Does someone have big plans for these buildings?

Why buy just one townhouse when you can buy two? The new owner of 153-155 East 78th Street certainly thought so. But what does he or she plan to do with two houses? Could the new owner have plans besides renovating the space into a huge single-family mansion?

The listing, held by Corcoran broker Anne Snee, helpfully suggested that the new owner might like to make the two townhouses, which are both single-family dwellings with restricted ground-floor retail, into a 25-foot-wide mansion. While such a space would no doubt be magnificent, and the home appears to be in excellent shape from the listing photos, it doesn't take a fool to see that site would also make a magnificent site for a housing development.

Located just off Lexington Avenue, the twin houses are about a block outside of the Upper East Side historic district, and together the 47-foot-tall buildings each have about 11,500-square feet of unused air rights. The listing helpfully points this out, along with the fact that the c1-8x zoning allows the ground floor to be built up to a depth of 95 feet.

We called Ms. Snee to see if she had any information about the plans of the mysterious buyer—Spruce 317 West 77th Street—who bought the buildings for $12.2 million, according to city records. The purchase price was generous considering that owners Pamela Usdan (No. 153) and Jon A. Turner (No. 155) only wanted $11.9 million.

"They're lovely buildings," said Ms. Snee, who told us that she had also sold one of the homes some 30 years before. "As for the buyer, I can't really comment on what he's going to do."

Unfortunately, the buyers were not interested in speaking with The Observer about their plans for the site. The LLC is registered to Spruce Capital Partners LLC, who have taken out $15 million and $30 million mortgages on the properties, according to city records.

Not that the owners are necessarily planning anything on the scale of the Toll Brothers tower that will level two townhouses in Carnegie Hill. They might just be looking to flip the place post-renovation. As might be expected, the LLC owned, until recently, a townhouse at 317 West 77th Street that it bought for $1.8 million in 2004. After a makeover from architect Guerin Glass, they sold the space for $11.1 million in March (a healthy profit even if they'd been trying for $13.7 million).

The question is whether an awe-worthy renovation could even net even twice the price the new owners paid, especially considering the fact that the townhouse is east of Lexington.

kvelsey@observer.com

Mr. Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, Tyco's former chief financial officer, are now standing trial at the State Supreme Court in Manhattan for allegedly looting the $36 billion manufacturing conglomerate of $170 million, plus illegally profiting from $430 million in stock sales after artificially inflating the company's value; and while the prosecutors attempt to show how the two indicted executives found profligate ways to spend Tyco shareholders' money, earning it back through the sale of Mr. Kozlowski's executive residence is proving a harder task.

In March 2000, according to Mr. Kozlowski's attorney, Stephen Kaufman, Tyco purchased the apartment at 950 Fifth Avenue, which was owned by financier Stephen Schwarzman (who, in turn, paid a then-record $37 million for his triplex penthouse at 740 Park Avenue). Mr. Kaufman said the apartment is an asset of Tyco, and because the board at 950 Fifth Avenue didn't allow corporate ownership, the shares in the co-op were listed in Mr. Kozlowski's name. His high-profile neighbors in the limestone co-op, on Fifth Avenue and 76th Street, include Daily News owner and real-estate mogul Mort Zuckerman and Jonathan Tisch, chairman of NYC and Company and chief executive of Loews Hotels.

The 4,500-square-foot apartment is represented by a quartet of brokers from Brown Harris Stevens, including Elizabeth Sample, Jean Meisel, Amy Katcher and Brenda Powers.

Ms. Sample declined to comment on the recent price drop of more than 10 percent to $24.99 million, and her partners didn't return calls for comment.

"They're ludicrous for asking that kind of price," sniped one broker from a competing brokerage who is familiar with the property. "It's like two floors of a townhouse. Anyone with a large art collection can't get their paintings in there. And you have to walk through the dining room to get to the kitchen, so I wouldn't say it has an ideal layout, either. It's more like a $15 million apartment."

