Back in February, Mr. Sulzberger had transferred ownership of the family's 64th and Central Park West co-op to his wife for $3.2 million. When reached by phone by the Observer at their New Paltz home back then, Ms. Gregg wouldn't comment on the deal, and when a Times spokeswoman was asked whether the couple was separating, she said the deal was done for estate-planning purposes and would not comment further.

In Alex Jones and Susan Tifft's authoritative account of the family that owns the Times, The Trust, they detail the couple's relationship. They began dating when Pinch was a senior at Tufts and was visiting his mother in Kansas for Thanksgiving 1973 at a house across the street from Ms. Gregg's. They fell in love right away, and moved in together in January 1974. "She was forceful and self-assured--the very strengths he tried to cultivate in himself, though his way of expressing them tended to be cocky and confrontational." Mr. Jones and Ms. Tifft wote.

She challenged him on everything from his political beliefs and his abrasvie demeanor. "Gail takes no shit from him...and she keeps him honest," said Doug Adler, his cousin. Mr. Jones and Ms. Tifft wrote: "Their marriage was one of trust, friendship, respect, political sympathy teamwork. Unlike Punch, who never discussed business with Carol, Arthur Jr. valued Gail's counsel and freely told other executives that he ran many decisions by her."

But being married to the publisher of the Times had its challenges. As Pinch made his ascent to publisher, he cut off all his friends from the paper, and asked Gail to do the same. She also had dedicated her early career to journalism, and was freelancing in New York when Pinch asked her to quit the professional altoghter, fearful that any advancement in her career would be perceived something he had a role in. She told her friends she was becoming a painter and they "expressed amazement" that she was leaving the only career she ever knew.

Their relationship was also emotionally cool:

After already swapping a loft in the glass-clad Richard Meier towers on the western reaches of Perry Street, Mr. Gallo just closed on his second apartment swap in less than a year in the building.

In September, he listed his 1,800-square-foot spread on the seventh floor for $2.75 million. Last week, he unloaded it for $2.4 million, according to his broker, Linda Melnick of Stribling and Associates.

The move comes after the filmmaker and sometime Republican activist purchased the raw-space spread on the seventh floor for around $2.15 million in December, holding it for under a year and flipping it for a $300,000-plus profit (nice going, Vincent!).

"[Vincent] never moved in. He's still undecided about where he wants to actually plant permanent roots," explained his broker, Ms. Melnick.

Douglas Elliman broker Leonard Steinberg represented the buyer and declined to comment. Mr. Gallo was not available for comment by press time.

The buyer of Mr. Gallo's loft, a finance executive, also snapped up the sixth-floor apartment for just north of $2 million, and according to sources familiar with the building, he plans to combine the two spreads into a sprawling duplex, the only mid-floor duplex in the north tower. (Of course, there is the penthouse duplex-that's the spread that belonged to Martha Stewart before the dethroned domestic diva sold it for a little over $6 million).

The Perry Street towers have made frequent appearances in the city's gossip pages, drawing media attention for everything from shoddy finishes to problem-riddled construction. Or, as Mr. Gallo himself once told Vanity Fair: "You won't believe what's going on in these buildings …. It's a microcosm of everything ugly in human beings-beautiful, beautiful architecture desecrated by scandal, greed, conniving and gluttony."

But now, with his latest sale, he seems to have weathered the P.R. maelstrom and made out well, financially. In July 2002, the 42-year-old filmmaker purchased the third-floor spread for a reported $2.03 million before unloading it for around the same price.

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. will greet 2005 with one less Manhattan apartment in his real-estate stable. In September, city records show that Mr. Sulzberger and his wife, the artist and writer Gail Gregg, did some real-estate flippage when they sold a 738-square-foot condo at 104 West 70th Street for $800,000. In August 2002, the couple closed on the property for a reported $615,000. That's a 30 percent profit-not bad!

According to New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, Mr. Sulzberger was traveling and unavailable for comment about his deft real-estate moves. But perhaps he was inspired to sell after perusing The Times' recently bolstered real-estate coverage, complete with their own celebrity real-estate gossip column! Ms. Gregg was also not available for comment.

