Heiress could lose $2M on sale of WV townhouse

Johnson & Johnson heiress Libet Johnson, who last year purchased the Vanderbilt Mansion at 16 East 69th Street for more than $48 million, has dropped the asking price by more than 23 percent on another one of her Manhattan properties — a West Village townhouse at 85 Perry Street.

Johnson, whose brother is Jets owner Woody Johnson, listed the home with Pamela D’Arc of Stribling & Associates at the end of May for $13 million, but the price has now been chopped to $9.96 million, according to data from Streeteasy.com. If the property trades at the new asking price, Johnson will lose money on the transaction, having purchased it for $12 million in 2008. She bought it from a Merrill Lynch executive three months before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.

Neither Johnson nor D’Arc could immediately be reached for comment.

The Federal-style four-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom home was built in 1818, according to the listing, and is one of only 13 New York City homes with a private garden on Bleecker Street overseen by a custodian. It also comes with a roof terrace.

As previously reported, Johnson’s purchase of the 12,000-square-foot Vanderbilt Mansion was the priciest Manhattan residential sale of 2011, tying with a deal for a condo unit at The Plaza bought by Igor Krutoy, who founded Russian MTV. She bought the mansion from Sloan Lindemann Barnett, best-selling author and daughter of billionaire George Lindemann.