Zygi Stardust.

Just as The Observer was writing up the news of Zygi Wilf's brand spanking new $19 million condo, the Minnesota Vikings owner was sending emissaries down to the capitol in St. Paul to request millions in taxpayer dollars to help fund a new stadium for the abominable team. His timing was as bad as late-career Brett Favre.

Mr. Wilf has become quite possibly one of the most hated men in the land of 10,000 lakes, an impressive feat in a place where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. From ice-fishing outposts on Lake Minnetonka to the holiday crowds at the Mall of America, fingers are wagging in Mr. Wilf's direction.

Minnesotans have taken to various message boards and networking sites to express their frustration with Mr. Wilf's latest real estate deal (he made his money building developments in 39 states). #Wilfare has become a common topic on Twitter with fans furious that Mr. Wilf would demand taxpayers foot the bill for his expensive new stadium while simultaneously indulging in multimillion dollar real estate splurges on the other side of the country.

One Minnesotan offered friendly advice for Mr. Wilf on Twitter: "Pro Tip: Don't buy a $19 million home while begging the public for hundreds of millions in stadium subsidies." Fair enough. Others, however, were less civil. "What was the state contribution?" some asked sarcastically of the eight figure apartment purchase. The Observer even got a call from The Star-Tribune, as the local daily is hot on the news of Mr. Wilf's purchase—which, if it was not enough of an insult, appears to have been made all in cash. That could have paid for an entire locker room, with a goalpost or two thrown in.

Not to worry. Should the insults and threats become too intense, there is a certain four-bedroom hideaway high above Park Avenue that Mr. Wilf could escape to.

Take a tour of Zygi Wilf's $19M palatial pad [PICTURES]>>>

eknutsen@observer.com

Zygi Wilf

Although the Vikings may be the consummate heartbreak team, their owner, Zygi Wilf seem to be doing just fine for himself.  The real estate developer and his wife, Audrey, have just purchased a New York apartment, paying no less than $19 million for the place.

The Wilfs new four-bedroom, 4.5-bath spread comes just as the winter months are settling in over the Midwest. If their place feels a bit drafty, however, they have a working fireplace to warm it up. The Wilfs have ascended to their own private Valhalla, a full-floor co-op on the penultimate floor of 778 Park, where the terraces are as expansive as Asgard. Mr. Wilf knows a thing or two about apartments already, having built thousands of them in 39 states through his Garden Homes company.

According to a listing from Warburg broker Robert Schulman, "The master bedroom and marble master bath provide a quiet Zen-like retreat," perfect for meditating over that disastrous mid-season trade of Randy Moss last year. With three guest bedrooms, the Wilfs can surely have Adrian Peterson stay with them during his convalescence! Featuring park views and 12-foot ceilings the home is the opposite of Brett Favre—which is to say far from an overpriced  disappointment.

The home was originally listed for $24.5 million in 2009 by Irving and Judith  Shafran, who recently bought an apartment from the Sulzberger family on Central Park West for $10.25 million. The building, the redbrick sibling to storied 740 Park, was home to such titans as Brooke Astor and William F. Buckley.

Take a tour of Zygi Wilf’s $19M palatial pad [PICTURES]>>>

eknutsen@observer.com

Irving and Judith Shafran purchased the nine-room, full-floor spread for $6 million in 2000, when Gloria Gurney swapped it for the smaller penthouse for $4.2 million. Mr. Shafran is a matrimonial attorney and Ms. Shafran is a book editor who was once married to the head of the Henry Schein Company, one of the nation's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers. They put their home on the market for $24.5 million in December 2009, exactly one year and one week after Bernard Madoff was arrested by the FBI.

The couple had invested with the notorious Ponzi schemer, as SEC documents or a cursory Google search reveal. Listing agent Robert Shulman of Warburg said he was unaware of the Madoff matter. "I have no knowledge of that, I was simply asked to sell their apartment," he told The Observer, adding, "They're very private people."

The four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath home took three price cuts since coming on the market, before settling at $19.5 million, and the prospective buyers are said to be paying close to that. Not a bad investment, then. "It's small, but only relative to everything else in 778 Park," a broker who has sold units in the building said. "But it's in great condition, which is rare for one of these buildings, and it has fabulous views and terraces."

