
New York City’s biggest transactions so far this year closed in June, with an anonymous buyer paying $157.5 million in total for two full floors at the ultraexpensive 220 Central Park South.
The purchaser, whose identity was shielded by the limited liability company Chancery Lane, bought the 60th floor for $82.5 million and the unit above for $75 million, according to city property records, presumably to combine. Both were resales.
Also at the limestone skyscraper, situated near Columbus Circle in Midtown: A sponsor apartment on the entire 67th floor was acquired for $59.5 million, and a half-floor unit on the 36th floor, another resale, sold for $23 million.
All the resales at the nearly sold-out condominium complex — four have closed to date — were bought for more than their original purchase prices, a clear indication that the apartments there can hold their value (and then some), even during a pandemic. (The first resale, in May, sold for 23 percent more.) The same can’t be said for some other high-end buildings, like One57, the glassy-blue high-rise at 157 West 57th Street on billionaires’ row, where units have been selling at deep discounts from the original purchase price.
$50.9 million and the other upper floor in March 2020 at $51.4 million. The anonymous seller of the 36th-floor unit also saw a gain, having paid $21.9 million for the apartment in October 2019.
The Central Park South condominium is the city’s most expensive residential building, and arguably the world’s most profitable. Sales have topped $2.86 billion as of April 2021, according to the latest financial statement from the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, and 91 percent of the units have been sold. This includes the nation’s highest-priced single residence: four full floors bought by the hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin in early 2019 for nearly $240 million.
On the Upper East Side, the Levinsons sold their townhouse at 11 East 69th St., near Fifth Avenue in the Lenox Hill neighborhood, for $53.5 million. They had purchased the building back in 2004 for $9.5 million from the nonprofit American Friends of the Hebrew University.
The six-story, limestone building, which underwent extensive renovations, was erected in the 1920s and once served as an apartment house. It has around 16,352 square feet of interior space.
The new owner used the entity Acuspi No. 1 Ltd. in the transaction.
$19 million. The five-story, 25-foot-wide Greek Revival building has a classic front stoop and plenty of outdoor space. There’s a roof deck, a 25-by-28-foot rear garden, and terraces on the parlor and fourth floors.