How to price a penthouse with an en-suite garage?

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's a car elevator! Penthouse 1 at Annabelle Seldorf's notorious "sky-garage"  condo project at 200 Eleventh Avenue has had a hard time finding the right buyer. The three-bedroom, 3.5-bath first hit the market in 2007 asking $9.5 million only to decide a few months later that an apartment with a sky garage was very special indeed. It upped the ask to $11.3 million.

The price then went down, then up, then way up, then the duplex sold for a measly $7.6 million 2011. Now, a new buyer has plunked down $11 million for the sleek spread. Has the unit found happiness at long last?

Hey, a sky garage is a hot commodity for a riverfront apartment these days—you don't have to worry about your car flooding the next time a hurricane hits. Of course, if the power goes out, the car remain stuck until who knows when, but better safe in the sky than waterlogged, right?

Besides the famous en-suite auto-storage, the unit, listed with Douglas Elliman's Herve Senequier and Leonard Steinberg, has two large loggia terraces, a freestanding granite tub and teak millwork. And although the unit sold considerably below the $12.95 million ask, seller West Sky LLC made a killing, a full $3.4 million, off this flip.

At least the buyer, 1300 Federal LLC, can take comfort in the fact that he or she paid for something close to what the unit has been asking for over the years ($7.6 million seems like a steal). Who might that buyer be? The LLC is registered to 435 Hudson Street, but that doesn't reveal any clues. Let's play the celebrity guessing game... Katie Holmes has been renting nearby in the Chelsea Mercantile and 200 Eleventh Avenue is "just moments" from daughter Suri's school. Or could it be Mitt Romney? The man needs someway to distract himself from his recent defeat and we know he likes car elevators. Does anyone else want to hazard a guess?

Although there was initially some doubt that buyers would flock to modern sandstone townhouses in the West Village when they could have the real deal—creaky stairs, historic cachet and all for roughly the same price—some would-be townhouse dwellers are apparently unconcerned with hanging a plaque outside their front door.

But buyers were not as free with their money as the developer had hoped. The 5-bedroom abode at 26 Downing Street, listed with Douglas Elliman brokers Herve Senequier and Leonard Steinberg, didn't quite fetch the $16.95 million that it's been asking since hitting the market in October 2010.

Nor did Nos. 22 and 24, snapped up by an LLC this March, as reported by Curbed, get the $33 million they were asking (the buyer paid $27 million and likely has plans to combine the two buildings, taking advantage of the flexibility that a non-landmarked property offers).

The buyer of 26 Downing is a different, but no less mysterious limited liability corporation—MF Downing Street 26 LLC.

Whoever the buyer is will enjoy a large kitchen overlooking the South-facing garden, a "skylight-illuminated atelier," a "grand parlor floor" with fireplace and large terrace and a rooftop observatory. Also, you needn't be bothered with pesky staircases—there's an elevator!

There is just one catch. Moving in will mean living with the construction racket next door as the two "custom designed" townhouses merge into one. After all, custom doesn't mean much of anything unless it's custom-designed for you.

kvelsey@observer.com

Seal in '06. Those were the days.

Gregory Spock is used to performing librettos before rapt audiences in concert halls from Hartford to Florence. Recently, the 26-year-old has found more intimate venues within the exposed-brick walls of New York townhouses. A Roland keyboard or a baby grand to his right, a pink bow tie around his neck, a songbook in his hands—Verdi always wows `em—Mr. Spock delivers bursts of baroque beauty, all for salesmanship.

Mr. Spock joined Manhattan brokerage Rubicon Property four months ago, after receiving his broker’s license in the winter. He said his new boss liked him for his creativity, which means saving money on those showings.

“A lot of people have food or wine now, but the entertainment isn’t thought out.”

Because who isn’t lulled into signing a multi-million dollar contract by the plaintive moans of Aida?

During last decade’s real estate boom, the real estate party, usually in a newly built condo tower, was a staple of the industry. After the recession hit, nobody could much afford them. Now they seem to be hobbling back, along with the real estate market.

“In some ways, it’s just kind of a relief,” said the blogger-turned-flogger Joey Arak. Mr. Arak spent years penning “Hangover Reports” while he was senior editor of Curbed New York, and now he is helping to throw them. “During the downturn, there was a feeling that it was wrong to celebrate, wrong to spend money, wrong to buy real estate. Now it’s such a relief that we don’t have to worry about that anymore and can just enjoy ourselves.”

