From left: David Kornmeier and 137 West 74th Street (credit: PropertyShark)

In the recent news flurry of record-breaking condominium and co-op sales, attention seemed to be drawn away from another notable purchase that quietly hit public records in late April. The price paid for the Upper West Side townhouse located at 137 West 74th Street doesn’t directly compare to the hefty amount exchanged for these other record-breaking purchases, but it does mark the highest price paid for an Upper West Side townhouse that isn’t located on a Central Park block. [more]

From left: Jonathan Plutzik, wife Lesley Goldwasser and their townhouse at 312 102nd Street

Fannie Mae is frequently involved in residential property deals, but usually not in such a direct way.

The sellers of an Upper West Side townhouse that made the list of the most expensive deals of last week, is Jonathan Plutzik, who sits on the board of directors of the government-sponsored mortgage giant, and Lesley Goldwasser, his wife and business partner in various ventures, The Real Deal has learned. [more]

A new play based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s third novel, “Elective Affinities,” and starring Tony Award-winning actress Zoe Caldwell, is showing in an elegant Manhattan townhouse on Fifth Avenue, the New York Times reported. The Soho Rep theater, normally headquartered at 64 Walker Street in Soho, had a reasonably difficult time finding the 19th century, brick-and-limestone-clad townhouse, for which theater-goers only receive the address after they reserve tickets. “We naïvely thought someone would want to rent their Upper East Side townhouse to us,” said Daniel Talbott, one of the producers of the play, which is about members of a vanishing social class. One broker was so confused she finally said, “It would be great if you could get a real theater” (italics not added). The address was not divulged in the Times. The show, which runs till Dec. 18, is sold out. [NYT]
[more]

156 West 88th Street

From the March issue: On the gutted second floor of 34 East 68th Street, residential real estate broker George van der Ploeg is giving a mini-lecture on 19th-century architecture. A rectangular staircase pillar isn’t original to the 1879 brownstone, says van der Ploeg, who is marketing the $11.975 million listing with fellow Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Nancy Aryeh. However, another round post a few feet away, topped with an elaborate handrail, “is original, and would have been mahogany, though it’s covered with about 10 layers of paint,” he says. Townhouse specialists like van der Ploeg are a vanishing breed. [more]

Images from inside the listing at 123 and 125 East 10th Street

The largest residential property available in the East Village has just hit the market, according to Jason Haber, CEO of Rubicon Property, which is marketing the listing The 8,400-square-foot townhouse has an asking price of $14.3 million. The listing is the largest and priciest single-family home currently on the market in the neighborhood, data from Streeteasy.com shows. The second largest is a 3,780-square-foot co-op for $5.4 million, according to
Streeteasy.com.

The listing, which is comprised of two addresses — 123 East 10th Street and 125 East 10th Street — is being marketed as a set. The nearly 160-year-old home, located between Second and Third avenues, includes 18 fireplaces, original moldings and a balcony. [more]

From the June issue: If developers think selling new condominiums in Manhattan is tough, they should try finding buyers for high-end townhouses. Pricey, older townhouses appeal to a tiny percentage of buyers — by one broker’s estimate, just 3 percent of house hunters are looking for a townhouse — and as a result, they’ve always taken longer to sell than condominiums. But since the real estate market crashed, townhouses are proving even more difficult than usual to sell, and when properties do change hands, it’s only after steep price reductions. “The townhouse market has been a little on the slow side,” said Anne Snee, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group. “Townhouses are trickier to market. It’s taking longer than normal for everything to sell.” [more]

The unit to see the biggest price cut today is Buttonwood Real Estate President & CEO Andrew Heiberger’s townhouse at
161 East 63rd Street, according to Streeteasy.com. The price of the
home, which has seven fireplaces, was cut by $2 million, and the home
is now on the market for $14.85 million. The townhouse is now listed
for 12 percent less than its asking price of $16.85 million when it
first went on the market in February. Heiberger, founder of Citi Habitats, bought the home for $8.15
million in 2004, according to Streeteasy.com. Sotheby’s International
Realty’s Michael Pellegrino has the listing. TRD

Iris Cantor — philanthropist and widow of Cantor Fitzgerald founder
Bernie Cantor — just closed on a townhouse at 11 East 74th Street,
between Madison and Fifth avenues, according to the Post. Cantor bought
the 10,800-square-foot home for $18.13 million. The seven-bedroom,
10-bath townhouse was first listed for $35 million in 2007. Cantor is
also trying to sell two of her other properties. Her 35,000-square-foot
mansion in Bel Air, Calif., which has its own hair salon, is on the
market for $53 million, and a penthouse at 110 Central Park South,
which Cantor has never lived in, is being marketed for $11.9 million. [more]

Miramax co-founder Robert Weinstein, of the Weinstein Co., and his wife Annie Clayton paid $15
million for a townhouse at 39 West 70th Street on the Upper West Side. The couple closed on the mid-block building between Columbus Avenue and
Central Park West May 6, according to property records published today. The four-story building is 6,580 square feet and is approximately 100 years old, data from PropertyShark.com shows.
[more]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been quietly expanding his five-story
townhouse at 17 East 79th Street, between Fifth and Madison avenues,
for the past two decades, and now owns four of the six units in the
adjacent property at 19 East 79th Street, a co-op townhouse. Bloomberg knocked down walls to combine
two of the floors in the buildings, and the total amount of space is
estimated to be about 12,500 square feet. Bloomberg bought the first-floor unit at 19 East 79th Street in 1989 for $550,000, then bought the
second floor in 2000 for $1.2 million. Purchase prices for the other
two units were not available. Bloomberg also owns two buildings on East
78th Street for his charitable foundation, and owns properties on Park Avenue and in Westchester County, Vail, Bermuda and London.
[more]