Mr. Kaufman said his client retains no rights to the apartment, and proceeds from any pending sale would go to Tyco.

"The apartment is an asset of Tyco. It always was, and is, an asset of Tyco. And it is carried on the books as such, as an asset of the company," he said. "The furnishings will go to Tyco, and some, but not all, of the artwork. The personal artwork belongs to him."

A spokeswoman for Tyco declined to comment on the ownership or pending sale of the 11-room duplex.

"Since there is ongoing litigation, at this point we cannot confirm details concerning the apartment's ownership," Tyco spokeswoman Gwen Fisher said.

With the reduced asking price, Tyco is hoping to unload one of the most envied-and detested-baubles of executive greed to come out of the latest round of corporate scandals, including Martha Stewart's ImClone stock sale and the trial of John Rigas and his two sons, who are charged with illegally acquiring $2.3 billion in stock from their company, Adelphia Communications, which began on March 1. The Tyco apartment made headlines last year when the public learned of its ornate decorations, including the infamous $6,000 shower curtain and the $15,000 umbrella stand that Mr. Kozlowski purchased, along with his fine-art collection, which includes a $3.95 million Monet and a $4.7 million Renoir.

On Feb. 25, Mr. Swartz, 43, told the jury in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that his boss, Mr. Kozlowski, 57, had the board of directors' permission to spend $200 million annually on corporate acquisitions.

"He [Mr. Kozlowski] did have authority to make acquisitions of businesses and capital expenditures," Mr. Swartz said on the witness stand.

These "acquisitions" by Mr. Kozlowski included the $18 million duplex at 950 Fifth Avenue, which was finished with a $13 million decorating job; homes in Boca Raton, Fla.; jewelry from Harry Winston and Tiffany's; and, most infamously, a $1 million birthday party in Sardinia thrown for his wife, which featured a private concert by Jimmy Buffett (who came for just $250,000) and an intricate ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David that seemed to urinate Stolichnaya vodka while toga-clad guests danced around.

Mr. Kozlowski's finance executive was no penny-pincher himself. Mr. Swartz, who left Tyco with a $50 million severance package in September 2003, is also being tried on charges that he used the Bermuda- and New Hampshire–based company as his personal piggy bank.

In May 2000, he reportedly used Tyco funds to purchase a 5,188-square-foot duplex at 30 East 85th Street for $7.7 million, and then promptly listed the place for $12.5 million in September of that year. In November 2003, he sold the 28th-floor duplex with four exposures for $15.9 million to former Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola (Mr. Mottola's four-floor condo at 9 East 64th Street traded for close to $20 million in December 2003)-but because the Manhattan district attorney froze Mr. Swartz's assets, he hasn't been able to gain access to the money from the sale. Testimony from the trial also showed that Tyco paid private-school tuition for Mr. Swartz's three children.

But while the price drop at 950 Fifth Avenue may help generate interest in the 11th-floor duplex among well-heeled buyers, Mr. Kozlowski has more to worry about than any real-estate troubles. If convicted on the 35 counts of grand larceny, enterprise corruption, violations of state business law and falsification of business records, Mr. Kozlowski and Mr. Swartz face up to 30 years in prison.

RECENT TRANSACTIONS IN THE REAL ESTATE MARKET

Upper East Side

1 55 East 76th Street

Two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $699,000. Selling: $699,000.

Maintenance: $1,079; 58 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: four months.