Mr. Arak said the turning point was a party last summer at Williamsburg development 58 Metropolitan, a hulking faux warehouse loft number near the waterfront. It was not very fancy, just fried chicken from Pies ‘n’ Thighs and a few kegs from Brooklyn Brewery. “But it was the first party anyone had invited us to in ages, and people were celebrating and enjoying themselves, and it was nice to know you could do that again.”

When people who know speak of real estate soirees, a blustery night on March 2, 2006 almost inevitably comes up. That was when developers Gary Barnett and Shaya Boymelgreen threw dueling parties at their respective projects—the Aldyn, then still a vacant lot on Riverside South, and 20 Pine: The Collection, one of so many odes to FiDi debauchery from that era. Uptown, Seal performed. Downtown, John Legend.

These days, revelers are more likely to find a decent cheese plate and some cocktails from hip speakeasy PDT or a food demonstration by one of Danny Meyer’s chefs and an assortment of quaffable wine. “If you’re lucky, there’s Champagne and it’s good,” said Leonard Steinberg, a top broker at Douglas Elliman. One of the big differences between the parties of today and those of yore is that in the past there were bachanals. Now we have box socials.

“I remember when the go-go dancers came out at the William Beaver House,” Mr. Steinberg said. The ugly yellow obelisk of condos was erected in the FiDi by Andre Balazs and Tamir Sapir. It fell into foreclosure last year and was converted into chintzy rentals. “When the go-go dancers come out, you know the party is over.”

"It feels like where Tom Hanks would live in a Tom Hanks movie where he was a guy who lived in New York," Stribling broker Alexa Lambert, who is marketing the building, told The Observer. "You know in the movies where they show the apartment and it's like, 'Yeah, right, nobody has that.' It's like the idea of what living in New York looks like."

The building has suffered its share of setbacks in getting to this point. The first set of condos, 22 in total on the 11th through 14th floors, came on the market in 2002, when the city was still recovering from 9/11 and the tech crash. Then it was revealed that the massive duplex penthouse was a little too massive, exceeding plans on file with the Landmarks Preservation Commission (the building is located in the Tribeca North Historic District).

No worry. Developer Stanley Scott--who had worked in the building since 1966 and bought it three decades later--had the duplex dismantled and rebuilt by master glass designer James Carpenter, who did the facade at 7 World Trade Center among other project. The staircase alone cost $1 million to manufacture, but when it was all done, the 7,493-square-foot pad set a new downtown record at $30.5 million when it was purchased by ex-con William Duker.

In the meantime, all that reconstruction held up closing on the second round of condos, built out on the seventh through ninth floors--everything below is a commercial condo, stocked with architects and other creative types. Deposits were refunded and it was not until this spring that the units came back on the market. "I think I was pregnant when we started this property, and now my son's shaving," Ms. Lambert joked.

Still, thanks to a shortage of inventory in one of the city's most sought after neighborhood, the two-, three- and four-bedroom lofts were snapped up in short order. Ranging in price from $3.5 million to $7.3 million, they are on the high-end even for this tony corner of the city. Ms. Lambert credits the finishes, including oak floors and gigantic casement windows, all while the building has no fancy amenities to attract buyers.

"I think people are willing to pay up for something they love," Ms. Lambert said. "The market for mediocre properties isn't the best."

Granted there were only nine units to sell in that nine month period, and even Ms. Lambert acknowledges she did not break the coveted $2,000-per-square-foot threshold that now seems to be the barrier for the most luxurious buildings. Prices averaged just under $1,900 a foot. But with hundreds of prospective buyers, the sell out still speaks to a paucity of product. (Ms. Lambert declined to identify any of her buyers, but she said there were "no investors, no speculator and no foreigners," mostly just bankers and well-to-do professionals as well as some family money.)

"Given the amount of development in Tribeca over the past decade, it's amazing the lack of inventory right now," said Bruce Ehrman, a Stribling broker who specializes in the neighborhood but was not involved with the project. "People are just circling and circling and snapping up whatever they can, because there's not much out there, especially product of this quality."

Market guru Jonathan Miller was less charitable with the building's two-month sell out. "That is good," Mr. Miller said. "I'd look at that and say that looks like a reasonable absorbtion rate. And it's certainly better than in recent years, so their timing appeared to be good."

One of the units is rethinking its timing, though. Early last month, that penthouse came back on the market for a $45 million, a bid to make Mr. Duker a tidy profit while skyrocketing him back into the record books, his purchase having since been surpassed at the $31.5 million Super Ink penthouse.

After only 17 days on the market, the crystalline penthouse came off. In a true sign of market madness, had it sold so fast? No, listing agent Leonard Steinberg of Prudential Douglas Elliman informs us, nor has it been rented. "It will be back late this year or next," he said without explanation.

