Elliman exec LeDon buys colleague’s condo for $2.44M

A true friend — and a truly great colleague — is one who buys your apartment when you’re moving out of town, which is what a Douglas Elliman executive has done.

Horacio LeDon, senior managing director of the brokerage’s revamped Development Marketing division, has forked over $2.44 million for the West Village condo of fellow Elliman broker and friend Colleen Newland, and her husband, Max Newland, according to city records filed yesterday. 

The Newlands are moving from 374 West 11th Street to Florida, but Colleen will continue to work for Elliman. Colleen Newland could not be reached for comment.

LeDon told The Real Deal that the transaction was off-market because he is familiar with the place.

“I’d been looking for a while, and … I knew the apartment well, so I didn’t really have to look at it too much,” he said.

The sale went into contract on May 24 and closed July 26, records show. The Newlands purchased the 1,758-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo for $1.68 million in May 2010 through a short sale, LeDon said. The listing three years ago showed that the apartment includes a balcony and a patio, an open cook’s kitchen and a keyed elevator.

LeDon sold his two-room studio at the Superior Ink Condominium building at 400 West 12th Street, not far from his new digs, for $1.7 million in January 2012, city records show. He purchased that pad in March 2010 for $998,000. Since then, he has been living at Related Companies’ the Tate, at 535 West 23rd Street in Chelsea, he said.

Before joining Elliman, LeDon owned Horacio LeDon Real Estate, which operated in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and London. He has also been an executive at Starwood Capital and Related.

Newland worked for LeDon at his brokerage and was an executive at CitiGroup before that, LeDon said. For a time, she was the only other broker to work at LeDon’s firm, as The Real Deal reported.