Steve Cohen’s Former NYC Penthouse Marked Up 18% to $36 Million in Just Four Months
Steve Cohen’s Former NYC Condo Is for Sale Again, at $36 Million
(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Steve Cohen sold his luxury Manhattan condo in June, finally getting $30.5 million after multiple price cuts. The buyers, who never moved in, are relisting the apartment for sale -- at an 18% markup.
The 9,000-square foot (836-square-meter) duplex penthouse at One Beacon Court, with postcard views of Central Park, is now seeking $36 million, according to the new listing by Compass agent Kyle Blackmon. It’s a bold wager that rising demand for high-end properties in the borough will translate to a quick spike in values, even while buyers still have plenty of choices.
“New York is such an important global city that you have to have a presence here,” Blackmon said in an interview. “I believe that there is considerable upside in the market over the next number of years.”
Blackmon’s clients purchased the condo from Cohen four months ago, ending an eight-year marketing effort by the New York Mets owner and hedge fund manager that began with a $115 million price tag. Shortly after the transaction closed, the buyers determined they’d be spending more time on the West Coast, and opted to resell the Beacon Court apartment rather than move in, Blackmon said.
High-net-worth shoppers have been homing in on Manhattan’s poshest apartments, sending luxury deal volume to levels not seen in nearly a decade. In the third quarter, there were five sales of homes priced from $30 million to $39.9 million, up from only one last year, according to Jonathan Miller, president of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. The median price of those five deals was $33.5 million, 5.8% higher than the single purchase last year.
The turnaround and markup of Cohen’s former apartment is “clearly optimism, given the supply that’s out there,” Miller said. “But it’s not some sort of wild symbol of excess.”
An expected return of international homebuyers to New York, as the U.S. prepares to open its borders to overseas travelers, figured into the new price tag, Blackmon said. So did the provenance of the apartment’s interior, which was designed on commission by the architect Charles Gwathmey just a few years before his death.
“If it were up to me, the interior of this apartment would be landmarked,” Blackmon said. “This is the equivalent of an Andy Warhol oil painting, relative to one of his lithographs that he signed.”
The five-bedroom apartment, on the 51sth and 52nd floors of the East 58th Street tower, has 24 foot (7.3-meter) ceilings and offers sweeping views of Midtown and the southernmost swath of Central Park. It was built in 2005.
It was Blackmon who helped touch off an earlier Manhattan luxury boom in 2012, when he sold former Citigroup Inc. chairman Sandy Weill’s penthouse at 15 Central Park West for $88 million, a record at the time. That deal, for a building constructed around the same era as One Beacon Court, netted just over $13,000 a square foot.
His current listing is a bargain by comparison, he said, at $4,000 a square foot.
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