A Mexican billionaire has sold his Trump Tower apartment to a Japanese retail mogul for $14.3 million, a price-per-square-foot Record For The Fifth Avenue condominium, The Real Deal has learned.
Telecom magnate Carlos Peralta is getting $5,600 per square foot for his 2,510-square-foot pad – more than double the $2,424 average of the building’s last dozen sales, according to listings database CityRealty.
Kesao Fukae, whose holdings outside Japan include a bank and a vineyard in California, paid about $1 million more than the original $13.5 million asking price; the unit hit the market in August 2009.
The sale closed today after going into contract in late June, said Nick Jabbour of NestSeekers International, who represented Fukae. Mark Shemel of Think Properties had the listing.
The park view and stature of Trump Tower clinched the deal for Fukae, Jabbour said.
The home, which has three bedroom and 3.5 baths, saw a price increase in February — to $15.5 million. Then, in May, Peralta took the property off the market. It resurfaced right before it went into contract in June, this time listed for $17.5 million.
“That’s a pricing strategy,” Shemel explained. “We were listing at $13.5 million for most of the time. Every year a seller’s target is going to change based on how the market is moving. It’s just strategy from [our] side.”
Peralta purchased the apartment in 1998 for $4 million, city records show. Yacht designer Francois Zuretti did the interiors. Peralta owns one of the biggest yachts in the world.
Peralta turned a cell phone franchise into a billion-dollar enterprise, buying a minority stake in Bell Atlantic, now owned by Verizon. He also owns the Tigres de Quintana Roo, a baseball team in Mexico.
Fukae owns a conglomerate of companies, primarily retail, and owns real estate around the globe, but Jabbour declined to specify where.
In November, Fukae sold his apartment at the Park Imperial for $7.75 million to Jim Ferraro, a Miami lawyer and the former owner of the Cleveland Gladiators football team, The Real Deal previously reported. Jabbour also represented Ferraro in that deal.