Max Abelson
Articles by Max Abelson
Tim and Elisabeth Hasselbeck Buy Glassy $3.25 M. Condo
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Tim Hasselbeck and his wife, Elisabeth, the blond, slightly annoying Survivor star-turned-View co-host, just bought a four-bedroom, 2,349-square-foot apartment at Ariel West, the new tower developed by Gary Barnett at Broadway and 99th Street. According to city records, they spent $3.25 million.
The floor plan says that two of the bedrooms, the 30-foot living/dining room, the family room, and the master bathroom are all lined against a massive wall of windows. Of course, that means there will be a nice view for the View co-host, which would have easily made for a nice pun-dripped headline—but there are times in every real estate writer's life when the opportunity to write genuinely idiotic double-entendres must be resisted.
In any case, it's not the first Upper West Side place for the couple. They spent $999,000 in 2005 on an apartment 20 blocks south, city recoreds show, which they haven't sold off yet. That place probably didn't have Ariel's über-condo bonuses like a 51-foot indoor pool, an outdoor basketball court, a pet grooming salon, billiards parlor, and an "elaborate" childrens' playroom, which will suit Ms. Hasselbeck's elaborate tastes.
Howard Wolfson Sells Central Park West Condo For $1.91 M.
It's not a particularly great day to be a close Clinton ally, but Howard Wolfson, one of the senator's chief strategists, has a non-election reason to celebrate. According to a deed filed in city records today, he finally sold his two-bedroom, 1,333-square-foot apartment at 455 Central Park West for $1.91 million. The condo was first listed way back in July, according to the Web site Streeteasy, and closed late last month.
The listing says there are 10-foot ceilings, "absolutely mesmerizing" Central Park and skyscraper views, a layout that "lends itself perfectly to gracious living," and two bedrooms with "luxurious limestone bathrooms en suite!" Sounds classy. On the downside, Mr. Wolfson paid $1,775,000 in 2005, so he didn't make much money from the deal.
'Come on In, Baron!' Eric de Rothschild Buys Village Co-op for $1.15 M.
The old French wings of the Rothschild family have inappropriate members and very appropriate members: 23-year-old Raphael de Rothschild was found dead from a heroin overdose in Chelsea a few years back, but then Baron Guy de Rothschild, who recently died at 98, threw balls at his country home with Dalí, and also fought the Nazis.
Baron Eric de Rothschild is the good kind of Rothschild. He helped bring the family bank back to France after it had been nationalized under Mitterrand, and has spent the past 34 years running the vineyards at Château Lafite Rothschild. And he just bought his painter wife, Maria-Beatrice Caracciolo Di Forino, a Village penthouse where she can do some work whenever they’re staying in New York. read more »
Chatty Hotelier Jeff Klein Sells Old Chelsea House for $5.95 M.
Jeff Klein, the hotelier behind the prim City Club, doesn’t have much nostalgia for the gritty, arty days of the old Chelsea. “Not really,” he said from L.A.
So Mr. read more »
No Name-Dropping in $46 M. Brooke Astor Apartment Listing, But Floorplan's Gargantuan!
The massive listing for the late Brooke Astor's duplex at 778 Park Avenue is finally online, and it's the kind of thing that real estate obsessives will salivate over for years. Leighton Candler, the broker who beat out four other super-powerful brokerages--read what Ms. Astor's daughter-in-law had to say about her here--put up four flowery interior shots, but the real keeper is the floorplan. read more »
Grand Theft Auto Mogul Prefers 'Vacuous' Neighborhoods
In an interview with New York magazine today, Rockstar Games mogul Dan Houser talks about his inspirations for the godly New York video game Grand Theft Auto IV: "You've got the angry sleeping-pill-popping sort of Sex and the City type woman, you know, whose looks are just beginning to fade ... The people in Soho are expensively dressed and into shopping and vacuous in their own way." read more »
Noted Debtor Veronica Hearst Sells Upper East Side Co-op 'at Top Price'
The news this week that a building super was keeping mail-order baby chickens at his luxury U.N. read more »
Contracts in the Time of Collapse: Bear Stearns Exec Makes It Just in Time on $1.9 M. Condo
The fiery death of New York real estate will look something like this: Bear Stearns executives will renege on the Upper East Side apartment contracts they signed before their firm’s collapse; finance guys at other firms, saddled with another round of nonsteroidal bonuses, will keep downsizing; foreign investors will get panicky and back out of Manhattan; Bloomberg will blubber; brokers will bawl. read more »
Beautiful Woman Fails in Manhattan! Scarlett Johansson Sells Tribeca Loft for $52K Loss
Plump-lipped, long-legged, well-paid starlets that don’t worry about making any money from their real estate sales might be Manhattan’s only hope for reversing our absurdly high-climbing prices. read more »
Veronica Hearst's Fifth Avenue Apartment Selling For 'Around $30 M.'
