The Chloë Sevigny lookalike has gotten a lot of press, but brokers remain unimpressed. (Photo courtesy Gawker.)

Janna Bullock, the Russian mansion flipper who washed up on the shores of Brighton Beach after the collapse of the Soviet Union, did not have much luck with 12 East 82nd Street, but she's clearly hoping for better fortune with 14 East 82nd Street. She recently listed the property for $25 million, selecting Nikki Field and Patricia Wheatley of Sotheby's International Realty as the home's listing agents (Ms. Field and Ms. Wheatley also sold 12 East 82nd).

Ms. Bullock picked up Nos. 12 and 14 in 2006, paying $14 million for the former and $12.2 million for the latter. She intended to combine the two homes into a massive 43-foot wide property, Richard Steinberg at Warburg Realty told The Observer (Ms. Bullock had promised him the listing, he said, only to give it to Ms. Field), but could never get the combo plan past the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

"Logic wouldn't let you do that!" a different broker told The Observer of the would-be combination, which involved two townhouses by two different architects, without so much as congruent window heights.

14 East 82nd Street is being sold "as is."

Cutting her losses at No. 12, she sold the home for $15 million earlier this year, or a measly $1 million more than she paid seven years earlier—likely not enough to cover the taxes and broker fees (not that she didn't try for $19 million).

But at No. 14, Mr. Bullock is hoping that the fates will align. Whether she can get $25 million for what is essentially a shell—albeit a beautiful shell with a "bowfront limestone façade with ornate iron grill double doors" and four walls, which is more than could be said for No. 12—remains to be seen.

Nearly every broker we spoke to was skeptical. "I bet if she got $20 million she'd take it," said one. "It's stupid," said another of the $25 million ask. "She can't get $25 million for an unrenovated house," said a third.

Part of Ms. Bullock's problem, as one source put it, is that "she doesn't renovate. She stripped the house, planning to renovate it, and then she never did it." (Of Ms. Bullock's wealth, the source speculated, "She got it from her husband"—shady Russian biznesman Aleksei Kuznetsov, currently hiding from Putin somewhere in Europe according to the latest rumors—"and then she lost it. She can't afford to do anything except sell them if she can.")

"She made money in one building," said the source—54 East 64th Street. "She sold it for $9 million more [than she bought it for]. It seems easy, real estate. Until it's not."

"I'm sure she's good at other things," the source continued. "We won't get into what."

They're not exactly giving it away at $15 million either. (NYT)

It turns out that the townhouse at 12 East 82nd Street did not, in fact, sell for anything close to its $19 million asking price. An in-progress gut renovation and a missing rear wall proved daunting, even in this giddy trophy market.

When The Observer first learned that the five-story brick federal townhouse was in contract early this January, we were taken aback. We have, after all, seen a lot of bold asking prices and Janna Bullock, the Russian developer selling the place, is famously fearless when it comes to defending her real estate investments and her honor. But $19 million beggared belief. Assuming that the would-be owners had likely knocked the price down, we called Sotheby's broker Nikki Field, who has the listing with colleague Patricia Wheatley.

Ms. Field told us that the townhouse was not only in contract, but in contract for close to the $19 million asking price. The Observer felt like we'd been hit with a ton of bricks—a whole rear wall of them, in fact. Ms. Field attributed the handsome contract, and the decision to raise the price $4 million in December—from $15 million to $19 million—to overwhelming interest in the property.

Now, the sale has closed for a thoroughly underwhelming $15 million, city records show. Ms. Field has not yet returned The Observer's request for comment on the discrepancy (perhaps we just have very different understandings of "close"?)

Ms. Bullock paid $14 million for the house back in 2006, buying it from plastic surgery addict Jocelyne Wildenstein. The house was already in the midst of a renovation at that point, Ms. Wildenstein having decided that the house "needed a little work" and Ms. Bullock gamely continued the job, knocking out walls both interior and exterior before listing the place for $15 million this November. All things considered, the closing price isn't stunning, but Ms. Bullock did get her first asking price and the house spent very little time on the market.

Maybe the buyer, 1282 Street LLC, discovered the missing back wall and demanded a discount?

The buyer's LLC is registered to an apartment on the 17th floor of 151 East 85th Street owned by Leslie Lewis Sword. The buyer could well be someone else, however, given that deeds and residencies don't always match up. And why not leave the new owner at least a modicum of privacy given that he or she will be entirely exposed for at least as long as it takes to construct a new rear wall?

kvelsey@observer.com

The front of 12 East 82nd looks pretty good.

You know that the luxury real estate market has reached a fever pitch when gutted townhouses with only three walls start selling for $19 million. True, it is the back wall that's missing from 12 East 82nd Street, but backless townhouses don't have the same allure as backless gowns.