The Sulzbergers' Upper West Side spread was reportedly purchased for Ms. Gregg to house her art studio. Ms. Gregg-who, according to her Web site, most recently exhibited at the Gallery at R&F, in Kingston, N.Y.-still lists 104 West 70th Street as her studio address.

Ms. Gregg may also miss one added perk of maintaining a studio space at 104 West 70th Street: the buttery confections on sale at the famed Bakery Soutine, which sits on the building's ground floor.

Back downtown, billionaire scion Robert Soros and his wife Melissa have ankled the West Village. In October, the couple unloaded the four-story townhouse at 288 West Fourth Street for $5 million, city records show. At about the same time Mr. Soros, 41, the oldest of George Soros' five children, was appointed to run the Quantum Endowment Fund, an $8.3 billion investment portfolio.

According to city records, finance executive Ronald Layard-Liesching, a partner and director of research for the risk-management firm Pareto Partners, snapped up the Soros' West Fourth Street townhouse.

After pumping six-figure donations into Democratic coffers during this campaign cycle, Mr. Soros boosted his own personal balance sheet with the sale of the West Village manse: The couple purchased the property, which sits between 11th and Bank streets, for a mere $1.9 million in September 1998, city real-estate records show.

The 20-foot-wide home has a kitchen, a living room with fireplace and a garden on the ground level; the second floor boasts two bedrooms (each with a fireplace) and a bathroom; the master bedroom shares the third floor with a separate east-facing studio apartment; and the fourth floor has two bedrooms, a bathroom, a second kitchen and a sitting room.

Patricia Cliff and Carter Wilcox, both of the Corcoran Group, handled the sale and didn't return calls seeking comment. Mr. Soros was traveling and unavailable for comment.

The Soroses first listed the spread for $5.15 million in June of this year, before unloading it in October.

Recent Transactions in the Real Estate Market

Soho

110 Thompson Street Studio co-op. Asking: $259,000. Selling: $260,000. Maintenance: $540; 47 percent tax-deductible. Time on the market: four months.

WHEN ALL THE LIGHTS ARE LOW Meanwhile, another uptown girl bought this 300-square-foot slice of Soho-but she always knew she wanted to be downtown. The twentysomething wine distributor works in the neighborhood and wanted to live among the stylish lanes south of Houston. So, after leaving behind her Upper East Side rental, she closed on this second-floor studio on fashionable Thompson Street. "It was about the location," listing broker Gerry Kendrick of Douglas Elliman said of the first-time buyer's decision to take the Soho plunge. The seller, a book publicist in his 30's, recently married and relocated to a larger spread in the flower district. His former Soho studio has a garden view, hardwood floors and east-facing exposures adding light to the spread. Vincent D'Allesandro of Fenwick-Keats represented the buyer.

Murray Hill

34 East 38th Street One-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom co-op. Asking: $1.2 million. Selling: $1.1 million. Maintenance: $2,561; 65 percent tax-deductible. Time on the market: 11 months.

I KNOW A PLACE TO GO This one-bedroom on 38th Street between Park and Madison covers some 2,000 square feet-a rare find in Murray Hill-and yet it languished on the market for the better part of a year. "It was a tough sell," said Ella Sacks of the Corcoran Group, speaking of the unconventional layout: a one-bedroom apartment spread across four floors of a Murray Hill brownstone built in 1865. "One of the challenges in selling this apartment was that it's more like a downtown property." The sellers, a retired couple, relocated as far downtown as you can go-to South America-and listed their midtown perch with its exposed brick walls, eat-in kitchen and three wood-burning fireplaces. Finally, after 11 months on the market, they found a newlywed uptown couple intrigued by the spread's unique configuration. Fellow Corcoran broker Margaret Velard partnered on the deal.

Upper East Side

115 East 86th Street Two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op. Asking: $995,000. Selling: $1.06 million. Maintenance: $1,212; 50 percent tax-deductible. Time on the market: three weeks.