QUEEN ANNE'S PLACE For the past 30 years, a gentleman occupied this two-bedroom co-op in the Queen Anne building between Lexington and Third avenues, where he amassed a collection of fine-art books. In fact, he was one of the first residents to move into the building, which dates to 1958. But last year, well over the age of 90, he passed away, and his estate had to sell off his longtime Upper East Side home (though his art-book collection was generously donated to the New York Public Library). When the news broke that the apartment was on the market, a cascade of eager young buyers washed over the place, and a doctor and his wife snatched the apartment just as the real-estate market was heating up at the end of last year. "They were absolutely ready to buy; the timing was just as the market was beginning to turn," said broker Anne Snee of the Corcoran Group, who had an exclusive on the place. Ms. Snee noted that a similar apartment in the building recently listed for $200,000 more, making the family's purchase a steal by Manhattan's exuberant real-estate standards. The clan (they have two children) plan a renovation to the 1,300-square-foot spread and will now enjoy the apartment's fine details, which include hardwood floors, a windowed kitchen, walk-in closets and northern exposures. "Their children are young now, but the many private schools in the neighborhood are a plus," Ms. Snee said.

Soho

93 Mercer Street

Three-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $1.5 million. Selling: $1.295 million.

Maintenance: $606; 45 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: seven weeks.

ARRANGERS ON A TRAIN The sellers of this Soho loft, a cancer doctor and his nutritionist wife, met a broker by chance on a train and began chatting about their plans to move to the East Village. The broker promptly put them in touch with Mary Anne Fusco, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, who sold their spacious loft, between Broome and Spring streets. "My colleague met the sellers on the train and got the listing," Ms. Fusco said. "The seller was interested in purchasing a space with a garden that she found in the East Village. She had a miniature Schnauzer and wanted a ground-floor apartment with a garden." While the couple found an unlikely slice of bucolic bliss in the East Village, the buyers, a finance executive and her photographer husband, scored their prime 2,200-square-foot loft with Soho staples like a stainless-steel kitchen and private elevator that opens onto the second-floor apartment. Mark Schoenfeld at the Corcoran Group represented the buyers.

Tribeca

124 Hudson Street

Four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom condo.

Asking: $3.25 million.

Selling: $3.2 million.

Time on the market: three weeks.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN While real-estate developers lament what they perceive as the city's draconian enforcement of building specifications in landmarked districts, some enterprising developers have built new properties, including this three-year-old loft development in Tribeca, that cleverly mirror their more historic counterparts while offering 21st-century amenities. "This is an interesting building. It was the first building built in Tribeca that subscribes to landmark specifications," said Leonard Steinberg of Douglas Elliman, who sold this 3,170-square-foot loft along with fellow Elliman broker Hervé Senequier. "The lobby has a fireplace and a lounge area. It's like walking into an Ian Schrager hotel. This building is about the whole environment, not just the apartment." But the apartment's stature is no less august. And it must have been hard for the sellers, a couple with two children, to relocate their family to Europe when the Wall Street husband got transferred. The buyers, a manufacturing entrepreneur and his wife, were relocating from New Jersey. But unlike the sellers, they weren't leaving their former abodes behind; they just added the Tribeca loft to their portfolio of homes, which includes a summer spread in the Hamptons as well as their Garden State refuge. Judith Karnas of Douglas Elliman represented the buyers. "They wanted to be in a cool area, especially Tribeca. The J.F.K. Jr. bubble was very attractive to them," Mr. Steinberg said of this sixth-floor loft, which has a stainless steel kitchen, security system and open northern exposures with views of the Empire State Building.

In late June, Mr. Lewis, 45, sold his co-op at 140 Thompson Street, which last listed for $1.25 million, a source familiar with the deal told The Observer . Through a spokesperson, the media-shy Mr. Lewis declined to comment, as did the Corcoran Group broker who handled the sale.

Mr. Lewis' 1,600-square-foot apartment was modest by Hollywood's Soho standards, with two bedrooms and an open kitchen. But the price is right-with a maintenance tag of just $1,200 a month-and the place was said to be in exquisite condition.

In the upcoming Gangs , which drew raves at the Cannes Film Festival this June when Mr. Scorsese screened a 20-minute trailer, Mr. Lewis will star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. He plays Bill the Butcher, the gang ruler of the "Five Fingers," as the lower Manhattan slums not far from his Thompson Street digs were once called.

