Rupert Murdoch Takes $2.5M Loss on One Madison Condo

Rupert Murdoch with 23 East 22nd Street (Getty, New Construction Manhattan)

Rupert Murdoch’s One Madison unit recently topped Manhattan’s luxury contracts, but the condo traded at a $2.5 million loss.

Unit 57A, which asked $16 million, sold for $12.5 million, public records filed Monday show. The sale came in $3.5 million below ask and $2.5 million less than the $15 million the media mogul paid for it in 2014.

The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom unit spans over 3,000 square feet. Its one of two Murdoch bought in 23 East 22nd Street, a luxury residential property developed by the Related Companies and HFZ Capital Group.

Murdoch bought Unit 57A mainly for staff and guests to reside one floor below a penthouse built out to his specifications. The larger unit, a triplex occupying the tower’s 58th, 59th and 60th floors, is also up for grabs, asking $58 million.

Murdoch paid about $57.9 million for the two apartments in 2014. When they were first put on the market, the two units asked a combined $78 million, with the triplex asking $62 million and the smaller unit asking $16 million.

The unit was the priciest on Olshan Realty’s weekly report on contracts for Manhattan homes asking $4 million or more.

It wasn’t Murdoch’s first chart-topping real estate deal. In December 2021, he and his then-wife supermodel Jerry Hall paid the founder of Koch Industries $200 million for a Montana ranch. The couple’s purchase of the property, which is home to 12,000 cattle, marked the biggest such sale in the state’s history.

The Murdoch family also owns a ranch in California and a roughly 25,000-acre sheep and cattle farm in Australia. In 2013, Murdoch purchased an estate and winery in Los Angeles’ Bel-Air neighborhood.

Manhattan’s luxury market picked up in October after hitting a slump in late September. Olshan Realty’s report marked 30 signed contracts in the week of Oct. 17 to 21 — the highest total since the 39 recorded in early May.