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Sitt closes on 432 Park pad after trying in vain to flip contract
Thor chief had been eyeing quick $6M profit on $19M pad
It appears that Joseph Sitt couldn’t wriggle his way out of a deal to buy an apartment at 432 Park Avenue.
The Thor Equities [TRData] chief was trying to flip his contract on an apartment at the the skinny skyscraper, according to sources, much to the chagrin of the building’s developer, Harry Macklowe. But public records show he finally closed on the unit July 1 for $18.85 million.
A spokesperson for Sitt was not immediately available for comment.
Sitt first inked a contract to buy the unit on the 63rd floor of the building several years ago in a “friends and family deal.” But he quickly turned around and tried to score a profit of more than $6 million by attempting to flip the contract, according to people with knowledge of the situation. If Sitt had reassigned his contract under the terms of the early-bird deal he signed, he would have had to give Macklowe a cut of the profits, sources said. But he allegedly tried to cut Macklowe out.
Those allegations emerged in a lawsuit filed in June by Wendy Maitland, former president of sales at Town Residential, against the residential brokerage co-owned by Sitt.
Maitland suggested that Sitt’s alleged bad behavior at 432 Park may have cost Town a major assignment to market One Wall Street,also developed by Macklowe.
“I feel like a cop on the beat with Joe, always having to watch out for what he’s going to try next to get around the rules,” Maitland alleges she was told by one Macklowe Properties employee.