Dune Road Construction a Shore Thing for Rudin

Environmental concerns may have convinced the Southampton Town Board to enact a five-month moratorium on Atlantic coastline construction last week, but commercial real-estate magnate Bill Rudin will probably get an exemption from the clampdown, according to town officials sympathetic to property owners' rights.

The Southampton Town Board voted 3-2-Democrats for, Republicans against-to enact the moratorium on oceanfront construction, which went into effect July 17. Mr. Rudin, who owns a beachfront house on Dune Road in Bridgehampton and is in the process of filing a permit for construction, spoke out against the moratorium at the hearing, but, according to a report in the East Hampton Star , was assured later by committee members that he would likely be granted an exemption from the building ban.

"I just had a conversation with Mr. Rudin's attorney, and it appears he is exempt," board member Dennis Suskind told The Observer .

In 1997, Mr. Rudin sued the town for the right to erect a large series of shore-hardening devices to protect his shoreline from erosion. The town settled, letting him go ahead with the project. But they were such an eyesore to beach-roamers that the town commissioned a study to examine the effects that the devices were having on the beach. The study concluded that devices like Mr. Rudin's were in some cases narrowing the shoreline and in others eroding the sand foundations of neighboring houses-leading to last week's moratorium hearing.

Things there got contentious. Democratic Council member Carolyn Zenk, a Hampton Bays environmental attorney, charged Mr. Rudin with being the individual most directly responsible for the enactment of the ban in the first place.

"I said to Mr. Rudin, 'I want to thank you very much, because you are single-handedly the individual most responsible for bringing about the coastal moratorium you're protesting today."

Mr. Suskind told The Observer that he thought Ms. Zenk's comments were out of line, but Ms. Zenk countered that "there is a time for righteous indignation, and this is it. I don't care to apologize to Mr. Rudin."

Regarding the issue at hand, however-namely Mr. Rudin's exemption for construction on his Dune Road house-Ms. Zenk said she would weigh his case on its merits.

"As much as I rebuke him, I'm going to consider his case on the merits," she said. "If it doesn't do any good to include him in the moratorium, I would let him out. But if it looks like he should be kept in the moratorium because something he's building should be scaled down, I would do that as well."

Mr. Rudin, who is waiting out the storm at his other Bridgehampton residence on Ocean Road, declined comment through a spokesperson.

Mr. Suskind said that the moratorium provides exemptions for property owners who have already begun wading through approvals from various town agencies for their beachfront construction.

"It's a question of fairness," Mr. Suskind said. "If you've spent four years working on something-if you're rounding third and about to step on home, and now we say you have to wait five months-that's just not fair."

Upper East Side

360 East 88th Street (the Leighton House) Two-and-a-half-bedroom, three-bathroom condo. Asking: $900,000. Selling: $852,500. Charges: $870. Taxes: $959. Time on the market: two weeks.

SECOND CAREER FOR GRANDMA The buyers of this condo, both in their early 40's, are a pretty high-powered couple: He's an attending physician and assistant professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center, and she's vice president and corporate council of a large city bank. So when they got the news that a child was on the way, they hired a part-time nanny and started looking for bigger digs. They found a good building-the Leighton House, at First Avenue, which has a reputation for being family-friendly, with the doormen hosting Halloween and Christmas parties for the kids every year. Then the expectant mom's own mother, in retirement in Florida, piped up; she was longing to return to the city. So they struck a deal, and Grandma's coming up to help out the nanny. She'll be living in a one-bedroom apartment that the couple bought eight floors down in the Leighton House from the 1,500-square-foot, two-and-a-half-bedroom place they're getting for themselves and the baby. "In the world today, people love a full-time nanny," said their sales agent, Renée Bross of Ashforth Warburg. "But there's nothing like having a parent in the building … and they all have their privacy."