CONNECTICUT YANKEES Have child No. 1: move to an Upper East Side two-bedroom. Child No. 2: shuttle off to the suburbs. That's what happened with this growing clan when they recently added a fourth member and decided to relocate to the Connecticut wilds in search of more space. "They loved the city, but they couldn't find what they were looking for," said listing broker Jane E. Goldberg of Century 21 William B. May. "In the end, they decided they wanted a backyard." When they listed their 13th-floor spread on Labor Day, they instantly received five all-cash offers. A single travel agent who wanted to hop across the park from her West Side apartment snapped up the place, paying nearly $10,000 over the asking price. The pent-up demand may have been due to the prewar spread's details, which include herringbone floors and a living room with a wood-burning fireplace. How country!

The apartment looks directly over the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, and the next owner will share a floor with U2 front man Paul Hewson-a.k.a. Bono-who has an apartment two doors down.

Ms. O'Neal bought the apartment in 1996 for $2 million. The grand-scale co-op has three bathrooms, a maid's room and bath, an eat-in kitchen, a formal dining room and north, east and west exposures.

The apartment's listing agent, Roger Erickson Sr., managing director of William B. May, had no comment on the sale.

Ms. O'Neal shot to instant stardom in 1973 when, at 10 years old, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of a precocious con artist in Paper Moon , in which she starred alongside her father, Ryan O'Neal, Farrah Fawcett's longtime paramour. She solidified that standing in the 1976 smash The Bad News Bears , but a string of disappointing roles followed, and she quickly fell out of Hollywood favor.

In 1984, the 20-year-old Ms. O'Neal met Mr. McEnroe, then 25, at a party in Los Angeles, and they were married two years later. They had three children together, but their union dissolved acrimoniously in 1991. Their hostility toward one another was made very public this summer with the publication of Mr. McEnroe's memoir, You Cannot Be Serious , which painted Ms. O'Neal as an unfit mother, in large part because of her admitted lifelong battle with drug addiction. She subsequently went on a public-relations offensive-including a People magazine cover story and a Barbara Walters 20/20 special-to counter some of her ex-husband's charges. Ms. O'Neal is currently attempting an acting comeback with a starring role in The Technical Writer , an independent film hunting for a distributor, and she has also signed a deal with HarperCollins to write her memoirs.

Nightclub owner David Marvisi has purchased the East 65th Street townhouse that was the focal point of one of New York's most sensational murder cases. Mr. Marvisi, who owns the popular Manhattan nightspots Exit, Spa and Capitale, is the new owner of 20 East 65th Street, the former home of slain socialite Irene Silverman.

Prosecutors believe it was at this address that mother-and-son grifter team Sante and Kenneth (Kenny) Kimes murdered the 82-year-old Silverman in 1998, in a bizarre attempt to gain possession of the property for themselves. Both Kimeses are currently serving several life terms for Silverman's murder, and the pair is currently awaiting trial for another murder in California.

Mr. Marvisi did not immediately return calls at press time, and his broker at Stribling declined to comment on the sale.

For years, 20 East 65th Street was the house that wouldn't sell, as the property's original asking price of $15 million was reduced several times over the last few years to the last asking price of $11.5 million. Mr. Marvisi, however, was able to strike an even better deal on the building that some brokers had taken to calling "jinxed." According to city records, Mr. Marvisi closed on the townhouse on Sept. 10 for $7.5 million.

Ms. Kimes, who is believed to be 68, and her son first met Irene Silverman, a wealthy Manhattan widow, at an anti-aging conference, and they later rented one of the apartments Silverman let out on 65th Street. A month later, Silverman had disappeared. Though the Kimeses steadfastly maintained their innocence, they were found guilty on 118 counts, including murder, burglary and robbery. Both are currently standing trial in California for the shooting death of David Kazdin, a former business associate.

upper east side

781 Fifth Avenue (the Sherry-Netherland)

Two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $2.995 million. Selling: $2.8 million.