So things are swell in Tribeca, but not yet out of control.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

It only makes sense, then, that when looking for a Manhattan home, Mr. Engelbert would choose a glorified, gilded garage built atop a former impound lot in far West Chelsea. Yes, Mr. Engelbert has just purchased, according to city records, one of the few remaining units at 200 Eleventh Avenue, that notorious Annabelle Selldorf condo tower with "the sky garages." Each apartment has its own private parking space connected to the unit, which is served by a vehicle elevator that can handle a Hummer.

Like every unit in the building, Mr. Engelbert's $5.5 million spread is a two-story affair, with a 44-foot-long great room on the first floor facing the Hudson. If the Swede would sooner dine at Craft or the Red Cat than whip up his own meatballs and lingonberry jam, the kitchen disapears discretely behind teak doors. Though listed as a fifth-floor unit, it is actually more than 100 feet in the air, thanks to the building's duplex-on-every-floor configuration and its 11-foot ceilings--including a 23-foot double-height space in the living room.

"Enormous southern walls protected from direct sunlight are an art collectors dream," decalares the Douglas Elliman listing.

A master bedroom is found on the second floor, facing those luminous, loft-like windows, as well as one additional bedroom on each floor, tucked into the southeast corner.

Good luck finding another unit like it, as only one remains on the market, a 3,248-square-foot penthouse asking $12.5 million. The unit had reportedly gone to stars of stage and screen Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman, but as The Observer reported earlier this month, the couple bought a fourth-floor unit for $9.6 million instead. Former Whitney chair Robert J. Hurst recently picked up another penthouse for $14 million, and, in 2009, Demonico Dolce bought two of them for nearly $30 million. There is also a $6.8 million unit on the eight floor that has been in contract since July.

Mr. Engelbert could not be reached, and listing brokers Herve Senequier and Leonard Steinberg declined to comment.

The only outstanding question, then, is whether this is a pied-à-terre or simply another savvy investment. Well, that and whether Mr. Engelbert will be parking a Saab or a Volvo in his sky garage.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Caroline Cummings, the 20-something real estate heiress who had bought the place from one of Rupert Murdoch's sons for $12 million, divided its 12,000 square feet into three units after a gargantuan renovation. The master bathrooms had heated floors; even the powder rooms got dual-flush toilets. "That’s pee-pee and poo-poo; that's European, it saves water," listing broker Robbie Browne told The Observer then, pressing the two buttons. "Fabulous, isn’t it?"

But things got un-fabulous very quickly. In November, Mr. Browne was replaced by a firm called the Core Group, and the house's tag came down to $36.5 million. In late March, the price was cut to $29.5 million. The listing came off the market last week, and just resurfaced with Elliman's Leonard Steinberg for $26 million.

The separately listed triplex downstairs has dropped to $7.5 million, less than half its original $15.15 million tag. The penthouse triplex, which once cost $17.95 million (and was most recently asking $13.1 million) has arrived at $14 million. The Candle Building also has a two-bedroom loft in between those big units, but it doesn't seem to be available alone any longer.

"I think there is a much better chance for these homes to trade," Mr. Steinberg wrote in an email this morning. "We shall see!"

mabelson@observer.com

“One of the great killers of all time,” Donald Trump called her at the firm’s awards ceremony five years ago, when Ms. Lenz fought off her slick-haired ex-protégé Michael Shvo, who had threatened to leave if he wasn’t named top broker.

On Feb. 12, after seas of silk-scarved, shiny-shoed, power-suited real estate brokers shuffle into the Pierre’s ballroom, the colossal real estate brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman will name its broker of the year. Just as it’s been since Dottie Herman and Howard Lorber bought the company in 2003, and as it will be until the day onyx bathrooms and heated-floor kitchens all cease to exist, the award will go to Dolly Lenz.

“One of the great killers of all time,” Donald Trump called her at the firm’s awards ceremony five years ago, when Ms. Lenz fought off her slick-haired ex-protégé Michael Shvo, who had threatened to leave if he wasn’t named top broker. He left. Last year, Jackie Teplitzky, an Israeli Army sergeant–turned–broker, complained publicly that the ceremony’s rules had been changed to give the award to Ms. Lenz.

But her biggest problems these days are these days themselves. Back in the bubbly autumn of 2007, Ms. Lenz was reported to have sold $748,319,000 of real estate the year earlier, four times higher than the country’s second-biggest broker. Since then, as the luxury housing market has fizzled gruesomely, she’s been replaced at her three biggest projects: the gargantuan white-brick Manhattan House; the New Age–branded Miraval Living; and Wall Street’s Cipriani Club Residences, where, the brokerage confirmed, Elliman’s Raphael De Niro, the actor’s son, has been the main broker for over a year.

