It's magical, but not magic.

Given the massive profits that many early buyers at 15 Central Park West made flipping their units, it sometimes feels like no price is too high for an apartment in New York's newest pre-war building.

Well, it looks like steel magnate Leroy Schecter has finally learned how much is too much: $95 million.

Mr. Schecter just cut a whopping—or, at least, it would be whopping in any other building—$10 million from the ask on his 35th-story apartment, to a still-stratospheric $85 million, which would put it below the $88 million record price that Dmitri Rybolovlev paid for Sandy Weill's penthouse.

But can it sell? Besides the units in contract at One57, no sale has actually closed for anything approaching the price that Mr. Rybolovlev paid back in 2011, though there have been plenty of contenders—ranging from the laughable ($100 million for the penthouse at the '80s-errific CitySpire Center) to the slightly more realistic ($125 million for the triplex penthouse at the Pierre).

The unit is a combo—"the building's only post-construction combination unit," reads the listing—though it's still smaller—20 percent smaller—than Mr. Weill's old digs.

But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in views. Mr. Weill's unit was on the shorter tower—sorry, "the house"—which meant it had only (only!) views of the park. Mr. Schecter's apartment, on the other hand, is located in the main tower on Broadway, meaning the non-master bedrooms have Hudson River views in addition to the park views of the master bedroom, library, living and dining rooms.

The apartment also has, for some reason, two laundry rooms. (No word on what kind of views those have.)

Emily Beare at CORE has the listing. As Ms. Beare did not return a request for comment, we’re not sure what inspired the slight price decrease, but we doubt it indicates a great deal of flexibility. Although Mr. Schecter paid just $18.9 million for the two apartments, he walked away from a $48 million offer for the two unconnected units in 2010—an offer that seems entirely reasonable given that he had been asking $55 million back then.

In the meantime, the magnate is occupying himself with the overhaul of the Rothschild mansion, which he paid $25 million for last October. God knows what he’ll ask for that when he gets done.

Revealed as the owner of a 40th-floor apartment at 15 CPW.

The Observer has spent many an afternoon trying to puzzle out the clues in mysterious LLCs. That is, the LLCs that have clues—those that were not registered in Delaware approximately a month before the real estate purchase they were created to shield, named after the building that they are buying property in, and/or in the care of a huge midtown law firm.

But as real estate chronicler Michael Gross proves in a new Newsweek article, promising clues may well be red herrings. When Novgorod LLC purchased a nine-room spread on the 40th floor of 15 Central Park West in 2009, it was assumed that the buyer was one of the many rich Russians who had been sniffing around the building. Quite possibly a rich Russian with some intense personal or professional connection to the city in whose name he'd purchased a $37 million dollar condo.

Mr. Gross, who is finishing up a book on 15 CPW, reveals that the buyer wasn't a rich Russian at all, but rather an American: Bob Diamond, the Connecticut-born CEO of British bank Barclays. In 2009, Mr. Diamond had yet to be raked over the coals for his role in the Libor interest rate scandal (for which he would lose his job, though not his fortune), but he was being pilloried in the press for his excessive pay.

Not hard to see why Mr. Diamond would want to hide the fact that he was buying an extravagant spread at New York's most luxurious condo in the midst of the global financial crisis.

But as Mr. Gross notes, it is the fallout of this financial crisis that has made New York an even more attractive place for the world's wealthiest citizens to park their money. With much of that money belonging to the foreign elite, some of whom made their fortunes via less-than-honorable means, the luxury condo towers have started to displace the so-called "good" buildings lining the Gold Coast at the top of the city's real estate hierarchy. Chief among them (at least for now) is One57. As Gross writes, "its will-to-power penthouses are so high in the sky, they also promise invulnerability to the flight-capital types now pouring into New York to protect fortunes made on the lawless frontiers of emerging markets."

Indeed, while Mr. Diamond and a handful of other buyers at 15 CPW have managed to obscure their identities behind LLCs, the building's level of secrecy is nothing compared to One57, where hardly anyone knows anything about any of the buyers, except that they're fabulously wealthy. And that they probably wouldn't do very well in a co-op board interview.

kvelsey@observer.com

The condo is a grand 1,916 square feet and it's relatively far from the Hudson.