The five-story brick federal townhouse is in contract for close to the $19 million ask, confirmed Sotheby's broker Nikki Field, who has the listing with colleague Patricia Wheatley.

Russian developer Janna Bullock, the owner of the townhouse and its next-door neighbor, is not known for her timidity—last year she mounted an art exhibit at 14 East 82nd to strike back at all the nasty rumors that have been circulating about her in the Russian press. But it takes a certain kind of chutzpah to ask mint-condition prices for an empty shell. (A chutzpah, we might add, that has been amply rewarded.)

But the back is a mess. (NYT)

The would-be buyer is apparently unconcerned with the townhouse's deshabille. And he or she is not the only one. Ms. Field said that they decided to raise the price $4 million in December because of overwhelming interest in the property.

"There's very little inventory," said Ms. Field. Another broker noted that the location was excellent, even if the townhouse is not. And the townhouse is landmarked, so it's most definitely not a teardown.

Ms. Bullock purchased the house from plastic surgery addict Jocelyne Wildenstein, a.k.a. "the Cat Woman," for $14 million in 2006. Ms. Wildenstein had started a massive renovation of the house before she decided to sell, filing an application to install a hydrotherapy pool on the first floor. A broker who had seen the house when former owner Fred Levinson lived there said that it was a perfectly normal townhouse when it was sold to Ms. Wildenstein.

Ms. Bullock was clearly not thrilled with what the Cat Woman had done with the place after sinking her claws into it. But Ms. Bullock, a well-known townhouse flipper, lost her appetite for the renovation and listed the house for $15 million this November.

Besides the beautiful blue tarp shown in the photo above, the buyer will get a 21-foot by 86-foot structure on a 102-foot deep lot, as well as a façade of marble and limestone. The listing doesn't pull any punches: "TO BE BUILT OUT AND IS BEING SOLD IN 'AS IS' CONDITION," it cautioned potential buyers.

The pending sale will come as welcome news to the neighbors, who complained about the eyesore to the Times last spring.

“The rain goes right through it,” neighbor Johanna Van Straaten told the Times. “I put up flowers in my window so I wouldn’t have to look at the building.”

kvelsey@observer.com

Hopefully it works, as the listing has bounced from Stribling, where it was listed for $11.5 million in the fall of 2007, to Brown Harris Stevens the following year, with an audacious tag of $15 million, before arriving at Warburg around the time our article appeared, when the ask was set at $10.95 million. For what it's worth, Dana wrote that nobody is exactly sure the building's ever broken the $10 million mark, so if this one pulls it off, bravo.

 -- What's it like working the ESPYS, ESPN's annual awards show? The Desk has no idea, but now we know it pays well enough to buy your own million-dollar two-bedroom in the East Village. Maura Mandt, who has produced the show -- among other things -- eight times since 1998, just bought a co-op at 50 East 10th Street. The final price was $1.15 million, down from $1.25 million but also more than the $999,000 the unit was asking back in March. That sale entered contract but never closed, and the apartment was relisted in June. The seller was Joan Bardach, a clinical psychologist.

Clifford Alexander Jr. and his wife, Adele, sold their apartment at 860 United Nations Plaza to Kane Company Inc. Principal, John M. Kane and wife, Anita for $2.11 million. Mr. Alexander, a lawyer, businessman and public servant, served as the first African American Secretary of the Army, during the Carter administration. Ms. Alexander is a historian and member of the National Council on the Humanities. The couple's daughter, Elizabeth Alexander, a poet and professor at Yale University, wrote and recited the poem, "Praise Song for the Day" at President Obama's inauguration in 2009. The high-floor three-bedroom boasts sweeping river and city views through floor-to-ceiling windows. The apartment features a double-length corner living room and dining room and a master bedroom with ensuite marble bath. It was listed by Sotheby's Nikki Field.

Corporate lawyer, J. Truman Bidwell Jr. sold his 30 Sutton Place penthouse to Marc and Michele Flaster for $3.7 million. Listed by Brown Harris Stevens' Mary Rutherford and Leslie Coleman, the "unique" two-bedroom penthouse flaunts two "exquisitely landscaped terraces" with sweeping river views. In addition to a dining solarium and two wood-burning fireplaces the apartment comes with a lobby-level maid's room and private bath which has been "retrofitted as an extensive wine cellar and storage space."

Kevin Berryman, CFO of International Flavors & Fragrances and former CFO of Americas for Nestle Professional, and wife, Risa, bought a $1.925 million apartment at 144 Columbus Avenue from retired banking executive, Harry Stainrook and wife, Judith Swann. The apartment does not appear to have been listed.

