An Upper East Side townhouse has just gone into contract to an anonymous buyer for upwards of $47 million, which would make for the priciest single-family home sale in New York City since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the five-story, 33-foot-wide townhouse at 16 East 69th Street, once owned by the Vanderbilts, wasn’t officially listed. And after three years of quietly showing the mansion to prospective buyers, the owners — author and cell phone heiress Sloan Lindemann Barnett and her husband, Beauty.com founder Roger Barnett — have found one, sans broker, meaning that no one will be taking home a commission on what will surely be one of the city’s biggest deals of the year. [more]

The Trump International Hotel has agreed to let the Charlie Sheen “Torpedo of Truth” speed through during the 20-city tour’s New York and Connecticut legs. According to the Post, the tiger-blooded, former “Two and a Half Men” star and his posse checked into 12 rooms at the hotel yesterday and plan to stay four nights. It’s a #winning moment for Sheen, considering he had been barred from several top hotels in the city after trashing his room at the Plaza last year and causing $7,000 in damages. For that reason, Sheen had been rumored to be eyeing private residences for his return to town, but sources now say that was never true. Rooms at the Trump International can cost around $850 per night. [Post]

Annual common charges in New York City condominiums are slated to increase next year by between 4.5 percent and 6.5 percent, on average, according to property management company Cooper Square Realty, which is the managing agent for more than 400 apartment buildings in the city, including the Plaza and One Lincoln Square. Meanwhile, co-op owners are getting hit a little harder, with maintenance charges set to rise by an average of between 5.5 percent and 7.5 percent in 2011. TRD [more]

As The Real Deal reports in the December issue, out today, casino magnate Steve Wynn has already flipped the Plaza penthouse he bought just a few months ago for $1 million more than he paid. According to the Wall Street Journal, the $24.4 million sale won’t amount to a profit for Wynn, since he’ll have to take that extra $1 million and apply it to transfer taxes and broker commissions. The buyer — anonymous, for now — is said to be the same individual who wanted the 5,600-square-foot spread over the summer, when Wynn nabbed it in a bidding war. But despite the tireless new owner, the condo is still a far cry from its original $31 million contract price in 2007. That buyer later backed out, and the apartment was listed in May for $24 million before Wynn purchased it. [WSJ]

An image of Kahn’s design for Roosevelt Island

There are few areas of New York City odder than Roosevelt Island. It is closer to Manhattan and to Queens than either is to the other, and yet it feels like a world apart. And this is notwithstanding the fact that only a narrow avenue of water separates it from either borough, or that a bridge, a tramway and even a subway connect all three.

And yet, unless you live on Roosevelt Island, you are rarely if ever likely to go there. Indeed, progress seems to happen on the island far more slowly than elsewhere in our five vibrant boroughs.

Thus it is hardly surprising that it has taken more than 36 years for groundbreaking to occur, as it just has, at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, in preparation for a monument to FDR designed by Louis Kahn shortly before his death in 1974. But there is an added irony as well as a cruel appropriateness to the delay. [more]

After staying shuttered for 15 months, the Plaza Hotel’s tea spot, Palm Court, is set to reopen April 12, according to the Post’s Steve Cuozzo. The $6.5 million 2005 restoration hadn’t gone over so well with locals, according to Cuozzo, with its pricier tea and poor lighting. This time around, Shane Krige, the Plaza’s general manager, said that all-new chairs, table linens and other furnishings will “breathe life into the focal points.” Another plus for money-conscious tea sippers: afternoon tea will now be $20 cheaper than before. [Post]

From the February issue: Top real estate developers joined together to fight the proposed development of the 10 million-square-foot World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, 46 years ago this month. Meanwhile, in 1929, while riding the real estate boom of the 1920s, the developer of the Plaza Hotel joined with a bank in an unusual plan to finance the construction of two Turtle Bay apartment buildings with the public sale of stock and no mortgage. And the Real Estate Board of Brokers, a trade association that later changed its name to the Real Estate Board of New York and became the leading voice for the industry in the city, was formed 114 years ago this month. Click here for more. Compiled by Adam Pincus

The legendary Demel Bakery is planning to walk away from a 10-year lease at the Plaza hotel’s grand concourse and is suing developer Elad Properties for fraud, the Post reported. Demel is claiming that Elad lured the Viennese bakery to the below-ground mall under false pretenses in February 2008 — namely, that the location would put it in the midst of retailers like Harrods, Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Elad, which purchased the famed hotel for $675 million in 2004, has not followed through, according to the suit, filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court. The basement’s Plaza Retail Collection, part of a $450 million hotel renovation, is now “populated with unknown… retailers or — worse — vacant, unleased space,” the suit claims. Demel, which stopped paying rent to the Plaza in February 2009, is the only restaurant in the 160,000-square foot mall and could leave within weeks, according to sources, and other retailers are threatening to follow. [Post]

From the February issue: Slowly, Manhattan’s residential real estate market is coming back to
life. When the city’s major brokerages released their fourth-quarter
market reports last month, they revealed a clear jump in activity. The
number of sales in the fourth quarter grew 8 percent from the same
period in 2008 and almost 11 percent from the previous quarter,
according to Prudential Douglas Elliman’s report.
But thanks to the lingering grip of the credit crunch, the vast
majority of those sales were resales in established buildings, not new
developments.
Only 19 percent of closed sales in the fourth quarter were in new
condos, according to Elliman, down from 38 percent in the fourth
quarter of 2008. By contrast, some 58 percent of closed sales in 2006
were in new developments. Meanwhile, Elliman estimated that the “shadow
inventory,” or not-yet-released new development units, may total more
than 6,000.  [more]

Condo-hotels, like the Plaza Hotel at 768 Fifth Avenue, and the new Trump Soho at 246 Spring Street, may soon become a thing of the past. The buildings allow condo buyers to access hotel services and restrict their occupancy so that units can be rented out while they are away. But they are now proving difficult to sell — not because of a lack of interest but because of a lack of financing. “There is no financing for condo-hotels, so people have to buy in cash,” said Rodrigo Niño, president of the Prodigy Network, which is marketing Trump Soho. “What we think is, out of the original sales, we’re going to lose 10 to 15 percent of the people who won’t be able to close because of lack of financing.” After their planned 205-unit Nobu Hotel and Residences fell through, Raphael and father Robert De Niro are now planning a new condo-hotel in Miami’s South Beach, but the model is slightly different: Buyers’ occupancy will not be restricted and the units will not be rented out part-time. Condo-hotels using the Trump Soho’s model “are proving to not be successful,” said Raphael De Niro, managing director at Prudential Douglas Elliman. At the Fannie Mae-approved 75 Wall Street, hotel services are being sold to buyers à la carte. “Fannie Mae will not approve a condo-hotel under their guidelines,” said Larry Kruysman of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, who is directing sales at 75 Wall Street. [NYT]