Two Plaza units list below purchase prices

Two apartments in The Plaza Hotel are being offered for sale at prices far below what they were originally purchased for.

The 1,212-square-foot unit 1505 is being offered for $4.9 million, 16 percent below its July 2007 sale price of $5.873 million, according to city property records. The other unit, number 1707, is a 2,841-square-foot apartment that is being offered for $14.5 million, close to $200,000 less than its May 2008 sale price of $14.674 million, records showed.

There are more than two dozen apartments listed for sale by recent buyers in the landmark building at 768 Fifth Avenue at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, according to StreetEasy.com, but the others are being offered at prices higher than their original sales prices. The renovated hotel has 181 condominium units and has been battling unhappy would-be purchasers and contractors who have not been paid.

The one-bedroom unit 1505 is priced to move because the owner already owns a two-bedroom apartment in the building, said Jeff Yi, an associate broker at Halstead Property. The owner, Fred Farago, is the president of American Fruits & Flavors, based in California.

“They simply don’t need it,” he said.

The other apartment is a three-bedroom unit owned by the New York-Presbyterian Fund, a non-profit charitable organization affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The Plaza unit was donated to the fund on December 29 by the original purchaser, money manager Oscar Schafer, founder and managing partner of Manhattan-based investment fund O.S.S. Capital Management. Warburg Realty is listing the unit, but would not comment on it.

A representative of New York-Presbyterian Hospital did not immediately provide a comment about the apartment.