UPDATED, MAY 21, 2020, 11:42AM: A luxury condo that once belonged to Malaysian fugitive Jho Low has been sold by the U.S. government at a sharply discounted rate.
The two-bedroom, second-floor unit at 102 Prince Street — also known as 118 Greene Street — was sold to an anonymous LLC for $7.6 million, property records show. That’s down from the $8.5 million when it went into contract last month, and the $9.9 million asking price when it was listed last July. Adam Modlin of Modlin Group had the listing.
Low, who was known for his extravagant lifestyle, dropped $13.8 million on the home in 2014. It was one of several luxury properties he bought in New York and California.
The properties later became the subject of forfeiture lawsuits mounted by the U.S. government, which accused him of buying them using money stolen from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.
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The Prince Street unit is the second of Low’s forfeited properties to close this year. The other, a mansion in West Hollywood, sold in March for $18.5 million — less than half of what Low paid eight years ago.
While the latest sale price is a roughly 45 percent discount from the $14 million Low paid in 2014, that price was somewhat of an anomaly in the property’s history: In 2003, the unit sold for $2.7 million, before trading at $8.9 million in 2012. When Low purchased the property through an entity two years later, he accepted a jump of $4.9 million.
A 4,341-square-foot, three-bedroom unit in the building sold in 2016 for $9.2 million, according to StreetEasy.
In recent months, the pandemic has added further pressure to the sales market. Since the state shut down, buyers in existing contracts have sought to renegotiate deals, and new contracts have slowed to a trickle.
Write to Sylvia Varnham O’Regan at so@therealdeal.com
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the floor of the building that Low’s former unit is located on.