Veronica Hearst's reportedly difficult financial situation is about to get a lot better. read more »
Will Mortgage Master Melissa Cohn Go On Old Pal Jeff Appel's New Talk Show?
Starting in June, mortgage broker Jeff Appel will co-host a new hour-long program called NY Residential TV.
Airing Sundays at 9 a.m. on CW11, the show teaches New Yorkers about "preparing appetizers for open houses," real estate investment, and decorating.
In this week's Sit-Down, The Observer asked Mr. Appel's old boss, mortgage queen Melissa Cohn, about their relationship. It's safe to say she probably won't be preparing any cocktail weenies for the cameras: read more »
Asher B. Edelman Wasn't Technically Rejected at 820 Fifth
This past Monday, sitting in the massive library of his rented townhouse, the formidable old corporate raider Asher B. Edelman was kind enough to tell me about his place for an article I wrote yesterday.
But I asked about a rumor that he had once been rejected by the board of 820 Fifth Avenue (which has turned away multibillionaires like Steve Wynn and Ron Perelman). “I never actually made an offer," he said. "I’ll tell you the story if you’d like!” I nodded, and here’s his massive explanation: read more »
Godly Shutterbug Thomas Struth Snaps Up Co-op on ‘Frontier-ish’ Upper East Side
Thomas Struth, maybe the most sublime photographer alive, just bought his first apartment. This month, he and his wife, the writer Tara Bray Smith, paid $2.1 million for a two-bedroom apartment on East 67th Street, near Park Avenue, according to city records. read more »
Need $23 Million Fast? Mortgage Queen Melissa Cohn Checks Your Credit
Location: Last year you did $1,129,126,981 in loans, which makes you the biggest mortgage broker in the country. How is that possible during such a massive economic crisis?
Melissa Cohn: Well, 2007 happened to be probably the biggest year in real estate for New York City, and I was certainly a beneficiary of that. I mean, it was the highest-grossing year for real estate in any year that’s ever been recorded. I certainly have benefited from the increase in the value of real estate in New York City.
Old Corporate Raider Asher B. Edelman Meets the New Landlord, Stays Put (for Now)
The real Gordon Gekko doesn’t own his New York home anymore. He rents.
Asher B. read more »
Gutted Former Muppet Manse on Sale for $32 M.
When a handsome young couple listed a Little Italy townhouse for $18 million earlier this month, even though they spent $1.5 million to buy it in June 2004, it made a nice little statement about the grand voraciousness in the downtown real estate universe.
Uptown wants in, too. read more »
Last Laugh: Comedian Carol Burnett Sells Trump Tower Digs for $5.58 M.
If billionaires replace all the comedians in Manhattan, will laughter die? Or will the rich just sit around guffawing simply because they’re rich? read more »
Gutted Muppet Mansion Listed for $32 M.
This is the year of the ridiculously massive, gloriously ambitious real estate listing.
Remember the $75 million house on East 71st that art collector Aby Rosen bought for just $15.65 million in 2004, or the $64 million house on East 68th that sold for $7.6 million in 2003?
It's another day, and there's another epic listing. Corcoran's Carrie Chiang has put the red-brick, neo-Georgian mansion at 117-119 East 69th Street (between Park and Lexington) on the market for $32 million.
Muppet mogul Jim Henson bought the 12,000-square-foot house in 1977, but his family kept it until 2005, a decade and a half after his death.
According to city records, the Henson estate sold the place for just $12.4 million to Brian Brille, the global head of investment banking for Bank of America, and his wife Leslie. They want just about $20 million more than they paid three years ago, but it turns out that the Brilles haven't done renovations yet. read more »
Ricky of Ricky’s Lists Park Slope House; Four Hatbox Toilets, Magnetic Wall Included
Ricky Kenig is a dramatic man. In February 2006, the beauty and costume shop kingpin spent $1,375,000 on a nice little Park Slope brownstone at 409 Eighth Street, and then he obsessively, expensively, tremendously and fluorescently gut-renovated it.
“I’m real anal,” Mr. Kenig, a divorced father of teen girls and a baby, said about his restoration tastes. “It’s like the worst thing.” read more »
Quest Magazine Chairman Plays Chicken with Mortgage Company, Wins
S. Christopher Meigher III, the well-bred, well-connected, well-tanned chairman and CEO of society magazine Quest, is not the kind of New Yorker whose name appears in public notices for co-op auctions.
