Knock, Knock, It’s Nate! Decorator Nate Berkus, pictured with his fiancé, Jeremiah Brent, sold his duplex at 23 West 9th Street for $4.95 million and is moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky, just around the corner at 39 Fifth Avenue.
Who is a decorator’s most agreeable client? Himself, without a doubt. If designers’ homes are their calling cards, then a few boldface-named decorators will need to change the address on theirs this fall. Diminutive Oprah fave Nate Berkus cleaned house this summer, unloading not one but two Greenwich Village apartments within weeks of each other. The larger, a 3,000-square-foot three-bedroom duplex at 23 West 9th Street, sold for $4.95 million in an off-market deal—a silent bid, if you will, by someone who knows a lot about bidding: Alexander Gilkes, co-founder of the online auction site Paddle8. The British-born Gilkes and his wife, fashion designer Misha Nonoo, will presumably entertain royally in the new pad, as they are close pals with the Middleton family, and Princess Eugenie, seventh in line to the throne, is decamping to New York to work on Gilkes’s site.
Berkus also relinquished a smaller one-bedroom apartment at 32 Downing Street that he had designed and lived in earlier in his career; listed at $699,000, it sold for $750,000 within two months. (Perhaps the Berkus stamp sparked a bidding war?)
With these two sales complete, Berkus was hardly out on the street; rather, he simply moved around the corner, after closing in August on the $5 million penthouse at the Bing & Bing–built Emery Roth building at 39 Fifth Avenue. While Berkus, the star of NBC’s brand-new American Dream Builders, is the sole holder of the deed, certainly he’ll be able to make room for his fiancé, decorator Jeremiah Brent, formerly of The Rachel Zoe Project. (The lovebirds have also recently completed work on a 1939 home in the Hollywood Hills.) The new Manhattan nest includes two wood-burning fireplaces, ten-and-a-half-foot coffered ceilings, and a loggia with sweeping city views.
Berkus wasn’t the only designer completing real-estate transactions this summer. More than a year after signing a contract, Los Angeles–based decorator Waldo Fernandez—whose clients have included Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Aniston, Sean Connery, and the Jolie-Pitts—finally closed on a two-bedroom parlor-floor apartment in the 19th-century townhouse at 69 Washington Place (he purchased it for $1.99 million from deejay Mark Ronson). A previous owner, writer Michael Gross, has said publicly that the apartment was “an utter disaster” in a “cursed” building and that Fernandez should “hire an exorcist.” But any good decorator can sniff out a diamond in the rough. Perhaps Fernandez was smitten with the 12-foot ceilings, ornate molding, ten-foot-tall windows, and lush private garden. A little further east, architect Peter Marino could be in the running for a new job, assuming the owner of a new $2.2 million condo at 250 Bowery calls on him for a consultation.
Chances are good, since she’s his kid. Isabelle Trapnell Marino, daughter of the leather-daddy designer and his wife, costume designer Jane Trapnell, closed this summer on a two-bedroom condo in the Bowery’s most expensive building (the sales of which were chronicled on Million Dollar Listing New York). Marino’s motorcycle-riding alter ego—he calls himself “Pedro”—will likely thrill to the building’s black glass and metal façade, while his more traditional side might appreciate the casement windows. Will Daddy’s little girl join the ranks of notable Marino clients such as Andy Warhol, Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, and Gianni and Marella Agnelli? Only time will tell. —Rebecca Morse
Marino: s_bukley/Shutterstock.com
Manhattan’s sales market has never been hotter, with prices soaring to record levels, particularly in Midtown and downtown, brokers say. “Increasing development, heavy international interest, and an improving regional economy are contributing to vigorous action,” says Dottie Herman, CEO of Douglas Elliman. “I anticipate this trend to continue through the fall with rising prices, low supply, and strong sales volume.”
