Trustee Asks Court to Approve Auction for Oleg Cassini Townhouse

A storied townhouse’s “tortured” sales process may have an end in sight.

The palatial Upper East Side home at 15 East 63rd Street, which once served as famed designer Oleg Cassini’s studio, has found a potential buyer, according to a recent court filing.

The attempt to sell the home has been followed closely, not just because of Cassini’s reputation for romancing stars like Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly and styling celebrities like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but because of the drama-filled bankruptcy proceedings surrounding the home.

But the nearly three-year legal fight over the home appears to be coming to a close after two potential buyers came forward in the last few months of 2025. Chapter 11 trustee Albert Togut filed a motion asking the court to approve a sales procedure that would designate the highest bid, a $34.5 million offer from a buyer shielded by a limited liability corporation, as a stalking horse bid prior to holding an auction on Jan. 28.

The filing also seeks to designate a $34.1 million dollar offer from tech entrepreneur Yingkai Xu as back-up bidder, and to exempt the sale from transfer taxes.

“I can’t imagine there is a reason the court wouldn’t approve this,” Togut told The Real Deal, pointing to the difficulties that arose during the sales process.

The home was originally scheduled to be sold out of foreclosure before Peggy Nestor, Cassini’s sister-in-law, filed for bankruptcy one day before the sale in April 2023 and agreed to either secure new financing or sell the home.

Nestor and her sister, Marianne Nestor Cassini, who married Oleg Cassini in 1971, had accrued an array of liens on the property prior to Nestor declaring bankruptcy.

The largest claim on the home resulted from a 2017 loan provided by Lynx Asset Services that the sisters defaulted on less than a year later. Lynx, which filed the original foreclosure and has provided debtor-in-possession financing during the bankruptcy proceedings, has consented to the sale.

Lynx had called the sales process “tortured” after it took nearly nine months for Nestor to sign an agreement with a broker to market the apartment and another three months before the home was listed for $65 million by Sotheby’s International Realty.

The sisters had thwarted sales efforts by barring the Sotheby’s team from staging, photographing or marketing the home, according to a filing from Togut on April 10, 2024. Later that month, with help from the U.S. Marshals Service, the sisters were removed from the home which was discovered to be in “disarray,” Togut wrote in another filing.

“Until today, Sotheby’s was completely frustrated and prevented from doing its work,” Togut wrote.

But Togut said the Sotheby’s team failed to bring “even one” credible buyer, and last January handed the listing over to Brown Harris Stevens’ Sami Hassoumi, who re-listed the 18,000-square-foot townhouse for $39.5 million.

Hassoumi has shown the home at least 60 times since then, according to an affidavit he filed as part of Togut’s motion.

“I’m satisfied that by working the property the way we did, we got the highest offer we could get, or anyone could get,” Togut said.

Featuring seven bedrooms and more than eight bathrooms, the 25-foot-wide home would be part of a run of ornate Gilded Age homes that have found buyers after years of sitting on the market. Last year, the Woolworth Mansion at 4 East 80th Street sold for $38 million after asking as high as $90 million back in 2011.