But an Upper East Side broker who apparently likes leafing through The Observer’s legal section found a recent notice for an exclamatory sale—“BY VIRTUE OF DEFAULT”—of Mr. read more »
Holy Vaulted Ceilings! Lufkins Want $17.5 M. for CPW Chapel
When very rich New Yorkers put their plush Manhattan real estate on the market for many millions more than they paid, it’s spectacularly easy to really loathe the sellers.
(Consider that liquor heir Edgar Bronfman Jr. bought a Fifth Avenue co-op this year for $19.5 million and put it on the market a week later for $24 million; or that a handsome young couple just began asking $18 million for a Little Italy house that cost them $1,512,000 in 2004.) read more »
Astor Heir Picks Georgia-Bred Broker to Sell Brooke's 778 Park Duplex
Brooke Astor’s duplex at 778 Park Avenue, a perfectly trimmed, scarlet-lacquered, canonical Upper East Side abode, officially has a broker, eight months after Astor’s death at age 105.
Her 83-year-old son Anthony D. read more »
The Rich Get Richer: $45 M. Plaza Apartment Deal, New York's Second Biggest Ever, Closes
In an epic article today on why the super rich are still spending superbly, the Times wrote that buyers have "already closed on 71 Manhattan apartments that each cost more than $10 million, compared with 17 apartments in that price range during all of 2007."
That stat was already outdated by lunchtime.
According to city records, an 11th-floor apartment at The Plaza sold this month for $45,100,956, which makes it the second most expensive apartment ever to close in New York. It's behind only Harry Macklowe's massive spread four floors down at the newly renovated hotel, and slightly beats the even $45 million that scary hedge fund guru Dan Loeb just paid for his 15 Central Park West penthouse. read more »
Dora the Explorer Co-Creater, Playwright Wife Buy $4.395 M. Condo
A hit children's TV show will take you far in this town. Dora the Explorer co-creator Eric Weiner and wife Cherie Vogelstein, a playwright, have bought a high-floor, seven-room condo at Ariel West, the new glass tower on West 99th Street and Broadway. According to city records, they paid $4.395 million.
Besides their four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom, 2,881-square-foot apartment, the Upper West Side writer couple will have an in-building spa, plus a 51-foot-long swimming pool--though, you know, what self-respecting Upper West Side writer couple doesn't have one of those nowadays?
Finally, for $6 M., a 'Hassle-Free Solution to Owning an African Game Farm'!
If you're free Monday afternoon, and can wrangle an invite, you might want to stop by Gramercy Tavern's dining room for the special luncheon to introduce "15 uber-luxurious safari homes" on the 54,000-acre Phinda Private Game Reserve in South Africa.
Development of the houses began just last March, according to the press e-mail we just got, so it's not clear where the image above comes from. All the e-mail says is that prices start at $6 million, which offers "discerning buyers with a passion for Africa and its wildlife a unique, hassle-free solution to owning an African game farm." read more »
Tribeca’s Priciest Townhouse Listing Ever! $35 M. for North Moore House
If it wasn’t piercingly clear that Manhattan’s ego hasn’t been dented by the enduring national economic calamity, nothing sends a message of gusto like one of the most expensive listings ever in the city’s most expensive ZIP code. read more »
Slim Profits? Former Diet Drink King Sells East Side Condos for $14 M.
After you’ve sold your diet products company to a multinational conglomerate for around $2.3 billion, pinching pennies from apartment sales is no longer important.
So even though an investment group belonging to Slim-Fast founder and philanthropist S. read more »
Natty Novogratz Couple Asking $18 M. for Souped-Up Little Italy House
The disturbingly handsome couple Robert and Cortney Novogratz has spent the last 12 years buying rundown houses, renovating them in a style they call “vintage nouveauxx,” and then selling them for disturbingly massive profits. read more »
Top Co-ops Amid Dismal Economy: No Fear, Still Loathing
When the economy disintegrates and Manhattan bursts into flames, the board of the block-long co-op 765/775 Park Avenue will still be begging the day help and dog walkers to take the service elevator; the co-op board members at 820 Fifth will still be turning away unsatisfactory multibillionaires like Ron Perelman and Steve Wynn; and Ambassador Donald Blinken’s living room at the read more »
Beautiful Deal: Bono Finally Sells El Dorado Co-Op for $4.9 M.