But everyone’s fallen. There are no super-powered super-brokers in the recession. It’s made mortals of all, even the woman who once said things like “I don’t go through a lot of tirades, because I kind of just say, ‘That’s it. It’s over, O.K.? Sorry, can’t do that, goodbye.’” Even the agent whose ex-client Dennis Kozlowski called “Jaws.”

“Who’s to say you go from ’07 and do more? The market is not the same. And it may never be the same,” Mr. Lorber, Elliman’s chairman, said this weekend. “No one’s very happy. Developers aren’t happy, brokers aren’t happy, customers aren’t happy.” He pointed out that it wouldn’t be a disgrace to have sold a little less last year. “It’s like you buy a stock at $1 and it goes to $100—and then to $50. Did you make $49, or did you lose $50? What do you measure from ... Didn’t we all like ’07 better than ’08?”

But we are all not Dolly Lenz. She has her own BlackBerry commercial and, she says, 12 BlackBerrys. Her name is all over the real estate gossip pages—and her face is on real estate ads (next to Grace Kelly’s on one Manhattan House piece). When she’s on the Fox Business Channel, anchors say: “The No. 1 real estate agent in the country—this lady is just printing money!” Or: “Let us ask the Dolly.”

“RIGHT NOW, everyone’s losing a few things. She might be losing more because she had more to begin with,” said Claudine De Niro, whose husband and associate, Raphael, took over at the 106-unit Cipriani Club Residences in September 2007. When first asked about the condo, she denied that Ms. Lenz had left the project, pointing out that the broker’s name was still on listings. Later, Ms. De Niro said, “We’re all hurting. No one’s doing great. If they are, tell me who they are. I’ll hire them.”

Even though the Wall Street condo’s Web site says its units are 90 percent sold out, Mr. Lorber puts the figure at 70 to 75. “We said, ‘Maybe try something a little bit different.’ She was busy starting work at Miraval at the time, so we just said, ‘Look, Raphael’s a downtown broker.’”

But Miraval, the condo at 515 East 72nd Street that promises “massage centers, aroma-therapy spas, in-house sex therapists and skyline views,” hasn’t gone perfectly, either. In November, when Ms. Lenz was replaced, only 107 of 365 units had reportedly been sold. “Miraval is now on its third marketing team,” Mr. Lorber said. “So whatever those issues are, they are.”

“She’s a gifted dealmaker, but she’s not a marketing person,” said a source at Corcoran Sunshine, which took over from her at Miraval. “Good at marketing herself: Dolly Lenz as an institution, an epic, mythological figure. But not as far as laying out a strategic vision.”

Then there was the massive Manhattan House, a pale gray, glazed-brick emblem of the bubble’s gigantism. Not only did the Truman-era rental sell for a record $625 million four years ago, but the new owners aimed to turn the thing into a $1.1 billion condo. Besides the project’s sheer size, its furious old tenants, its hefty financing problems and its tepid location between Second and Third avenues, the new co-owners, Jeremiah O’Connor and Richard Kalikow, had a brutal falling-out. Mr. Kalikow left in October 2007.

In late January, the New York Post ran a feature about Ms. Lenz’s personal office in the Manhattan House, with its white silk roses and spotless glass desk. Later that day, according to The Real Deal, she was notified of the decision to remove her. Only a quarter of the 583 apartments had been contracted to sell, and only a third of those had actually closed.

“When they start talking about 25 percent, it’s bullshit,” said Mr. Lorber, pointing out that a chunk of the 583 units had rent-stabilized tenants or simply hadn’t been put up for sale yet.

“Look, as a company, would I have rather not lost it? Obviously,” Dottie Herman, Elliman’s CEO and co-owner, said later. “But, by the same token, if something is not going to sell at a certain price, you might as well stand on your head.”

“It seems Dolly’s timing was bad since it coincided with the financial crisis that no one anticipated or could stop,” said Joseph Aquino, an executive in Elliman’s retail real estate division, and a Manhattan House condo buyer. “The crisis was and still is global, and it was our 21st-century tsunami. It affected all of us.”

“I admire her,” he said later. “They use the following parable when the stock market tanks: ‘When the prostitution house gets raided, they even take the piano player.’”

BUT MS. LENZ has a Gatsby-like knack for transcendence. In a 2003 television interview, she and her husband said they spent, “swear to God, all the cash we had in the bank” on an $8,800 fur coat and nice dress so she could look the part of the power broker, back when she was just starting out. Four years later, asked by The Observer if she ever suffers envy, she said, “I’m just so busy doing ‘it.’ To covet you have to be outside ‘it,’ coveting.”

