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Libet Johnson lists West Village townhouse for $13M
Johnson & Johnson heiress bought $48M Vanderbilt mansion last year
Heiress, socialite and townhouse aficionado Libet Johnson appears to be seeking a buyer for her West Village townhouse. A $13 million listing for the home at 85 Perry Street hit the market today with Pamela D’Arc, an executive vice president at Stribling & Associates.
D’Arc declined to discuss the seller, but city records show that the property is owned by Falconer LLC, the same entity that Johnson used to buy the Vanderbilt Mansion at 16 East 69th Street in July. At $48 million, that sale tied for the priciest residential deal of 2011 (the other was a $48 million combination condominium unit at The Plaza that sold to Russia MTV founder Igor Krutoy) and the most expensive townhouse sale since Lehman Brothers collapsed nearly four years ago.
Falconer paid almost $12 million in cash to buy 85 Perry Street, between Bleecker and West Fourth streets, in June 2008 from a Merrill Lynch executive, property records show.
Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, bought the 12,000-square-foot Vanderbilt Mansion from fellow heiress Sloan Lindemann Barnett and her husband, beauty.com founder Roger Barnett. Neither party used a broker, since Johnson and Lindemann Barnett are reportedly friends.
The deeds for both townhouses were signed by Jill Ames, an associate at law firm Paul Hastings, who did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Federal-style Perry Street townhouse, built in 1818, backs onto the private Bleecker garden, D’Arc said, which is overseen by a custodian who also tends to the sidewalks in front of the 13 houses that share the outdoor space.
“You don’t have the normal amount of maintenance that one does when you have your own garden,” D’Arc said.
The 3,300-square-foot home also comes with a roof terrace and a “completely versatile” atelier on the top floor that could be used as anything from a playroom to an art studio, she said.
Manhattan-based Falconer was established in 2005, state records show, shortly before it acquired a Greenwich Village townhouse that it sold in 2007 for almost $12.8 million.
Bruce Lumish, a partner with accounting firm J.P. Cohn, is listed in state records as the contact person for the LLC, but he declined to comment since he is no longer involved with the entity.