New York suffered a brutal blow to its ego last week when Madonna said she was totally over Manhattan. “It’s not the exciting place it used to be,” the singer said. “It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn’t feel alive.”
So when The Observer found a real estate record filed just this morning that said Bono and his wife Ali Hewson had sold their Central Park West apartment, it seemed crushing. Could Madonna and Bono both be abandoning New York in the same short span? No.
According to the $4.9 million deed, the co-op is Bono’s old 2,322-square-foot apartment at the El Dorado at 90th Street and Central Park West. read more »
Why Didn't the Nazis High Five?
THE HITLER SALUTE: ON THE MEANING OF A GESTURE
By Tilman Allert
Metropolitan, 106 pages, $20
What if the Nazis had greeted each other with high fives instead of that stiff-armed, sharp-handed salute? What if Germans had been allowed to say hello to one another by name instead of invoking their Führer?
Tilman Allert’s The Hitler Salute, a joyously sharp account of a massively evil slice of human history, doesn’t treat the Nazis’ obligatory two-word, one-arm greeting as a product of evil, but as its enabler. He argues, movingly, that the salute wounded Germans’ sociability, connectedness and personal sovereignty, warping the holy human order.
A nation that’s forced to adopt inhuman gestures, in other words, is fated to oblige inhuman horrors: First hellos disappear, then morality. read more »
Advantage, Roddick: Recently Betrothed Tennis Deity Gets Earthly Gramercy Pad for $1.19 M.
Andy Roddick can serve a ball 155 miles per hour, faster than anyone in the history of professional tennis. For that reason, and one or two others (the 25-year-old’s forehand is good, he’s good-looking), he just got engaged to a 20-year-old bikini model named Brooklyn—you may remember her from the last two Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. And, less noisily, he just bought his first Manhattan apartment.
The condo, at East 22nd Street near Gramercy Park, was listed for $1.195 million with Elliman’s Tamir Shemesh, who wouldn’t comment. According to his listings, the apartment is in an old brewery, which seems proper for a 20-something athlete. read more »
‘Freaky’ Rockefeller Naomi Waletzky (a.k.a. Muffy Nixon) Nabs $9.2 M. Condo in Schrager’s 40 Bond
Ricky Martin has sold nearly 70 million albums, and because of that absurd accomplishment he owns a $6.3 million apartment at 40 Bond Street, the glittery green condo developed by hotelier Ian Schrager. read more »
Get Small! Arty Couple Lindemann and Dayan Buy Slender East Side Townhouse for $5.2 M.
In 2006, monolithic contemporary art collector Adam Lindemann bought Jeff Koons’ 3,500-pound Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold) from the dealer Larry Gagosian for a reported $4 million. A year later, cruelly, he sold it back to him for $23.5 million. read more »
Brazilian Psychedelia Pioneer Gilberto Gil Buys East Village Condo for $1.3 M.
Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, the epically inventive engineer of Brazilian psychedelia, Tropicália, deserves to live in some volcano with poodle fur wallpaper, a milkshake bathtub, corn syrup carpets and his 60’s backup band Os Mutantes perpetually playing live.
But the 65-year-old musician and his fourth wife, mellifluously listed on the dee read more »
Non-Hoax Email of the Day: 'DUDE RANCH VACATIONS AS BIBLE STUDY INCENTIVE'
Getting swept away by funny things on April 1 is always dangerous because you could look a tad foolish. But this reporter received an email that is not a joke (and if it somehow is, the accompanying Web site is a work of genius, and also God is going to be furious.) Here's the introduction, and the rest is after the jump.
Dear Mr. Abelson, I thought that readers of New York Observer would be interested in learning how children can win dude ranch vacations for their families by answering and illustrating questions from the Gospel of John for an online book. Please let me know if I can answer any questions about the Children's International Arts Festival. All His best...
Fear and Loathing in Trump SoHo
There's an excellent profile of Trump SoHo in this week's New York magazine--which happens to come awfully close to suggesting that the building is seriously tied to mob money. But its most swaggering and cold-hearted quote doesn't come from Mr. Trump himself! "We don’t want airline hostesses here," says neighborhood activist Sean Sweeney, the director of SoHo Alliance, explaining his opposition to the building, "or people coming from Europe or Asia for a couple of weeks."
Then there's this mean zinger: "Who was the first buyer in that building—a Croatian-Swedish soccer player?" (It's Inter Milan star Zlatan Ibrahimović, a Swede born to Bosnian parents). "Trump represents everything we hate. Bad taste. Déclassé. He’s uptown, we’re downtown, and never the two shall meet," Mr. Sweeney says. read more »
Eviction-Happy Landlord Croman Buys 75th Street Building for $14.5 M.; Should Tenants Fret?
