Park Avenue South, according to city records.

The four-bedroom, 3.5-bath home has 12-foot ceilings, dark oak floors and a kitchen with calacatta countertops and islands, according to the listing held by Prudential Douglas Elliman brokers Melanie Lazenby and Dina Lewis.

The building has been having some issues of late, with its posh halls filled with the rancid odor of cigarette smoke and that little dust-up a few years over a huge concrete hole in the floor. But apparently such problems were not dire enough to stop Ray Vasson and Anjani Argarwal Vasson from asking $12.5 million for the condo they bought for $8.6 million in 2007, or from getting it.

Then again, high-end real estate is selling like hotcakes, so why not.

And besides, a penthouse always rises above a building's riffraff and petty problems, doesn't it? And when Mr. Weisser steps off the elevator into "this magnificent penthouse, wrapped in over 3,000 square-feet of private terrace space," we're sure that he'll forget all about unstable grain prices. Heck, he even has the legal right to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes if he wants.

kvelsey@observer.com