Lofty Ambition Featuring Hudson River views, this sprawling Tribeca apartment is listed for just under $10 million with Cantor & Pecorella; call 212-343-2509. photograph by evan joseph
Because the economic implosion of 2008 immobilized condo construction all over Manhattan, “we [now] have historic lows on inventory,” says Kirk Henckels, director of Stribling Private Brokerage, which specializes in properties above $5 million. The wealthy, he adds, “have been sitting on their liquidity for a long time,” and with new construction going gangbusters once again to meet increasing demand, “the second half of 2013 will be much stronger than the first half, since many contracts were signed in late spring and early summer and are closing in the fall.” Henckels predicts that average apartment sales figures and the number of transactions in Manhattan will continue to rise. “Interest rates are still very low, so there’s even more incentive to buy.”
Sales of condos, co-ops, and townhouses for $5 million and up in areas like SoHo, Tribeca, and the West Village will eclipse last year’s levels, with “buyers almost making a point of spending as much as they can,” Henckels adds, whereas “super-deluxe Midtown condo projects, such as 157 West 57th Street and 432 Park Avenue, are selling at stratospheric prices,” reports Richard Cantor, a principal with Cantor & Pecorella. Several penthouses at 432 Park Avenue—where prices range up to $95 million—are in contract, with more than one-third of the building sold. The 84-story tower from the CIM Group and Macklowe Properties is scheduled to open in 2015.
A new crop of pre-war and pre-war-style buildings is luring buyers to the Upper East Side as well, including Philip House, a pre-war conversion with interiors by designer Victoria Hagan, and 135 East 79th Street, which is more than 80 percent sold. Closings at this new-construction building, where a four-bedroom sells for about $10 million, will begin in December.
Sales of condos and co-ops priced between $500,000 and $3.5 million will remain vibrant in the second half of 2013, Cantor predicts, though he believes activity on properties above the $5 million mark “might begin to moderate after having increased at a dizzying pace since mid-2012”—a slowdown that won’t last long, however, as new product comes to market. Condo prices in the West Village are escalating due to the dearth of inventory, but “several new small condo projects offering super-sized units with super-luxury finishes and amenities will open along the lower Fifth Avenue corridor below 14th Street, offering more choices for Village condo buyers.” —Barbara Thau
Planters’ Punch Forbidden from using an outdoor area for patio dining, the Exchange Alley restaurant has jumped on the farm-to-table craze.
When life gives you lemons, grow lemon basil. At the Exchange Alley restaurant in the East Village, chef Paul Gerard and his partners had hoped to provide outdoor dining on the café’s sizable patio, but city zoning restrictions decreed “no way.” So Gerard, a seventh-generation Brooklynite, converted cinder blocks, wooden pallets, and old doors into planters, filled them with soil, and created a box garden. Now five types of tomatoes tower over chilis, peppers, salad greens, and dozens of herbs. When customers order butter lettuce with green goddess dressing, they can be sure that the ingredients have been freshly snipped from the planters that day. To thwart tomato-obsessed squirrels, Gerard often picks the fruit unripe and serves fried green tomatoes, now a popular menu staple. While outdoor tables would have been a boost to revenue, Gerard does save money by growing his own ingredients. “There’s no way dirt is dirt cheap,” he concedes, but by next year he expects to recoup the costs of setting up the garden. “Our garden supplies our kitchen with herbs, vegetables, flowers, and a great deal of pleasure. That’s what matters most.” —Sharon King Hoge
Starting this month, a mixed brew of artists, technology companies, and nonprofit groups will be moving into 1000 Dean Street, a new commercial complex in rapidly gentrifying Crown Heights. A joint venture between Brooklyn real estate blog Brownstoner.com, developer BFC Partners, and Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, the 140,000-square-foot development in the former Studebaker service station is being leased by Aptsandlofts.com. Designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf, the project aims to fill the need for affordable office space beyond Brooklyn’s “Tech Triangle”—downtown, Dumbo, and the Navy Yard—which has been dubbed the next Silicon Valley and is home to more than 500 firms, largely with a creative bent. Office, production, and collaborative spaces range from 500 to 32,000 square feet, with rents averaging from $1,500 to $3,000 per month. A 9,000-square-foot beer hall, coffee house, and garden with food outlets is also in the works. —B. T.