--cmalle@observer.com

Mr. Burger was talking about the third-quarter Manhattan housing reports from various brokerages that came out last week, and he didn't have much good to say about them. "They don’t separate out pre- and postwar architecture and there’s a huge difference between how those two perform in markets,” he said.

Mr. Burger is not alone in his view. While in years past the reports received lots of publicity—both in reporting the health of the Manhattan housing market and in their ability to create buzz—New York's top brokers echo his unfavorable sentiments. It's not that the reports are especially inaccurate or inartfully done; it's just that they're more for the folks at home and not for people who make a living in the market day-to-day.

"The reports are targeted at the consumer—it’s old news for brokers and forecasters, but it supports what we knew was happening,” said Sotheby’s broker Nikki Field. The statistics of the report are based in deals “which happened during the second quarter, but were finalized and transferred in the third,” said Ms. Field, who was the subject of The Observer's latest Sit-Down. "They are not the pulse of the market; those are the deals being negotiated today.”

Michele Kleier, a broker who runs her own firm, found that the reports don’t attest to the daily and weekly fluctuations in the market, affected by myriad factors including the volatile stock market. “I peruse them, but the truth is that I only care about my own business, and my own business changed radically in the last quarter,” she said. "With the stock market not having a good week, things can all change quickly. So I read them, but do I take them as gospel? No.”

It is true that brokers keep the reports around, usually to rattle off statistics to clients. Bruce Ehrmann, an executive vice president at Stribling, said that his team did review the reports in a meeting, but that they are “always lagging—real estate is always day-to-day, an almost ephemeral thing.”

Some buyers like to hear the numbers and past history, but it's not the most useful information for someone who's looking to buy or sell an apartment right now. A good broker will know actually useful and dynamic information: what's really going on with prices at a particular time, neighborhood, and type of property.

“They are not put out by people who are in the marketplace," Mr. Burger said, "but people who analyze the marketplace through computer screens."

editorial@observer.com

You were a Pan Am flight attendant in the late ’70s, when you married. Where did you meet your husband?
Four twenty-nine East 52nd Street, it was a new rental building called River Court. I, and a lot of stewardesses, moved in—one-bedroom apartment; we had five girls. We heard about a guy who was moving into the same floor, a corner two-bedroom. And I knew he had a lot of closets, and I had no closets for my clothes.

After Pan Am, there was a job in marketing, which you left to raise your daughters. So why, in the late ’90s, did you return to work by becoming a real estate broker?
Because my children were desperate to get me out of their hair; I was everywhere in their lives. My children were in plays, I was the woman backstage doing the costumes; my children went on a field trip, I was the woman on the field trip. … I was totally overbearing.   

You sell a very particular, blue-blooded slice of Manhattan real estate, which your Sotheby’s profile calls ‘the ultra-luxury segment.’
I might sell someone’s townhouse, and his niece or his ex-wife’s new lover needs a place to live. They’ll still keep me and call me, and it might be a studio in the Village, or it might be a West Side one-bedroom walk-up. We take the business. … You want to sell everything. There are some brokers that say, ‘Oh, no, I only handle these guys.’

In 2003, you set a Carnegie Hill townhouse record for price-per-square-foot when you sold an $11.25 million house at 13 East 94th to a software executive. Is that what put you on the map?
I look at my first important sale as my first million-dollar sale. … That’s always on my mind, that’s always the big sale.

Your longtime real estate partner, Gillian Jolis, died in March 2005, after battling cancer.
In December, we had the single most complicated deal of our entire career. It was a major, high-profile person … and Gillian was at Sloan-Kettering, finalizing the deal. … Real estate attorneys came and went on this; the other broker on the other side was fired; and she kept it all together. She was doing deals right up to the end.

Last year, you sold $66 million of real estate, making you one of the 100 biggest brokers in the country. But this July you said your team’s volume was off by 50 percent from that time last year. What about now?
We just did our numbers: We are off last year’s by almost 40 percent.

You have quite a history at River House, the East 52nd Street co-op so fancy that it wants to be called by its street address, not name.
Well, all you have to do is put two and two together and look at all the listings at River House that haven’t been moving. I guess that’s not working for them, is it?

There are a lot of apartments lingering over there, including your $24.5 million listing on the third floor. Why aren’t they being bought?
What we generally feel is big apartments are bought by big families, and all the River House properties are big; big families have children; children go to school in Manhattan; and that is not a school neighborhood.

The Chicago producer Marty Richards first put his River House co-op on the market nine years ago. You had the $29 million listing, though you lost it in 2007, and it still hasn’t sold. Nor has former WorldCom director Francesco Galesi’s duplex, which you once listed for $50 million. What’s the problem?
I highly request that the board revisit their selectivity. … It’s such a high-profile turndown building that people in their right mind do not want to apply there, because they do not want the stigma of that turndown. And that is the reason. It’s really a shame, because the apartments are stunningly wonderful.