205 East 63rd Street Three-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op. Asking: $875,000. Selling: $875,000. Maintenance: $1,963; 42 percent tax-deductible. Time on the market: four months.

GOOD NEIGHBORS Sometimes brokers have mixed feelings about getting a listing. When Mora Israel heard that her neighbors, one of whom is an oncologist at a private New York Hospital, were moving out of her Upper East Side co-op building, she didn't want to see them leave-even though it was her job to sell the place. After all, when her pocket poodle suffered a heat stroke, the good doctor came to the rescue. "He started to massage the dog; he got him going again," said Ms. Israel. "I believe he would have given him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation if it were necessary." In the wake of Sept. 11, however, the doctor and his wife, who owns a sports-accessory business, decided it was time to move their three young daughters-the oldest of whom is in kindergarten at Dalton-to the suburbs. The new buyers recently moved in with their young boy and upgraded the floor from parquet to a dark strip-planking, and spruced up the windows in the bathroom and kitchen to open up the north, south and east city views. Residents in the building are already prospecting to see how their new neighbors-he works for a hedge fund, she's in the fashion public-relations business-can put their skills to work in the name of neighborliness, too. "He's great with numbers," Ms. Israel said of the new buyer. "He would be wonderful to have on the co-op board."

Midtown

415 East 52nd Street Two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op. Asking: $865,000. Selling: $840,000. Maintenance: $1,743.01; 52 percent tax-deductible. Time on the market: six months.

CONTROL FREAK The seller of this midtown co-op did so much unwelcome "hovering" around prospective buyers that her real-estate agent called her "the hovercraft." "Every time I had to show the apartment, she was hovering over my shoulder," said Insignia Douglas Elliman sales agent Carol Miller. "Several buyers couldn't stand her being so close and just rushed through the apartment. That's one of the reasons it hung on the market for so long." The seller, who owned a textile-importing company with her husband, apparently has been known to make a habit of the practice. Ms. Miller represented her when she bought the 1,450-square-foot apartment, and the seller wanted to be in control of every aspect of the sale back then, too. "She probably told her mother how to deliver her," said Ms. Miller. Luckily for the seller, Ms. Miller found a sweetheart of a buyer in a retired single woman in her 70's. She was looking for more room to entertain her grandchildren, and she loved the unobstructed city views of this 14th-floor apartment. "Everything was fine and dandy with her," said Ms. Miller.

Stuyvesant Square

325 East 17th Street Four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom, five-story townhouse. Asking: $1.795 million. Selling: $1.795 million. Taxes: $6,500. Time on the market: four weeks.

SLIM PICKINGS Corcoran's director of townhouses, Anne Snee, said that at first, she couldn't get buyers to look at this townhouse when they learned it was only 14 feet wide. "It was a jewel of a Victorian house, with lots of rich details and ornate molding," said Ms. Snee. "But I couldn't get anyone to come and see the place after telling them it was a 14-footer." Not only that, but the house was one of only two townhouses on a block otherwise populated by cold, impersonal buildings owned by the Beth Israel Medical Center. But brokers started bringing clients in, and soon they were getting swept away by the 1851 townhouse's original moldings and detail, high ceilings, 10 fireplaces, hardwood floors, three balconies and private garden. "In the end, everybody was coming out of the woodwork for this place," said Ms. Snee. "We had a bidding war." Ms. Snee found her buyers in a young couple in their late 30's who had one child and worked in the design industry. They had been displaced from lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, and Ms. Snee recalls their saying to her, "Thank you for saving us from Ground Zero."

Gramercy Park

Judge Lets Co-op Update Façade, But Not Everyone is Smiling

It's a trend not likely to return from its 60's netherworld on the Upper East Side, even as peasant shirts and scrappy jeans dominate the street below: blue bricks. But that's the defining characteristic of the façade of the building at the northeast corner of 65th Street and Madison Avenue. The cladding was actually popular from the late 1950's to the early 1970's, but now the co-op owners will finally get to replace it with something a little less dated.