When she goes on, say, CNBC to tell the post–Bear Stearns world, “I think we’re actually going to be perfectly O.K., if not possibly better off,” she doesn’t just look like a mega-agent, golden hair swooping down just so, perfect nose tilted up toward the camera; she looks like a mega-agent in a Robert Altman film. Even in print interviews there’s an air of ascendancy: In December, when brokers were starting to scamper around with their arms in the air, she told the Post, “I don’t see panic at all.”

And when the Daily News ran a story last year that not only vaguely alluded to an oft-rumored affair between the broker and Mr. Lorber, but asked if she would leave the firm, she shrugged and said, “I don’t know why this starts every year.”

“I guess that’s cute for the bloggers,” Ms. Herman said this week. “But at the end of the day, you know what counts? You know what buyers and sellers care about? They don’t really care what they did or didn’t do. They care about results.”

So what exactly have Ms. Lenz’s results looked like since the November 2007 list put her sales at $748,319,000? She wasn’t included in the most recent list in November 2008—because, it turned out, Elliman declined to submit its agents’ stats.

On Monday, Feb. 9, Ms. Herman was in an office with Elliman’s Manhattan president, Steven James, working on the upcoming award ceremony. When asked, Mr. James said that Ms. Lenz’s total commissions last year were her best ever: “Over $7 million.” He said some of that money had come from deals that were signed before 2008, but took a while to close. When this reporter called back to point out that Ms. Lenz has said her annual commissions have been as high as $9 million or $10 million, Mr. James hung up. “Then don’t use the information,” he said. “I’m going into my meeting. Goodbye.”

“Tell her to show her 1099. All top brokers are curious to see,” one of the best agents in New York emailed this week, referring to the income tax form. Rivals don’t believe, for example, that one year’s sales could have been three-quarters of a billion dollars.

“I don’t know how people think I make it up. They’re out of their minds,” Ms. Herman said later, going over the awards stats in her office. “You know what? It’s just ignorance, I’ll tell you that.”

“Two thousand seven was lower, and 2008 was a bit higher,” she said about the firm’s top broker. In separate interviews, she and Mr. Lorber both offered to find specific dollar figures for Ms. Lenz, though Ms. Herman later apologized and said they were private.

“THIS IS A problem when you’re No. 1: You can go only one way, right? You can’t go up,” said Leonard Steinberg, a colleague who recently got a batch of townhouse listings with Ms. Lenz and Mr. De Niro. “It’s not possible. Sometimes when I don’t sell anything after 12 months of trying, I feel like I’m the biggest loser on the planet. But guess what? I’m not. It’s not me, it’s the market.”

Brokers obsess about other brokers, especially the aggressive ones, and they tend to get practically giddy at the thought of Ms. Lenz falling. “Think Madonna. When Madonna was at the height of career, everyone wanted to tear her down. And they did. And then she came up again. Let’s face it, American culture is cyclical,” Mr. Steinberg offered. “Dolly, for many people, has provided that sick entertainment where they want to see her fail.”

Even Ms. Teplitzky at Elliman argued in interviews that she’d been robbed of last year’s top broker award, thinking she’d done better than Ms. Lenz. “I’ll give it to you straight: Jackie did not know there were a few things Dolly had done that she hadn’t turned in,” Ms. Herman said. “There were a few personal sales that Dolly made.” But which broker beat which didn’t make a difference: Ms. Teplitzky, who has her own team at Elliman, was put in the running for the brokerage’s top group award. She got it, just like Mr. Shvo got it back in 2004.

But Dolly Lenz was still named top individual broker, just like she’ll be named top broker again on Feb. 12.

“The true test is to watch what happens. Dolly’s not perfect, nor am I, nor is anybody. People are good, but we’re all human,” Ms. Herman said. “But I think the test is yet to come.”

Ms. Lenz did not return several calls and emails, and representatives for Mr. Shvo, Ms. Teplitzky, Manhattan House, Miraval and even BlackBerry had no comment about working with her.

On Feb. 6, she was walking near Central Park when another major Manhattan real estate figure, one of the several she’s publicly feuded with, walked by.

“I’ve been told,” the associate said a few hours later, voice genuinely quivery, “that when you’re walking down a hallway, do not make eye contact, because it will remind her to get you. I swear to God, I’ve had a number of people tell me that.”

But this figure’s eyes went up to meet Ms. Lenz’s. She went by without noticing! Or did she? “Something will happen in the next month, guaranteed. I don’t talk this way about other people. There’s something wrong with her. And she scares me.”

mabelson@observer.com