Michael Stern sold his duplex at Walker Tower for less than he’d hoped.
The 4,748-square-foot unit sold for $21 million, 24 percent less the $27.8 million it was initially listed for in June 2019, according to property records. The deal pencils out to $4,423 per square foot.
But Stern is still making off with a tidy profit. He bought the unit at Walker Tower, which his firm JDS Development Group developed alongside Kevin Maloney’s Property Markets Group, for just over $16 million in 2014, or about $3,370 per square foot. Stern did not respond to a request for comment.
The unit went into contract in November and closed in mid-February, according to the deed. The buyer is a limited liability company that is registered to Joseph Blum. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Not all units at Walker Tower have fared as well upon resale. The building’s condo board recently tried to stop the U.S. Department of Justice’s “low ball” sale of a penthouse, which the DoJ was selling after seizing the property due to its connections to stolen funds from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.
The board was unsuccessful and the penthouse sold to financial adviser Ron Vinder for $18.25 million, well below the $50.9 million paid by previous owner Khadem Al Qubaisi, an Abu Dhabi businessman and alleged co-conspirator in the 1MDB scandal. The unit had been on and off the market since 2017.
But a 24 percent discount isn’t unusual in Manhattan’s entrenched buyers’ market.
Extell Development, responding to a condo sale at One57 that closed in December at 32 percent under ask, attributed the substantial discounts in recent months to the pandemic.
“Almost all Covid-era transactions have been at exceptional prices for the buyer,” said a spokesperson at the time.
Stern owns a 40,000-square-foot waterfront property in Miami Beach, which he bought in 2018 for $10.5 million.