Rupert Murdoch’s agreement to buy the late Laurance Rockefeller’s Fifth Avenue penthouse for $44 million last month may have set a new price record for Manhattan apartments, but several contenders are in the running to surpass the new high water mark though maybe less than there used to be.
There is, of course, the triplex penthouse at the Pierre hotel going for $70 million, a listing shared by Corcoran’s Sharon Baum and Brown Harris Stevens’ Elizabeth Sample and Brenda Powers.
But another property represented by Sample and Powers the penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on the market for $45.5 million – was gone from the brokers’ Web site as of mid-December.
Sample didn’t return calls about what happened to the potentially record-setting property as of press time.
Another property at the pinnacle of the market – a penthouse duplex at the Trump World Tower selling for $58 million and listed by Michael Shvo is somewhat less impressive than it appears at first glance.
Rather than a duplex, it’s actually listed as two separate one-floor, eight-bedroom and 11-bath apartments, going for a paltry $28.24 million each.
Morgan Goldberg, Shvo Group vice president of marketing, said the properties had always been listed in that fashion since going on the market more than a year ago. “You can purchase both of them,” she said.
If Shvo sells both units at once, it would be similar to Corcoran broker Robby Browne’s $42.5 million sale at the Time Warner Center last year, the previous record, which involved combined apartments.
It’s worth noting, too, that the sales price for the Time Warner deal was also widely reported at $45 million prior to the Murdoch buy, seemingly leaving the title of “most expensive apartment” open to dispute, though sources interviewed recently said $42.5 million was the correct price.