Maintenance: $6,979; 24 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: four weeks.

klondike surprise A single woman who runs a large European corporation decided to buy at the Sherry-Netherland because a good friend of hers already lived in the building. After settling on this 1,900-square-foot mint-condition unit, she jetted off to the West Coast and boarded a cruise bound for Alaska. That made it a bit difficult for her broker, Laurance Kaiser, president of Key Ventures Inc., to negotiate the minutiae of the deal. "I told the listing broker it was difficult for my client to sign a contract because she was on an Alaskan cruise," he said. At which point the listing broker did a double take: Her client-the seller of the apartment-was on an Alaskan cruise, too. The very same cruise, in fact. A few phone calls later, the buyer and the seller found themselves sitting down to dinner and drinks on deck. "They got along famously," said Mr. Kaiser. "They made each other feel secure that they were both real buyers and sellers." The apartment at the Sherry-Netherland has an eat-in kitchen, a wet bar and a marble entrance gallery.

greenwich village

222 West 14th Street (the Sequoia)

Two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo.

Asking: $950,000. Selling: $900,000.

Charges: $583. Taxes: $557.

Time on the market: two weeks.

carpetbaggers This condo's previous owner is a furniture designer and interior decorator who once dolled up Tom Brokaw's country house and is currently at work on Lorraine Bracco's spread in New Jersey, in addition to the Long Island estate of the owners of Arizona Iced Tea. But that's just a side gig: He also owns Toad Hall-a furniture shop at ABC Carpet & Home on 19th Street and Broadway. And the furnishings on sale there come from the furniture factory he owns in Cooperstown, N.Y. His 1,000-square-foot, ninth-floor condo was originally configured as two separate units, but he combined them about a year and a half ago and filled them with antique-style furniture. "It has an old European, Parisian feel," said the apartment's exclusive listing agent, Ryan Fix, of Insignia Douglas Elliman. In place of the wall that once separated the two units, there now stands a huge teakwood door from Thailand; the master bed is draped with a lace canopy, and the bed frame is made from medium-sized tree branches. The new buyers-he's a real-estate attorney buying the place as an investment-said the teak door had to go, but the wife loved the owners' Norwegian rug so much that the designer gave it to her at the closing as a present. "She was ecstatic," said Mr. Fix. A balcony runs across the entire living room, which has open midtown views, and the new owners have already rented the place out for $4,500 a month.

brooklyn heights

105 Montague Street

Two-bedroom, one-and-half-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $545,000. Selling: $550,000.

Maintenance: $952; 55 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: four weeks.

a fine refinance The new owner of this Brooklyn Heights apartment just extracted that rarest of all exchanges from his co-op board: quid pro quo. The apartment's previous owners were in a rush to relocate to Paris, but they knew their co-op board was particularly choosy, so it was all the more important to find a buyer who would be suitable to the board. Thus, when five offers came in after their open house, the sellers-she's in the art world, he's in finance-didn't end up going with the highest bid. "They went with a single guy with a lot of money in the bank," said the apartment's listing agent, Judah Domke, of the Corcoran Group. The buyer, a vice president at J.P. Morgan, did go on to pass the board interview-but there was a hitch: After the two parties had gone into contract, the co-op board announced that maintenance fees were going up. But rather than walk away from the property-a 1,200-square-foot duplex with northern exposures and a common roof deck-the buyer suggested a compromise: He'd pay the extra maintenance if the sellers would let him take advantage of the just-lowered interest rates and refinance his mortgage, thus lowering his carrying costs. It was a deal. "It's rare for interest rates to drop [while you're in contract]," said Mr. Domke. "Luckily, there was something to work with to make the buyer happy."

UPPER WEST SIDE

Times Scion Buys Upper West Side Condo for Wife, Gail Gregg's Painting Studio

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. may be in the process of constructing a soaring new tower for his company near Times Square, but he made a somewhat smaller expansion on the Upper West Side this summer, with the purchase of a one-bedroom apartment that his wife is using for an art studio. Mr. Sulzberger and his wife, Gail Gregg, closed in August on a 738-square-foot condo at 104 West 70th Street, for which they paid $615,000, according to city records. Though Mr. Sulzberger and Ms. Gregg declined to comment for this article, her Web site lists the address as the office of her painting studio.

Mr. Sulzberger, who inherited The Times' publishing reins from his father in 1992, met Ms. Gregg in 1974, and they have two children.

According to Ms. Gregg's Web site, her minimalist and geometric paintings comment on "the manmade divisions superimposed on the vast wilderness west of the Mississippi." Perhaps the north and south exposures of her 11th-floor studio will inspire her to comment on the man-made jungle east of the Hudson.