The co-op's board of directors learned in February that decades of water damage had left 40 to 65 percent of the blue bricks cracked and poised to crumble on pedestrians. Unlike the porous red bricks, blue bricks are coated with a thick glaze that traps water runoff. When that water freezes, it puts pressure on the bricks, weakening their attachment to the underlying concrete wall.

Consulting an engineer, the board concluded that re-skinning the entire building in red bricks-at a cost of up to $3.5 million over roughly two years-would not only be more economical than trying to replace only the damaged blue bricks, but it would also prevent future problems.

But not everyone was so anxious to make the change at the co-op building at 27 East 65th Street. Elliott Sutton, the owner of the building's first-floor commercial units-whose tenants include Ferrier, a women's clothing store called Vertigo, an optician's shop and a garage-filed suit against the co-op, claiming that the unsightly scaffolding and renovations would do his business more harm than the dated brick. Mr. Sutton had brought in his own engineer, who concluded that only 20 percent of the bricks needed replacing, and that it would be much more time- and cost-effective to only replace those, rather than reface the entire building-but that would leave the building blue.

The judge disagreed with Mr. Sutton and on June 25 ruled in favor of the co-op-a decision that Mr. Sutton's lawyer, Lowette Fielding, has vowed to appeal.

"In my opinion, it's an effort by the co-op board of directors to sell to the shareholders the necessity of changing the building to white or red brick by engineering it that it must be done that way," she said.

As for the residents of the building, there's no telling how much more the apartments will be worth when the building's distinguishing mark-there are only a few other blue-brick buildings in the city, mostly in the East 20's-is gone.

And the restaurant? The co-op's lawyer, Aaron Shmulewitz of the firm Reed Smith, rejected Ms. Fielding's and Mr. Sutton 's claim that the first floor would lose business as a direct result of the extended renovations.

"That's speculative in the best-case scenario," he said. "How can anyone prove that a restaurant's business dropped off x percent because a [scaffolding] was up? Maybe people stopped liking the food."

The Observer visited Ferrier last week and asked its general manger, Cyril Trégoat, whether he had noticed any drop-off in business as a result of the now four-month-old scaffolding.

"Maybe a little, maybe not-it's hard to calculate," said Mr. Tregoat. "But we asked for extra lighting, and they gave it to us, and we asked them to raise the scaffolding higher so people could see the restaurant's sign, and they did that, too."

Ms. Paltrow's purchase is probably the only thing about the actress' life that has gone unnoticed by the press since she started taking her clothes off in movies and dating Brad Pitt, her co-star in 1995's Seven . The 26-year-old Ms. Paltrow auditioned her new house for two years as a renter before buying it from her erstwhile landlord, unobserved by the media. In the meantime, she was conducting a widely publicized house hunt, with and without Mr. Pitt, her former beau.

In early 1996, Ms. Paltrow and Mr. Pitt instructed downtown brokers that for the right property, money would be no object. The couple reportedly saw at least 50 different properties in both Greenwich Village and TriBeCa, but never made a purchase. Meanwhile, they were fixtures in the West Village, with sightings reported at Hogs & Heifers on Washington Street and the Grange Hall on Commerce Street.

By the summer of 1998, the actress was looking for real estate on her own. According to one downtown broker, Ms. Paltrow's search then included stops at at least two co-ops: 29 East Ninth Street, where a three-bedroom apartment was for sale for $1.15 million, and at the Portsmouth at 42 West 10th Street. "They weren't terribly exciting," said the broker.

Ms. Paltrow must have shared that reaction, since she decided last August to purchase the house she had been renting. The house contains three bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, a dining room, a backyard garden and a fireplace where she can prop her golden statuette on the mantel. According to real estate records, the house was constructed in 1841 by Mark Spencer, a merchant and distiller who lived nearby. On Feb. 19, the actress was issued an alterations permit from the city's Buildings Department to make multiple renovations, among them the removal of a wall, the installation of new plumbing and some mechanical tinkering.