Will Hurricane Sandy have a negative impact on Manhattan's luxury real estate market? A brand new listing at 15 Central Park West doesn't think so. The listing for the two-bedroom, 2.5-bath condo went live today, asking what has now become de rigueur in that celebrated building: twice the price the current owner paid.

Yes, No. 16L, purchased the sponsor unit in 2008 by Kalawati Company LLC for $4.7 million is now asking $8.5 million.

"It has a beautiful open city view. It's just a beautiful apartment and apartments in this building rarely come on the market." said Sotheby's broker Hideko Horiguchi, who has the listing with her colleague Mika Sakamoto.

Marble, Miele, and best of all, electricity.

We asked if the owner had decided to list the apartment when the hurricane hit, but Ms. Horiguchi assured us that she and Ms. Sakamoto got the listing right before the storm, but couldn't put it into the system until now.

The Upper West Side looks more appealing than ever after its admirable weathering of Sandy. Unfortunately, refugees from Tribeca lofts won't be able to take up residence immediately in this condo: Ms. Horiguchi tells us that there's a tenant in place so it's either a long-term investment property or a short-term one for the buyer eager to move-in when the renters' lease is up.

Amazingly, the apartment is the cheapest unit in the building right now by $1.5 million. FaceMate founder Christina Bloom is asking $10 million for her two-bedroom on the third floor. And this unit boasts more than a view of the courtyard with its 16th-floor vantage point (unfortunately, not one of the park). It also ticks all the obligatory luxury boxes: generous walk-in and custom-built wall closet, an Italian marble bathroom with double vanity and soaking tub, plus a gourmet kitchen with Sub Zero and Miele.

kvelsey@observer.com

The $95 million view. (Halstead/NYT)

Puttin' on the Ritz. (Carlos Melia)

It's a little embarrassing, really. A day after 15 Central Park West announced its $95 million listing, 50 Central Park South had to go and announce that it also had a $95 million listing. And they're even on the same floor (the 35th). But we're sure that the owner at the Ritz-Carlton had been totally planning to list the apartment for, like, months now, so like, whatever 15 Central Park West.

Anyway, the big takeaway  is that there are now two $95 million apartments on the market, in addition to a $100 million apartment at CitySpire, not to mention the One57 penthouse that sold for somewhere north of $90 million—maybe $95 million!

Because this is the new reality of the trophy property market in Manhattan, as The New York Times, who first reported the listing, claims. Or at least, it is the old reality of really rich people who want to be even richer people and are hoping that slapping a $95 million price tag on their apartment will make it a $95 million apartment.

The owner of the duplex penthouse (it spans the 34th and 35th floors) is an anonymous ballroom dancer who loves the Argentine tango, The Times tells us. But certainly the owner—listed on the deed as Abcp LLC.—has another line of work? Like trying to flip houses? He bought the place for $19.95 million back in 2006 and even if he did "promptly put another $7 million into a complete renovation" after buying the condo, that still means he's looking to make a $68 million profit on the sale. The profit alone is more than the $50 million that Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks is asking for his swanky unit downstairs.

But we digress... the 5,078-square-foot apartment itself features a 42-foot-long ballroom with ebony-stained wide-plank oak floors, three wood-burning fireplaces and an additional 700-square-feet of private terraces. It is listed with Halstead broker Dianne Weston. Still, even with "heart-stopping views" and a "masterful architectural renovation exudes timeless sophistication," is it worth it?

You can ask. That doesn't mean you will get.

kvelsey@observer.com

The octagonal condo on the 73rd, 74th and 75th floors of the mixed-use midtown tower at 150 West 56th Street is certainly "one-of-a-kind," as the Prudential Douglas Elliman listing boasts, but the question remains whether it can best the prices claimed by the premiere units in newer, lovelier buildings. The listing was first reported by The New York Times.

At 12,500 per square foot, the condo is only slightly less expensive than the Weill penthouse (which came in at just over $13,000 per square foot).

"In the the last year, the rules have changed," said real estate appraisal guru Jonathan Miller when we reached him on the phone. "I'm not speaking of this specific apartment, but the idea of cracking the $100 million threshold is now tangible."