You also have four listings nearby at 860/870 UN Plaza, the towers where Truman Capote and Bobby Kennedy owned apartments. Do you live in the neighborhood?
No … I love that building. I’ve sold a lot there. … I happened to be at the right place at the right time; I was averaging $1,300, $1,400, $1,500 per square foot. And then the market tanked, and the one property I could not sell there—and I will—is number 24DE. We have it on for $5.5 million. … This was Vilar, the bottom floor of Vilar’s.

That’s the fallen millionaire Alberto Vilar, who was found guilty of securities fraud. Is he the one who put in the blue and gold columns?
Yes. My people bought it from him when he was put in house arrest, and he had to sell off, the government sold off, half his property.

The investor and environmentalist Dan Lufkin listed his 455 Central Park West apartment, a 19th-century chapel, with you for $17 million, even though he paid $5.775 million. The tag is down to $14 million, but isn’t that high?
He paid $5,775,000? It was an empty lot; no roof on it. Just the facade was there. It was a burned-out, looked like bombed-out, facade with no roof. It was filled with birds and homeless people.

The mansion at 9 East 67th Street sold this January for $25 million. Even though you were its broker, the commission went to Richard Steinberg, who’d had the listing before you. You quarreled in the press over it; he called you a liar. Have you talked since?
Certainly I respect his work, and if there was business for us to do together, we would do it.

You just sold 99-year-old Bunny Mellon’s townhouse at 165 East 70th Street to Morgan Stanley chief John Mack and his wife for $13.5 million. Its entire first floor is a 12-car garage; she had used the house for storage. Did that make it a hard sell?
Eight offers in the first week on the market. It was not a hard sell. Eight real offers.

A couple like that probably could have spent a lot more on a house, but they ended up buying what was basically the Mellon family’s storage space. Is modesty in?
High-net-worth individuals right now all want to be low profile. … They do not want a high-profile purchase, and they’re looking for a reason to explain it.

Won’t that change?
For new money it will, yes—any new money, people who haven’t been burned yet.

mabelson@observer.com

According to city records, Paul Mellon’s 99-year-old widow Bunny sold 165 East 70^th Street last month to an anonymous limited liability corporation for $13.5 million. Two sources close to the deal said that the buyers are John J. Mack and his wife, Christy. A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley had no comment.

Even if $13.5 million sounds like a gargantuan sum for these lowly times, Mr. Mack could easily have chosen something a lot more conspicuous. For one thing, the house is between Lexington and Third avenues, which most high-chinned brokers consider déclassé. And, weirdly, it’s spent years as a warehouse: Ms. Mellon, whose bigger mansion up the block was sold off three years ago for $22.5 million, simply used this one to store things like cars and furniture--plus a longtime interior decorator, Bruce Budd, who lived and worked there for the past dozen years.

Maybe this means hilariously expensive trophy properties really are out, and that modesty (or a form of it) really is in? Either way, Mr. Mack and his wife have a lot of work ahead of them. “The third and fourth floors were just empty, in rather distressed condition, actually,” said Mr. Budd, who wouldn’t comment on the deal or the buyers, but would describe the house. “She wanted me to be closer to her, so she offered me this place to live in.” He had it to himself! “I know--it’s pretty incredible.”

According to a listing with Sotheby’s broker Nikki Field, the limestone carriage house was built by C.P.H. Gilbert, but converted into a garage and chauffeur’s quarters for the Singer sewing heir Stephen Clark. “It’s a no comment,” she said Thursday afternoon.

As for Ms. Mellon, who worked on the Rose Garden for her friend Jackie Onassis, Mr. Budd said she likes French décor, but “in a sort of relaxed, anglophile way.” The third floor has a 31-foot-wide garden in between the north and south sections of the house. But the obvious gem is the 30.5-foot-wide, 96-foot-long, 12-car garage that takes up almost all of the first floor, and has ramps up to the parlor floor and down to the 103.5-foot-long basement.

Will the buyers keep the garage? “I hope they do something interesting with it,” Mr. Budd said, “and not turn it into some typical, you know, modern something.”

Mr. Mack has a house in Rye, N.Y., and it’s not clear from city records if he owns elsewhere in Manhattan. But earlier this year, during an interview with Charlie Rose about last September's economic calamity, he mentioned a pied-a-terre: “I remember coming home, or coming to the apartment in the city, and saying to Christy, that, you know, ‘There’s a chance I could lose this firm.’ And then 30 seconds went by and I came back to her and said, ‘But I’d rather be doing this than sitting on the beach in North Carolina and reading a book.”

mabelson@observer.com

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