Of course, since she purchased the house, Ms. Paltrow has won a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award and an Oscar, and her rate has reportedly risen to $10 million per film. It may not even suit her anymore. A publicist for Ms. Paltrow had no comment.

Greenwich Village

JULIA ROBERTS TIRES OF GRAMERCY, SEEKS $2.95 MILLION CO-OP ON FIFTH. Village real estate sources report that 31-year-old actress Julia Roberts has been restless at her current residence near Gramercy Park and has signed a contract for a nine-room, $2.95 million co-op on Fifth Avenue near Washington Square Park.

Ms. Roberts, who recently formed her own production company, Shoelace Productions, paid $2.15 million in 1993 for her two-bedroom penthouse with double-height ceilings, a huge terrace and a view of Gramercy Park. Since then, she has been collecting properties in the building and has had a standing deal

with the building's management to have first crack at buying other units as they free up. The actress owns at least three units on lower floors, making her total investment in the condominium nearly $3.25 million.

According to real estate sources, the willowy actress has struck a similar arrangement with her broker on the prewar co-op on lower Fifth Avenue, requesting immediate access to apartments that go on the market. Last summer, Ms. Roberts considered buying a two-bedroom, $3 million apartment in the Fifth Avenue building. However, due to a filming schedule that took her to England shortly after she saw the space, she had to forfeit the apartment-which was sold to actress Polly Draper for $2.6 million instead. "She's been flirting with that building for a while now," said one downtown broker with knowledge of the

situation.

The three-bedroom, three-bath property under contract on Fifth Avenue has crystal fixtures that date to 1903, when the building was first erected; later, the interior was redesigned by architect Peter Marino. One broker familiar with the apartment said it has a "long, narrow hallway that leads off to three bedrooms, all on one side. It's kind of funky, and that's why people like it." With only two apartments on most floors, the building is very private.

A spokesman for the actress said she was not planning to move, but real estate sources said Ms. Roberts signed a contract on March 17-beating out the offers of other interested parties-and that the co-op's board is expected to meet the week of April 5 to review her application.

Upper East Side

200 East 90th Street (Whitney House)

Three-bed, two-bath, 1,283-square-foot postwar co-op.

Asking: $565,000. Selling: $565,000.

Charges: $1,586; 67 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: six months.

HE WHO DOESN'T NEGOTIATE, WAITS. In February 1998, an investor bought the 75 unsold apartments in the Whitney House, a Carnegie Hill co-op at 200 East 90th Street, near Third Avenue. The company renovated their new properties, combining some, and gradually put the remaining 61 units on the market with the Corcoran Group. The owners reminded their exclusive brokers that buyers would not need board approval, because they would be the first owners of the apartments. But the company also told Corcoran that none of the prices they were asking were negotiatiable. This three-bedroom apartment on the 22nd floor, which was the result of two units being combined and has new kitchens and polished brass fixtures in the bathrooms, was no exception. After six months on the market, a couple with two kids followed the rules and paid $565,000 for the 1,283-square-foot co-op. Broker: Corcoran Group (Gary Brynes).

115 East 90th Street

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,100-square-foot prewar co-op.

Asking: $495,000. Selling: $480,000.

Charges: $1,277; 20 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: two months.

BABY APARTMENT SWAP. The young couple who sold this second-floor apartment bought it in estate condition. Most of the rooms needed only cosmetic work-for instance, the bathroom, which got new fixtures and reglazed porcelain. But the kitchen needed a gut renovation before the couple could cook anything. After three or four years, they decided they needed more space for themselves and their child, so they took residence in a neighborhood rental while they looked at apartments. Meanwhile, another young family of equal size-two parents and a young child-has moved in. They like being on the second floor; they like to pretend they're in a town house. Broker: Corcoran (Carole Healy).

