Vanessa Bronfman, 117 East 69th Street

Vanessa Sherry Bronfman became a sales associate at the brokerage Key Ventures only a few months ago.
For one of her first assignments, she’ll be marketing a $27.25 million townhouse.
In representing the 40-foot-wide townhouse at 117 East 69th Street, she’ll be joined by veteran brokers Alina Pedroso and Paula Del Nunzio from Brown Harris Stevens, and Carrie Chiang from the Corcoran Group. Still, scoring such a pricey listing is quite an impressive feat for a newbie broker.

Of course, it helps that the house is owned by Vanessa’s father, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music Group chairman-CEO and billionaire heir to the Seagram fortune. [more]

Images from the home at 117 East 69th Street, some muppets (center, left) and Edgar Bronfman (center, right)

A townhouse that once served as the creative headquarters of Muppets creator Jim Henson hit the market today at $27.25 million.
The house, located at 117 East 69th Street, is a co-exclusive between the Corcoran Group’s Carrie Chiang and Brown Harris Stevens’ Alina Pedroso and Paula Del Nunzio. Previous reports had pegged the price at $28 million. Henson had purchased the house in 1977 for $600,000 from the New York State Pharmaceutical Association. [more]

From left: Lauren Muss, Carrie Chiang, Janet Wilkinson and Pam Liebman

Residential brokerage the Corcoran Group held its annual company awards ceremony this week, honoring some of its top-producing teams and agents. Lauren Muss was named the Individual Salesperson of the Year, while the Carrie Chiang Team was honored as the Top Team of the Year. Janet Wilkinson took home the Rookie of the Year prize. At Corcoran Sunshine, the top-selling onsite sales team was comprised of Graham Spearman, Aidan Sullivan, Melissa Ziweslin, Lynne Brown and Lena Nusimow, who work at Extell Development’s the Rushmore, at 80 Riverside Boulevard between 64th and 65th streets. TRD

791 Park Avenue and Peter Kraus

Peter Kraus, the Wall Street financier who made headlines in 2008 when he resigned from Merrill Lynch with a $25 million payout after just three months on the job, has sold his 791 Park Avenue co-op for $7.65 million after two years and over $1 million worth of price cuts, according to the Wall Street Journal. The four-bedroom, 4,250-square-foot apartment originally came on the market for $9.2 million in October 2008, one month after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and then-Merrill CEO John Thain sold the firm to Bank of America. That was also, incidentally, one month after Kraus began his duties at Merrill. Later that year, Kraus dropped $36.6 million on a swanky pad at 720 Park Avenue, where he currently resides. The listing broker for the 791 Park Avenue unit was Corcoran’s Carrie Chiang. [WSJ]

[more]

The Real Deal has ranked the top listing agents of the week base [more]

Will Carrie Bradshaw return to the Upper East Side? Sarah Jessica
Parker and Matthew Broderick are continuing their seemingly endless
apartment hunt but have shifted their sights to Park Avenue, according
to the Post. The couple — previously spotted checking out a penthouse 54 Bond Street
and a townhouse in the West Village — were recently seen taking a look
at the $29.8 million penthouse duplex at 610 Park Avenue, the former
Mayfair Hotel. As The Real Deal previously reported, the condo belongs to Taiwanese-American Nautica founder David Chu,
who now lives at 15 Central Park West with his wife, philanthropist
Gina Chu. The five-bedroom apartment was initially listed for $32.8
million with the Corcoran Group’s Carrie Chiang when it officially hit
the market in March, which made it one of the top 10 most expensive
condo listings in the city. The 7,700-square-foot spread, has a
1,450-square-foot private rooftop terrace, solarium and formal dining
room. Residents have access to concierge services, valet parking and a
fitness center, and also opt for maid service and catering from French
restaurateur Daniel Boulud’s eponymous restaurant downstairs. [Post, 2nd item]

[more]

870 Park Avenue and, top to bottom: Paula Del Nunzio, Carrie Chiang, Dolly Lenz

(Updated 6:27 p.m. with quote from Dolly Lenz) Benny Shabtai, the Raymond Weil watch mogul who has been trying to sell his multi-million dollar Park Avenue townhouse for the better part of the decade, has been shuffling the listing between the queen bees [more]

HGTV’s new realty reality show, “Selling New York,” premiers tonight at 9 p.m., promising to showcase the “top of the real estate food chain.” The show follows Gumley Haft Kleier’s Michele Kleier and her broker daughters, Samantha Kleier Forbes and Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, as well as Core’s Shaun Osher, among other brokers from each firm as they maneuver their way through some of the city’s most high-end real estate transactions. In honor of the debut, The Real Deal did some digging to find out which of the city’s prized properties are slated to be featured this season. Among them: a four-bedroom loft at the Chelsea Mercantile listed for $22.45 million, the 25 Murray Street loft for which former Giants star Michael Strahan is asking $1.85 million, a $17 million landmarked townhouse at 109 East 69th Street, and a 2,295-square-foot spread at highly-anticipated One Brooklyn Bridge Park (see slide show of many of the homes above). Click here for more information about the residences expected to appear in the upcoming season.
[more]

At left: 610 Park Avenue; Top center: Nautica founder David Chu; Bottom center: Listing broker Carrie Chiang, of the Corcoran Group; At right: Penthouse 16E

The duplex penthouse at the former Mayfair Hotel, which belongs to Nautica founder David Chu, officially hit the market yesterday at $32.8 million — roughly $4,260 per square foot. The price tag makes it one of the top 10 most expensive condo listings in the city, according to data from Streeteasy.com.

The penthouse is one of two in the 15-story, prewar limestone and brick building, now known as 610 Park Avenue. Investment firm Colony Capital purchased the property for $15 million in a 1996 foreclosure sale and teamed up with Donald Trump in the condo conversion project, which was designed by architect Costas Kondylis.

Chu, the Taiwanese-American apparel mogul, and his wife, Gina, a philanthropist and trustee at the non-profit Asia Society, purchased penthouse 16E at 610 Park Avenue in 1999, city property records show. It had been combined with the unit below, and while sale prices for apartments before 2003 are not publicly available, the pair took out a $5 million mortgage at the time to pay for at least some of the home, according to the records. [more]

Could a lack of counter space be forcing one of New York’s premier chefs to pack his bags for a new home? Daniel Boulud, the French restaurateur, has put his three-bedroom condominium unit at 610 Park Avenue, above his famed restaurant Daniel at 65th Street, on the market, brokers say. The 2,500-square-foot Upper East Side apartment, which has three bathrooms, is on the market for $6.5 million, according to a listing at that street address that first appeared two weeks ago on Brown Harris Stevens’ Web site, without pictures of the kitchen (see accompanying slide show). That listing does not have a unit number, and the agent for it, John Burger, would not confirm that the apartment is Boulud’s. “I can’t comment on any of my clients,” Burger said. But city property records indicate Boulud does own a condo in the building. And one of the photos in Burger’s listings shows some furniture upholstered in striped animal-hide-like fabric that would seem to match the “zebra-print couch” Boulud refers to in a 2003 interview in the New York Times interview about his home. [more]