The nest needed a lot of work when the Shafrans moved in, according to Mr. Shulman, but they hired Mariette Himes Gomez to decorate, restoring Candela's grand flourishes, such as the mahogany-panelled library and a dramatic rotunda-like foyer. There is a small roost on the 19th floor, as well, which Mr. Shulman bills as an airy office or gym, as well as a total of five terraces. Due to summer work rules, the job took two years.

What really sets the place apart is its perch. "I think in Mr. Candela's architectural wisdom, he made the smaller setback floors at the top of his buildings, they're a gem, they have such light and views," Mr. Shulman said. "You can't find it in most buildings on Park, and even the new buildings in the city, the mix of light and architecture. And that's what's selling right now, light and air and views."

One small issue remains: getting the buyer by the board. As The Observer reported last month, the guardians at 778, like so many co-op boards around the city, have tightened their standards, which caused at least one buyer of the famed Astor duplex to be turned down. With everything the Shafrans have been through, may the board be lenient.

Read past Manhattan Transfers here. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

It took two years and two staggering price cuts, from $46 million to $24.5 million, before Swiss currency speculator Daniel Forcart came around in December and signed a contract for the duplex. The price was $19.9 million.

Pretty much everywhere else in the world, this deal would have closed by now. But not in the world of New York City co-operatives. The board balked for reasons that remain unclear, whether because Mr. Forcart did not have the proper social credentials or the right price. It is impossible to know, because, like all other co-op boards, the one at 778 Park need not disclose its reasons for rejection. This, along with a handful of other nasty turns at buildings around the city, has brokers grumbling that co-ops are more intrusive and cockier than ever.

"It's an antiquated system not suited to modern life in a cosmopolitan city," Douglas Elliman's Raphael De Niro complained over coffee on Hudson Street recently.

During the real estate boom, condos colonized the city. Glassy spires shot up everywhere from Harlem to Brighton Beach, and dour old hotels were spruced up in bare-knuckled conversions (think the Plaza and the Stanhope). Even with tens of thousands of new apartments in the city, the buyable housing stock shifted only about 10 percent, from four co-op units for every condo to a ratio of three to one. With white flight running in reverse, yuppies and BroBos, along with their fashionably enlarging broods, swept across the boroughs in search of permanent housing. Thanks to all the new condos, it became easier than ever to avoid the onerous boards and their anvil application packages. And, best of all, those probing, embarrassing interviews.

As a result, some co-op boards, growing jealous of their chintzy brethren across the park or downtown, loosened their collars. New neighbors, ones who not so long ago would have been seen as "those people," who would have been lucky to be shown the apartment, let alone get an interview, found themselves with entree to some of the city's nicer buildings. This may not have been the case at the tippy-top, but brokers certainly say there was a relaxation of standards, not least because there was just so much money floating around. If letting some riffraff in meant your home was worth 10 times what you bought it for a decade ago, why not!

Then the music stopped, the panic set in, and this rarefied world teetered on the brink of collapse. Many of the city's co-op boards became stricter than ever before, requiring bigger down payments, more escrow and higher renovation fees. Picky, picky, picky. "Many of these buildings require a certain lifestyle, and you just couldn't have people sneaking their art and antiques out the service door just to afford the maintenance," said Mary Ellen Cashman of Stribling.

Yet there was also a countervailing force. As the fortunes, monetary and otherwise, of those in the coveted prewars continued to dwindle, some had no choice but to try and liquidate the homes they had worked so hard to get into. Many boards would never have allowed such things, damaging as a fire sale would be to their home values. With the power to set prices in their buildings, and the ability to reject at will, few boards thought twice about turning down buyers deemed to be paying too little, even as the sellers squirmed.

As this anxiety grew, there were also cases where boards relaxed their standards. After all, for a time in 2008 and 2009, it looked like the sky might never stop falling. Sure, boards were still fussy as ever regarding financial credentials--you've got only 10 times the price in liquid assets?--but the "panache" of the buyer, as one broker put it, was less relevant for once.

"Certain buildings are nervous, certain people were desperate," said A. Laurance Kaiser IV of Key Ventures. "And once those people get on the board, they're the worst of all! 'It's my candy store, and you can't have any of it.' The hypocrisy of it all."