If you pay very little rent for an apartment in the very coveted real estate holy land off Fifth Avenue in the East 70’s, you probably don’t want to hear that Steven Croman has bought your building.
Mr. Croman, who has been named to The Village Voice’s 10 Worst Landlords List, made headlines in 2002 when he began to empty a 23-unit apartment building he’d bought for $5.5 million to make a quadruplex for his family, plus a duplex for his sister-in-law. read more »
Famed Faker Frey Buys Soho Condo for $985K (For Reals)
According to city records, fabulist James Frey has a fabulous new unit to add to his three-bedroom apartment at 505 Greenwich Street. This month, Mr. read more »
Astor Son Auditions Brokers for Brooke's 778 Park Pad
The library alone at Brooke Astor’s 778 Park Avenue duplex, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases that got no less than 10 coats of scarlet lacquer, launched a thousand high-heeled Upper East Side adjectives. The philanthropist’s apartment was, until late July 2006, one of those co-ops that had long been fawned over as a perfect American home. read more »
Did Oprah's Dead Dog Sophie Inspire Gayle King's New Penthouse?
In January, the Post reported that Oprah Winfrey's best friend, Gayle King, had bought a penthouse at the Place 57 condo on East 57th Street for "approximately $7.4 million."
The deed for the deal just surfaced in city records, and it turns out that the three-bedroom, two-fireplace apartment was bought in the name of SOPHIE'S PENTHOUSE LLC, which seems to refer to Oprah's famous cocker spaniel Sophie. read more »
Why A $33 M. Park Avenue Townhouse Is Like A $5,000 Madison Avenue Dress
In my Manhattan Tranfers item today on gold watch guru Benny Shabtai’s townhouse at 870 Park Avenue, I tried to figure out why someone who couldn’t sell his house in 2006 for $19.9 million would try selling it now for $33 million.
The Brown Harris managing director John Burger, who isn’t involved with the listing, gave me this explanation for why Upper East Side buyers might actually like the $13.1 million difference: “A $5,000 dress in a window on Madison Avenue is much more interesting to a woman than a $1,000 dress,” he said. “It’s true.” read more »
Robert Toll: ‘Everywhere You Don’t See High-Rises, There Are Places to Build’
Location: We’re probably in a recession, and a big culprit is the housing market—prices were much too high, and now they’re really sinking. As the nation’s largest luxury home builder, do you feel guilty?
Mr. Toll: I feel guilty for not being more cautious and recognizing that we had to be on thin ice because things had been so good for so long. [But], by 2000, we should have entered the next down cycle, on an ordinary basis. But we didn’t. And if I had become cautious then, my company would have missed the great ride that it took in ’05 and ’06. In ’05 we made $800 million plus—net, net, net! read more »
Vegas Scandal Refugee Edward Scheetz Buys Soho Penthouse for $10 M.
Sometimes even good New Yorkers get wrapped up in very bad things. And then, if they’re lucky, they buy $10 million Soho penthouses to recuperate and repent in while the tabloids move on.
Last August, the 40-something father of two Edward Scheetz found his 23-year-old girlfriend stiff and “different funny colors” in his Las Vegas apartment. Mr. read more »
You Say Good Buy and I Say Hell No: Feuding Couple Forfeits Massive Deposit at 895 Park
Even if schadenfreude is universal, few human beings take joy in others’ suffering quite like high-end brokers, the kind with silk scarves, Harvard degrees and chauffeurs. They especially love when other agents can’t sell big listings, especially if something tangy got in the way. read more »
Stern’s Shine Boosts Oft-Marketed Park Avenue Townhouse to $33 M.
Luxury watch executive Benny Shabtai’s extravagantly contemporary townhouse at 870 Park Avenue, once described by the historian Christopher Gray as a futuristic beach house, first went on the market way back in February 2004, listed for $23 million by Corcoran’s super-aggressive superbroker Carrie Chiang.
That August the price dropped to $21 million, then to $19.9 million in June 2005. read more »
It Takes a Lot to Build in the Village: Swaths Selling for $20.2 M. ($45.4 M. With Townhouses!)
There are all kinds of cheap vacant lots. read more »
Tear Down This Wall! Beekman Place Townhouse Hits Market for $25 M.
A wall is not a wall on Beekman Place, that two-block blue-blood stretch over the East River: A wall is a slap in the face; a call to arms; an issue for the State Supreme Court.
That’s where William R. read more »
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