And while it's an unusual property, it lacks the polish, the prestige and building amenities of more recently built and renovated buildings like 15 Central Park West, the Plaza, the Ritz-Carlton or the Time Warner Center. Also, the CitySpire penthouse kind of looks like a villain's lair in an early 90s movie.

Still, Mr. Klar, president of the Klar Organization, is hopeful. “Art is what people are willing to pay for, and an apartment like this is like a piece of art,” Mr. Klar told The Times.

The six-bedroom, nine-bath home occupies the top three floors of the building, which tops out at 814 feet. Terraces—3,000-square-feet of them—wrap around the exterior of the apartment. They are said to be the highest in the city, but with enough width for only one person to walk on, they are not for the faint of heart or those with a fear of falling.

Mr. Klar bought the raw space used to craft the apartment for a mere $4.5 million back in 1993, according to The Times, and spent an equivalent amount designing the pad. Chilean-born interior designer Juan Pablo Molyneux spent the months designing a classical-style space with super-high end finishes—a look that did not, unfortunately, age as well as the Greek and Roman structures that it took its inspiration from.

The condo, listed with brokers Raphael DeNiro and Victoria Logvinsky, also comes with a guest suite on the 72nd floor, along with a "wine closet" that can store up to 1,000 bottles and a private internal elevator, in addition to the external elevator that services the building. (There's a mahogany staircase as well).

Mr. Klar told The Times that while he watched the Time Warner Center and 15 Central Park West rise from his window, he was not so impressed with their offerings.

“I am looking at that and I am saying, ‘They cannot go outside on the terrace and see the city of New York the way I do.'"

Any other Russian billionaires out there looking to buy an apartment for their daughter?

kvelsey@observer.com

Italian business bigwig Piofrancesco Borghetti, who serves as chairman of the board at Marbert Holding AG and a handful of other powerful companies, bought the spread for just $9.8 million in 2008, according to city records.

It seems he may be selling for more than just the chance to take advantage of a good market: The Real Deal has noted that he has been charged with crimes in Italy, including embezzling 19 million euros and making fraudulent bankruptcy claims. We guess he could use the money from the sale and, encouraged by his upstairs neighbors' ability to more than double their money with the sale of a 37th-floor 3-bedroom condo, Mr. Borghetti apparently saw no reason not to go for triple. He's angling for a little more than $10,000 a square foot (the apartment is a relatively diminutive 2,761-square feet), but he just might get it. One57 may be rising fast, but for the moment 15 CPW remains the brightest star in the sky.

"It's the only apartment available in the tower right now," said Brown Harris Stevens listing broker Paula Del Nunzio. "It has totally unencumbered East and West views, with three rooms over the park."

The living room faces East, overlooking the park, as does the 20-foot library and one of the bedrooms, which goes to the early riser in the family.

The master bedroom (tailored walk-in closets and dressing area, Calacatta marble-clad master bath) is perfect for the late sleeper, as it looks West over the Hudson River.

Ms. Del Nunzio noted that apartments in the C-line are "really gorgeous" and often fetch a premium, even by 15 CPW standards. And while she didn't want to be negative, she added that "some of the other corner apartments face into the interior, or other buildings."

With this listing coming on the heels of the $50 million listing at the Ritz-Carlton, we couldn't help but wonder if the luxury market would ever slow from the frenzied pace it's maintained since spring.

"It's impossible to predict the future," Ms. Del Nunzio said. "But if the past is any prologue, it seems that there is a certain niche of buyer that feels New York is a particularly good place to make a purchase."

kvelsey@observer.com

Nobody knows who'll live here and it's driving us all crazy. (Extell)

Remember when sales started at 15 Central Park West? And how the buyers were "supposed to be kept secret," but everyone was too excited to keep quiet and they gossiped like crazy and all the buyers turned out to be really famous, exciting celebrities like Denzel Washington and Sting? Wasn't that great? We were almost like best friends, us and 15 CPW, whispering late into the night together, swapping secrets.