And there is the rub. Now that the economy has begun to recover, and buyers are rushing the market once again, boards feel less desperate. They feel empowered--downright vicious, even. They can play a little catch and release, if the fish is not the perfect whopper. This, combined with the fact that co-ops have yet to loosen their still-spooked, post-Lehman financial rigor, means it is becoming more difficult than many brokers can remember to get their buyers past boards.

And it is not just the aerie likes of the Astor duplex. Consider the two brothers from an impeccable family, both recent London School of Economics grads. They had taken to a quirky penthouse duplex a block from the High Line in West Chelsea and gone to contract in December for $3 million, just over the asking price. Even though it was an all-cash offer, the buyers were never interviewed, and it took until April for the board to get around to telling them they would not be getting one.

It was the first time the buyers' broker had a client turned down in seven years--until it happened again later that week. "These are two very clean-cut, together young men, and if the board had seen that, I'm sure it would have changed their mind," the broker said. "Instead, all they saw was the application. All they saw was two 20-something guys who wanted to buy a penthouse in Chelsea and party all the time."

Yet for all the complaining New Yorkers do about co-op boards, this power grab could be their death rattle. Two bills are in the works at the City Council that would greatly curtail their authority. Intro 188, the "Fair Cooperative Procedure Law," which seeks to regulate the application process and require a yay-or-nay decision within 45 days, has members and representatives of the all-volunteer army up in arms.

"I have heard boards say that they don't have enough time to review the package and meet the buyers and deal with all of the building issues and still work their day jobs and spend time with their families, so they are just going to require that the brokers make certain that the buyers are qualified," Stuart Saft, president of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, wrote in an email. "It will be very interesting to see this play itself out. The boards seem to think that is the least the brokers should do considering that they are getting a $150,000 commission on $2,500,000 apartments." (And not only work and family, but those summers in the Hamptons and the holidays throughout!)

The Real Estate Board of New York, under pressure from its large broker membership, has recently flipped on the legislation. "There is the issue of the lack of a response, and I don't know if it's a big issue that happens very often, but if you get enough brokers together, it starts to sound like it," said Michael Slattery, senior vice president at the board. "If you've provided the information and gone through the interview, there is a sense you should be told up or down."

The board's support could finally push the bill, which has been kicking around the Council for a few years, out into the open for some debate--though it is not clear whether it would pass, and there is still a good deal of work to be done on it. As the bill's sponsor, Lew Fidler of Brooklyn, put it, "The bill needs to be tightened up in some areas and loosened in others."

The legislation that is far more controversial, and has only mixed support in the real estate community, is the "Fair and Prompt Co-op Disclosure Law," Intro 326. It requires co-ops to do the unthinkable: provide a written response outlining a board rejection.

"Does every corporation have to do this?" Corcoran broker Eileen Roberts said. "I would be in favor of that only if every business had to disclose every decision it made. Why should a housing corporation be treated any different?"

The bill surfaced before, in 2006, but never got very far amid widespread opposition. It has been taken up now by Brownstone Belt City Councilman Brad Lander, after he was notified by a cadre of civil rights groups. They argue that discrimination is still rampant in the city's co-ops. By forcing boards to spell out their decision, Mr. Lander hopes they might think more deeply about why they are rejecting a prospective neighbor. "It's a very simple bill," Mr. Lander said. "We're not changing the standards. It is still illegal to discriminate--just now you would have to discriminate and lie if you wanted to do it." He acknowledged that he only has the support of "a large group of civil rights groups" and a smattering of boards. "But I think they can be very persuasive on this issue."

Still, what if it were not about equal rights but really all part of some grand conspiracy by the brokers, to disembowel the co-op system simply so they can sell more apartments and make more money?

"It would make a huge difference," Mr. De Niro, the Douglas Elliman broker, said. "First, they wouldn't be able to turn down so many deals. And it would provide more information on what to put in front of them and what not to. You assume you have a slam dunk, and the next thing you know, everyone's wasted six months of their lives."

Some brokers blame their colleagues and not the boards. "Only a dodo would show everyone every single apartment," Mr. Kaiser, one of the city's most veteran co-op brokers, said. "You have to know where to take your client." Another broker said that a "silly bill" is not going to make anyone a better broker.