Upper West Side

1 Central Park West

(Trump International Hotel and Tower)

Three-bed, 3.5-bath, 2,094-square-foot condo.

Asking: $2.85 million. Selling: $2.7 million.

Charges: $1,162. Taxes: $1,479.

Time on the market: four weeks.

THE OILMAN COMETH. A businessman based in Singapore bought this three-bedroom condo in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in the summer of 1997 for $2.2 million-but he has never even spent a night there. Perhaps a little bitter, he ambitiously priced the pad at $3.3 million last fall, when he finally realized he should unload it. That figure was slowly ratcheted down to $3 million, and then to $2.85 million, at which point a retired oil executive who lives in another Trump International, three-bedroom apartment with his wife, who's also retired, was willing to bite. The couple paid $2.7 million and will rent out their other apartment in the glitzy gold-and-glass Philip Johnson building. Broker: American Real Estate Group (Mika Sakamoto and Michael Weiner).

201 West 70th Street (One Sherman Square)

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,350-square-foot postwar co-op.

Asking: $599,000. Selling: $580,000.

Charges: $1,497; 55 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: one year.

CASHING IN ON THE INHERITANCE. A schoolteacher in her 20's inherited this two-bedroom co-op on West 70th Street-a few floors above her own one-bedroom apartment-after her father passed away. When she decided to sell it, her mother, who had recently sold her town house on West 90th Street for $2.2 million, put her in touch with her broker, Anne Snee. (The mother moved to Vermont with a $2 million profit on the house she had purchased in 1983.) Ms. Snee found a single male psychiatrist who was so busy seeing patients that he could go home-shopping only on Sunday afternoons. But he liked the co-op's river views and bought it for $580,000-just $19,000 less than the seller was asking. Broker: Corcoran (Anne Snee).

Murray Hill

146 East 38th Street

Four-story town house.

Asking: $2.695 million. Selling: $2.695 million.

Time on the market: 10 weeks.

THREE MEN AND $2.695 MILLION. Back in March 1998, three guys bought this 1880's town house between Lexington and Third avenues; they planned to renovate and then cash in. The place was pretty much in tatters, and their wont was to preserve all the original details but modernize as much as possible. They installed central air-conditioning, new bathrooms and a kitchen with all the amenities, while spiffing up the parquet floors, moldings and mantelpieces. By November, the fellas wanted to test the real estate market by asking $2.85 million for their treasure. However, no takers came around until January, when they reduced their price to $2.695 million. A young couple fleeing Greenwich Village signed a contract in February, after the price of a Chelsea town house they had been enamored of couldn't be budged below $2.95 million. The couple was especially interested in a neighborhood tradition of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations, at Lexington Avenue and 38th Street between Lexington and Third avenues: When the Mission plays host to visiting diplomats, they and visitors to the block must be police-escorted to their destinations. The couple thought that would be an ideal time to show off their investment. Broker: Douglas Elliman (Millard Dixon); Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy (Patrick Lilly).

Tribeca

20-26 N. Moore Street

One-bed, one-bath, 2,500-square-foot co-op loft.

Asking: $875,000. Selling: $870,000.

Charges: $1,800; 83 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: three weeks.

ONLY NEW YORKER TO SPEND LESS THAN Her APARTMENT BUDGET. An artist in her 40's told broker Neiza Davis that she was prepared to fork over as much as $1.5 million for a new apartment. She was able to buy this spacious, prewar TriBeCa loft near West Broadway for much less. Of course, the apartment needed repairs, so the artist is gut-renovating to her taste: new kitchen, arched doorways and more closets. You see, she's moving from an old-line, three-bedroom co-op at 51 East 90th Street in Carnegie Hill-which she sold for $615,000. The apartments there are as populated

with closets as they are with kids. Broker: Halstead

Property Company (Neiza Davis); Douglas Elliman (Ruth Hardinger).