A cool $35 million piece of property drops to $20.95 million awfully quickly these days.
A six-story, seven-bedroom, ten-bathroom, walnut-paneled, chandeliered townhouse at 11 East 74th Street was put on the market for $35 million in August 2007, even though it had sold for $11,230,700 only a year and a half earlier. According to city records, the place is owned by a corporation associated with the townhouse–loving Rinzler family, which runs the developer Dominion Management.
There have been serious price cuts ever since: Last February, the tag came down to $32.5 million, according to the listings Web site StreetEasy; in May, the price was $29,275,000; in November, it was down to $26,975,000, and soon afterwards Brown Harris Stevens lost the listing to Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Lisa Simonsen and Rachel Koenig.
But the townhouse got its fourth price cut in January, when the tag came down to $24.95 million. Even that wasn’t enough, so the price was most recently chopped down to $20.95 million.
Considering that the Rinzlers only paid $11 million—though they had to pay renovations—could there be other cuts still to come? “No,” Ms. Simonsen said over the phone on Thursday.
“No,” said Ms. Koenig, who was also on the phone during the interview. Ms. Simonsen said that the house had been redesigned to its core, but that there were still original details. Ms. Simonsen was not amused when asked about that oxymoron, and hung up. Ditto Ms. Koenig.
According to New York magazine, the house once belonged to stained-glass maestro Louis Comfort Tiffany’s daughter, Mary, who lived there with her nutritionist husband. Ina Balin—you may remember her from such 1960s westerns as John Wayne’s The Comancheros and Elvis’ Charro!—moved in later.
Update: Ms. Simonsen called back to point out she had been doing a hectic open house at the time of the interview, and had warned she would be getting off the phone. “I would never hang up,” she said. “That’s not my style.”