When it comes to real estate, notoriety cuts two ways. There’s the fizzy obsession with celebrity homes (guilty!), which in these parts is currently focused on the Bedford house that newly estranged couple Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones purchased for $5.25 million in 2010. As of press time, the home is unoccupied and has not been put on the market. (According to the New York Daily News, Zeta-Jones has been holing up in the couple’s Central Park West apartment, while Douglas has been staying at the Bedford estate of Paul Bluhdorn.) Then there’s the kind of home that’s cloaked in infamy, such as the gloriously Gothic, circa-1924 Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center in Wingdale that was closed in 1994, unused for nearly a decade, and then purchased by a developer who planned on converting it into a campus for retirees. But progress on the project appears to have stalled—perhaps convincing people to spend their sunset years in a decommissioned psychiatric facility is a tough sell?
The new Fox series Sleepy Hollow is set in the hamlet that was famously (albeit fictionally) haunted by a headless horseman—not necessarily something that makes for good real estate sales copy. Even so, the village that once called itself North Tarrytown voted to change its name to Sleepy Hollow in 1996, presumably to cash in on its literary cachet. (Perhaps hunky actor Tom Mison, who plays Ichabod Crane, is now providing further appeal.) Another draw, at least around Halloween, is the romantically ghoulish Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is situated right next to the Old Dutch Burying Ground that looms large in Washington Irving’s tale. Just a pumpkin’s throw away stands a second literary lure: a 4,000-square-foot home fashioned from a carriage house that Mark Twain is said to have used as a writing studio. Al Vanacoro of Coldwell Banker in White Plains represents the $950,000 property.
Can’t get enough Gothic? Garrison’s Cat Rock estate was built for railroad baron Frederick Henry Osborn in 1919 and is currently occupied by an Osborn descendant who restored the castle-like structure but can’t quite swing maintaining the 120-acre property. Along with the 10,000-square-foot main house, the grounds feature formal gardens designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman, riding stables, a swimming pool, a carriage house with servants’ quarters, and a couple of other smaller houses. It’s listed for $7.25 million with Christine Foster and Shirley Lindefjeld of Renwick Sotheby’s International Realty. The highly stylized, Munster-like exterior of Rhinebeck’s circa-1875 John O’Brien House belies the light-filled 5,000-square-foot interiors, which have been immaculately restored with white walls and glossy floors (no peeling flocked wallpaper and dark paneling to scare away potential buyers here). Jim Ettenson of Rhinebeck Real Estate has the $1.895 million listing.
Cat Rock Fever Shirley Lindefjeld and Christine Foster of Renwick Sotheby’s International Realty have the $7.25 listing of this Garrison estate; call 914-588-7952. Douglas and Zeta-Jones: DFree/Shutterstock.com
Across the river in Tuxedo Park, a circa-1886 shingle-style mansion built for longtime Tuxedo Club treasurer and banker Grenville Kane is on the market for $2.95 million. Its closets remained relatively skeleton-free for more than a century, till another banker, current owner Michael Swenson of Goldman Sachs, got his hands on it. Swenson bought the property for $750,000 in 1998 and invested heavily in its restoration, rigging up a chandelier that looks like a pirate ship and papering one bedroom (walls and ceiling) in a sapphire-hued zebra pattern and another in an apple-green lattice print, among other less-than-decorous decor choices. Not that such dastardly deeds can’t be undone. It just takes a very brave buyer. Cindy Booth Van Schaack of Towne & Country Properties of Sotheby’s International Realty in Tuxedo Park has the $2.95 million listing. —Diane di Costanzo