By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/16 4:06pm

Manhattan Transfers

We're more than a little jealous of the views.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop $14 M. On an UES Penthouse

The Park Regis at 50 East 89th Street isn’t what normally comes to mind when one thinks of $14 million penthouses. Built in 1974, it lacks the classical prewar touches of its Park and Fifth Avenue neighbors, and the standard unit sizes range from studios to two-bedrooms—not quite the palatial spreads that one expects from an eight-digit Upper East Side tower.

But what it lacks in outward beauty, the co-op makes up for with its interior and its views. Perched on the 32nd and 33rd floors, the unit has jaw-dropping views of Central Park, with just enough city in the frame to give it a Manhattan flavor (“Located in historic Carnegie Hill, The Park Regis offers the atmosphere of a small town,” the building description claims—unconvincingly, if you ask us, the UES being one of America’s densest neighborhoods), but not so much that you can’t make out every feature in the park. The Central Park Reservoir is especially prominent. The grand prewar apartments on Fifth and Park may have stately exteriors, but they generally top out at around half the height of the Park Regis. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/08 4:57pm

Disappointments

We love you, No. 54, but you're bringing us down.

The Nay-Sayers Were Right: Observer Manse Sells at a Loss

Last week, when we wrote up the contract signing on The Observer’s old Upper East Side home, the brokers we spoke with were skeptical that the house would fetch its ambitious $28 million ask.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be low,” one veteran townhouse broker of 54 East 64th Street told us. Another concurred, throwing in a dig at Douglas Elliman super broker Dolly Lenz, whom the source claimed “tends to kind of dump her stuff.” Read More

By Janet Allon 5/07 5:00pm

NYOREALESTATE

Diane Ramirez.

Hot Town

It’s Springtime in New York again—that short slice of heaven squeezed between the long cold winter and the long hot summer—and the real estate market appears to be sprouting green shoots in celebration.  For real this time. The kind of growth that the professionals seem to think can really last. That’s certainly the take that Diane Ramirez, president and co-founder of Halstead Property, shared in a recent interview. And she has some solid evidence to back that up, unmistakable trends she has spotted that indicate a kind of vigor in the market that is sustainable. The market, she posits, has become unfrozen, people are feeling less stuck, and rather than sitting tight with what they’ve got, they’re upsizing, downsizing, and just generally moving on with their lives. “That,” she insightfully says, “is what real estate is all about.” Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/06 4:41pm

Manhattan Transfers

Modest façade yields modest returns.

Hedge Fund Honcho John Thaler Makes 3.4% Annual Return on the Upper East Side

John Thaler is best known for his tech-heavy hedge fund picks, but this morning he cashed out on a more old world investment: real estate. The JAT Capital manager just sold his condo combo at 450 East 83rd Street for $5.2 million, according to city records.

Mr. Thaler bought the two 17th-floor apartments at the Cielo in 2006 and 2009, for a combined total of almost $4.4 million. After an average of five years of ownership, his profit—exclusive of any taxes, fees or renovation costs—comes out to about $800,000, or an average return on his initial investment of about 3.4 percent per year. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/01 4:15pm

Manhattan Transfers

It's no Graceland, but 151 East 72nd Street will have to do for Mr. Sillerman.

From Movies to Music: HBO Honcho Sells UES Townhouse to Beatport Owner

After his $50 million golf venture on the Caribbean island of Anguilla went spectacularly awry, Robert F.X. Sillerman told the New York Post, “I think I have shown conclusively I’m not knowledgeable enough about the real estate business.”

Poor judgment in the West Indies aside, we’re betting that the music industry Renaissance man—Mr. Sillerman’s business interests range from the concert promoting titan that became Live Nation to Elvis’s old Graceland estate—will do a lot better with his latest purchase: a $12 million limestone townhouse on the Upper East Side.

The five-story, 18.5-foot-wide home was sold by HBO CEO Richard Plepler, who was not easily parted with the townhouse. After buying 151 East 72nd Street for almost $8.2 million in 2002, he got greedier than a Valyrian slave trader and tried to double his money by asking $18.5 million in 2008. While he may have had some takers a year earlier, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy not a week later, prompting his broker, Jaar-Mel Sloane of Sloane Square, to pull the listing a short time after. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/29 6:04pm

Manhattan Transfers

No word on whether the Times globe comes with the apartment.

Breaking News! Punch Sulzberger’s Old Fifth Avenue Pad Sells For $12.5 M.

The newspaper industry may be in secular decline, but at least the Sulzbergers’ bank accounts will be buoyed in the coming months: the late Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, Sr.‘s palatial pad just sold for a cool $12.5 million, according to city records.

The eighth-floor corner unit at 1010 Fifth Avenue, a 15-story limestone prewar, has three bedrooms, including the master, which overlook the Metropolitan Museum of Art, plus another overlooking East 82nd Street. And it also has no shortage of storage space: we count 18 closets, including a few walk-ins (the Times may need to find a new place to keep its archives).

Sheila Ellis at Sotheby’s was tight-lipped about her listing when we called, which she shared with Patricia Wheatley, though the duo wasn’t shy about touting its bold-faced bonafides in the listing, which described the co-op as “the home of one of the world’s most prestigious and well known families.” Read More

By Anna Silman 4/29 2:27pm

Canine Couture

photo-30

Upper East Siders Now Paying $100 to Tramp Stamp Their Dogs

Nowadays, doggies searching for an act of youthful rebellion have more options than just pooping on the carpet.

Pooches can embrace their inner punk by getting “inked”–yep, that’s right–with a new doggie tattooing service offered by Upper East Side Celebrity Dog Groomer, Jorge Bendersky.

According to an email from Dana Humphrey, Bendersky’s P.R. rep, glitter Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/03 3:46pm

Manhattan Transfers

It might not look like much, but 912 Fifth Avenue has park views and Lord Norman Foster's pied-à-terre on the eighth floor.

Zoe Cruz Drowns Her Sorrows in a $7.34 M. Fifth Avenue Co-op

Zoe Cruz has had a tough couple of years. Once the highest paid woman in finance and on track to succeed Jack Mack as CEO of Morgan Stanley, Ms. Cruz was publicly ousted from the firm in 2007 after the mortgage unit she ran lost $3.7 billion. Just last year she had to liquidate her $200 million hedge fund, Voras Capital, when its value dropped 8 percent in a year, and now, according to rumors reported by the New York Post, she’s splitting up with Ernesto Cruz, her husband of three decades.

Nothing a little real estate therapy can’t solve. Ms. Cruz—but not Mr. Cruz—just closed on a $7.34 million, 15th-floor unit at 912 Fifth Avenue, a limestone pre-war building between East 72nd and 73rd Streets, according to city records. Read More

By Janet Allon 4/02 5:00pm

nyoneighborhood

New York City's Central Park along Fifth

Moving on Up: Value Abounds in NYC’s Most Historically Glitzy Neighborhood

In each issue of NYO, The Observer’s new real estate and lifestyle supplement, we will spotlight a different neighborhood. And what better neighborhood to start with than the venerable, diverse, complicated, constantly evolving Upper East Side, where The Observer was born and first trained its sights. The Upper East Side encompasses a large swath of Manhattan—stretching Read More