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Claude Wasserstein relists UES penthouse for $55M
Former wife of late billionaire drops price $10 million
It is marketed as “pastoral and bucolic,” a spacious penthouse framed by leafy terraces overlooking a valley of Central Park treetops.
But for years, Claude Wasserstein’s opulent Fifth Avenue apartment has failed to win over a buyer.
Perhaps that’s because Wasserstein listed it in 2017 for $65 million, more than $30 million above what she paid for it in 2008.
Midway through last year, after cycling through several brokers, the property was discounted to $58 million. Still, crickets.
This week, the price was lowered to $55 million — a $10 million drop from the original listing.
It’s a familiar story in Manhattan’s ultra-luxury market, which has been starved of deals since the pandemic hit. Many sellers, recognizing the condo boom is well and truly over, have begun to lower their expectations — and their prices.
Last month, billionaire Michael Price sold his Upper East Side townhouse for less than half what he listed it for in 2016. And more recently, in a contested and controversial trade, a penthouse at Walker Tower closed for $18.25 million — 64 percent lower than what a buyer paid in 2014 (albeit with allegedly stolen money).
Wasserstein’s 7,000 square-foot duplex sits at the top of 995 Fifth Avenue, a 17-story condo developed by Gary Barnett’s Extell Development. It features five bedrooms, a library and a wood-burning fireplace, according to a listing.
Serena Boardman of Sotheby’s International Realty, who is marketing the unit, did not respond to a request for comment.
Wasserstein, CEO of Fine Day Ventures and a former CBS news producer, purchased the unit for $34.8 million in 2008 after her divorce from billionaire investor Bruce Wasserstein, who died in 2009.
After she bought it, Wasserstein transformed the unit’s expansive outdoor terrace space into a botanical escape with grassy flooring, a rose archway and a vegetable garden.
“I grew up in France, and I love flowers,” she told Vogue in 2011. “I love that I can look out and feel I am in a garden with the New York landscape behind it.”
Write to Sylvia Varnham O’Regan at so@therealdeal.com