One57, on the other-hand, is mysterious and distant and never tells us anything, huffs The New York Times in article about how different One57's approach to publicity is from the good natured and totally cool about everything 15 CPW.

In 15 CPW's case, the leaks turned out to be a brilliant marketing strategy, The Times claims (take a hint Extell). The Times speaks with Michael Gross, who is penning a book about 15 CPW and confirms their  suspicions about the awesomeness of 15 CPW's approach.

“There was a constant drip, drip, drip of information that made 15 seem like the most fascinating building in New York,” Mr. Gross said.

One57, on the other hands, is so weirdly reticent about divulging details that people, out of sheer boredom and frustration, have been forced to make up stories about the Qatari prime minister buying a $25o million block of apartments in the building.

Gary Barnett, can't you see what you and Extell are doing to us? Even after speaking out to say that the Qatari Prime Minister had definitely not bought anything in the building, you continued to torture us with riddles. Yes, the $90 penthouse was in contract and yes, the penthouse most recently listed for $115 million was also in contract, but the buyers were not from Asia or the Middle East.

“Neither is on the right continent,” Mr. Barnett told The Wall Street Journal when he shot down the Qatar rumor, “So they have another five guesses to go.”

Six months and 50 percent into sales and only one buyer—Richard Kringstein, the co-owner of outerwear company Herman Kay Company—has been disclosed, The Times marvels in mock-fascination before going a little mean girl on One57. Is it because there's actually something to hide?

Sure, sure, maybe it's a different market now than when 15 CPW went up, or maybe people don't like to brag about their really big purchases as much as they once did (although the most recent moves of the luxury market could hardly be called discreet), but maybe it's the fact that Mr. Barnett doesn't want anyone to know how many foreigners are buying into the tower.

"Some brokers murmur around town that Mr. Barnett may be trying to avoid revealing the number of foreign buyers at the building, because that might scare off other potential domestic buyers," The Times writes. Not that The Times believes that, but they just thought you should know what people are saying about you, One57.

And the one outed One57 buyer? He doesn't even care that people know he bought there, in fact, he told his friends and family that he was moving there with his wife. And why not? Confidentiality  “is not such a big deal,” he tells The Times.

Are you listening Mr. Barnett?

kvelsey@observer.com

The view from the fourth floor

With super high-end properties selling like hot cakes, Mitchell Julis and wife Linda clearly thought it was time to get into the action, putting their fourth-floor spread at 15 Central Park West on the market for $26 million.

And while their three-bedroom, 3.5-bath condo may not wow the broken-hearted buyers who missed out on the $52.5 million pad at 740 Park Avenue or the $40 million co-op at 2 East 70th Street, it could certainly be a nice consolation prize. Luxury buyers appear so desperate to fork over their cash these days, what won't they buy?

And who would be a better judge of when to buy and when to sell than Mr. Julis, the co-founder of Los Angeles-based hedge fund Canyon Capital Advisors?

The floorplan offers the only glimpse of the interior.

The apartment, listed with Mercedes Berk brokers Noel Berk and Liz Mercedes Berk, also comes with a seventh-floor studio with a kitchen and bath (a high-end version of the mother-in-law apartment?).

The couple bought the place for only $10.3 million in 2008, but that doesn't mean they might not be able to get more than twice as much now, given the prices that apartments at 15 CPW have been fetching of late. A certain $88 million sale notwithstanding, buyers have been doubling their money for some time now. But then, a 3-bedroom unit on the 15th floor priced at $35 million hasn't seen much action since it was listed at the end of last year.

Naturally, the condo offers luxury after luxury (although the secretive listing doesn't include any photos of said luxuries). There are large windows looking directly out onto Central Park, there is a "marble-clad," eat-in kitchen with double wall ovens and a commercial sized washer and dryer. There is a Central Park-facing master bedroom suite with a soaking tub and heated floors.

She's suing me for how much?

Elena Rybolovleva has an $88 million bee in her bonnet. Mrs. Rybolovleva has locked horns with her husband, Russian oligarch and fertilizer king Dmitry Rybolovev, in a bitter divorce battle, with his reported $9 billion at the center of the fracas. The international battle royale has spilled into New York, where Mrs. Rybolovleva has accused her husband of purchasing Sandy Weill’s prize $88 million condo at 15 Central Park West in an effort to divert funds in advance of the impending divorce.

