Billionaire investor Howard Marks and his wife Nancy spent a record breaking $52.5 mil for 30-room spread. Click below to read the full story.
Billionaire investor Howard Marks and his wife, Nancy, have plunked down $52.5 million for a 30-room spread at 740 Park Ave., breaking the record for the city’s most expensive co-op.
The building is one of the most storied in New York. Designed by renowned architect Rosario Candela, it was built in 1929 by James T. Lee, the grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who lived there as a child.
High-profile residents include billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, who bought the apartment once occupied by John D. Rockefeller Jr.; designer Vera Wang, and John Thain, the last chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch.
Celebrities like Barbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Walters have reportedly been rejected by the building. Real estate insiders say residents of the building are so rich that their staff eats takeout from Le Cirque and Daniel.
The duplex was owned by Courtney Sale Ross, the widow of the late Time Warner CEO Steve Ross. It has been quietly available for $75 million for several years, but was formally listed for $60 million by Brown Harris Stevens last fall. The Rosses reportedly paid $8 million in the 1980s for the two apartments they combined.
“You had a completely unmotivated seller who had no reason to sell it for anything less than a price that would make her smile,†said Michael Gross, who wrote a book about the building, “740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building.â€
The previous record was set in 2008, when a co-op at 1060 Fifth Ave. sold for $48.8 million.
To put the sales price in perspective, Gross points out
that the taxes on the transaction — nearly $1.5 million — could pay for a nice two-bedroom apartment on the upper East Side. Marks, however, can afford it. Forbes estimates his net worth at $1.5 billion.