Others are ambivalent, so long as the bill does not hurt the cachet of the co-ops themselves. "I tell everyone we should embrace the co-op system, love it," Warburg's Richard Steinberg said. "It is the one thing, more than any other, that saved us from turning into Miami, because there were far fewer speculators."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Consider two long-awaited mega deals at 778 Park Avenue, where the discounts turned out to be more spectacular than the apartments. The Buckley maisonnette, originally listed for $24.5 million, went for $8.75 million. Likewise, Brooke Astor's apartment, listed for $46 million, just went into contract for less than $20 million.

Today, The Wall Street Journal asks what gives, and presents one theory being passed around like bacon-wrapped lobster on the industry's holiday party circuit. The fault may not be in our stars, some are whispering, but in brokers' failure to price apartments properly.

"If you screw up prices," Douglas Elliman's Dolly Lenz told The Jourmal, "the sense of urgency is blown." The theory goes that when brokers list apartments with dizzyingly high prices, not only are they forced to drop the price to a more reasonable level, but because the apartment has then been sitting on the market for a while it's already lost some of its cache.

Of course, it's been a little tricky to price an apartment these last couple years. Surely no one during the cork-popping days of spring 2008 could have anticipated how quickly the champagne was about to turn to ginger ale. Who can blame a broker for trying?

lkusisto@observer.com | @LauraKusisto

Astor cherished the 15th-floor duplex in one of the city's most coveted co-ops--but then who wouldn't love six terraces and five wood-burning fireplaces? Following her death in 2007, the estate, headed by her son, Anthony Marshall, listed the spread for a princely $46 million in May of the following year. The price fell from the sky slowly, and not always gracefully. It was chopped to $34 million in 2009, then to $29 million. Most recently it was asking $24.5 million, barely half the original ask.

Now Astor's estate has accepted an offer in the high-teens, reports the New York Post.  

Hold on, though, because 778's famously picky co-op board could still reject the low-ball offer. Moreover, the estate is reportedly hoping something better will come along. Mr. Marshall is still heavily steeped in legal bills over accusations that he stole something in the order of $60 million from his mother during her lifetime.

Recently, the coveted Buckley maisonette at 778 Park sold to a Rockefeller heir. The last asking price on the Buckley place was $10 million, down from $12 million. StreetEasy now shows the price as $8.75 million, yet another steep discount

It seems even blue bloods are bargain-hunting these days.

Would it have been one of the biggests sales of the year? Find out! >>

lkusisto@observer.com

The apartment does not appear to have been listed and the seller appears only as the Park 1991 Trust. Mr. Winter is the scion of the Winter Organization, the real estate development firm where his father's chairman.

cmalle@observer.com

It took two years for the idealistic price to approach reality. The 13-room ground floor unit of the Candela-designed building, where the late Brooke Astor's apartment upstairs also lingers on the market (price sliced, incidentally, from $46 million to $24.9 million), was relisted after a recession-weary market hiatus, by Brown Harris Stevens mavens Paula del Nunzio and John Burger for $12 million, a discount of over 50%. Now, the Brown Harris Stevens' listing reveals yet another price cut to a bargain $10 million. Clearly the cost had become prohibitive for potential buyers!

The 5,000 square foot home which boasts its own address, 73 East 73rd Street, is famous for its red library, Mr. Buckley's office left as is, an 18 foot long marble foyer and the legions of political, intellectual and cultural elites who dined and wined with high-society conservatism's host Mr. Buckley and wife, Pat.

Something about 778 Park Avenue and provenance seems to equal price cuts, or perhaps it's simply a case of over-zealous preliminary pricing. The building's ground floor maisonette, which also boasts its own private, and symmetrical, address--73 East 73rd Street--entertained legions of New York City's elite as the headquarters for high-society conservatism with the home's hosts. As Ms. Del Nunzio told The New York Times in March, “This is the place where all those conversations and dinners with statesmen and political figures, not to mention film and television stars, with a quiet family dinner thrown in here and there, happened. This is a rare opportunity to acquire a piece of New York’s intellectual history.”

-cmalle@observer.com