The Observer spoke with David Newman, a partner at the law firm Day Pitney who is representing Mrs. Rybolovleva in the case. Encouraging us to refer to the unhappy couple as Mr. and Mrs. R. to avoid tongue twisting and Ruskie butchering, Mr. Newman launched into an animated and calculated attack against Mr. Rybolovlev and his (alleged) nefarious asset shuffling.

At the heart of the issue is a Swiss court order, mandating that Mr. Rybolovlev refrain from spending money acquired during the period of his marriage until the courts decide the fate of his considerable finances. Purchasing the apartment in New York was a flagrant violation of the order, Mr. Newman contended. “It’s almost as if Mr. R. has no concern about the law! Its almost he doesn’t care seem to care about the Swiss court order. It must be because he thinks that rich people have a different set of rules to live by,” Mr. Newman said emphatically.

Thus far, Mr. R.’s camp has been tight-lipped about the proceedings, though we did obtain the following statement from spokesperson Sergey Chernitsyn: “The divorce proceedings between the Rybolovlev spouses have been pending for several years. During this period, Mrs. Rybolovleva’s lawyers have filed numerous groundless complaints in several countries and jurisdictions without achieving any meaningful results. Most of the claims made in these suits as well as in the suit recently filed in New York are false and based on information Mrs. Rybolovleva knows to be incorrect.”

Mr. Newman, however, incredulously rebuffed the statement from Mr. Rybolovlev’s camp. “He’s just using the trust as a vehicle. The point is, he’s using it as a second step, to remove those assets and make sure that Mrs. R. needs even a longer arm to get the assets.”

A source from his office explained that the apartment was purchased by a trust in the name of Mr. Rybolovleva's daughter, Ekaterina Rybolovleva. The oligarch claims to be neither a trustee nor a beneficiary of the trust, and as such is not legally associated with the property. The trusts, the source claims, were established well before the divorce, and Mrs. Rybolovleva participated in their creation. Ekaterina does not intend to live in the apartment, and the property was purchased solely for investment purposes.

While it remains unclear exactly how the 22-year-old Ekaterina fits into the convoluted legal equation, Mr. Newman said one thing is clear: “I think she’s living the life of daddy’s girl, a very well-to-do daddy’s girl and she has a very nice lifestyle,” he said. While the daughter’s involvement “adds a little bit of sexiness,” Mr. Newman said, legally the straw-daughter machination is beside the point. “The bottom line is there is no doubt that he’s trying to leave no assets available to Mrs. R. Anything beyond that I can’t figure out,” Mr. Newman said.

The Observer has learned that the younger Ms. Rybolovleva is currently working to obtain her bachelor’s degree from Harvard and is working on global philanthropic projects, the details of which have not yet been announced.

Adding to the intrigue, Mr. Newman revealed that Mr. Rybolovlev is no stranger to 15 Central Park West. The oligarch and his soon-to-be-ex-wife actually looked in the building together in 2008 before all the marital unpleasantness began, he claims. “They looked at apartments in 15 CPW. They wanted to see the Weill apartment but it wasn’t available. They looked at one or two other apartments in that building, they looked in the Plaza, and other very-high-end buildings but ultimately, decided not to buy there but in Florida.” The home they settled on was not just any Florida mansion, but Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate, for which they paid $95 million. Mr. Newman is also representing Mrs. Rybolovev in an ongoing lawsuit regarding the ownership of that estate.

We contacted Brown Harris Stevens agent, Maria Torresy, who supposedly represented Mr. Rybolovlev on both the Palm Beach and the Central Park West purchases. “I never discuss my customers or my clients,” she said flatly. “So there’s nothing I can really do to help or add to this conversation.”

eknutsen@observer.com

Now's your turn to join the party. Let this 7-room unit, asking $31.5 million with Brown Harris Stevens' Kyle Blackmon, be a reminder to architects and homebuyers alike: You can have Venetian plaster and floor-to-ceiling windows, too.

SLIDESHOW: 15 Central Park West

realestate@observer.com