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A Wynn-Win in $70 Million Purchase
| June 13, 2012 | Tweet |
While high-spending Russian billionaires have been the talk of Manhattan real-estate market, deals for two apartments facing Central Park have closed for a total of $110 million, showing the strength of the domestic end of the luxury market as well.
In the second-most expensive sale of a Manhattan apartment, Steve Wynn, the casino mogul, on Monday paid $70 million for a 10,882-square-foot apartment with 14 rooms and an 80-foot terrace facing the park at 50 Central Park South above the Ritz-Carlton hotel.
Within a few hours, a duplex penthouse at 2 E. 70th St. on the corner of Fifth Avenue that had an asking price of $36 million closed for just over $40 million. The apartment was owned by the Ted Forstmann, the late private-equity investor. Brokers said the buyer had dual French and U.S. citizenship and was married to an American.
And the pace of sales to American buyers remains strong. Brokers said that a penthouse at 730 Park Ave. has gone into contract for a price said to be in the mid-$30 million range. Separately, a townhouse designed by Stanford White at 973 Fifth Ave. listed for $49 million was in contract for more than $40 million, a broker said. Both buyers were Americans, brokers said.
The appetite for real estate among top tier of wealthy Americans remains strong, brokers said, for the same reason that it is attracting activity by international buyers in the former Soviet Union, Asia and Latin America: a growing confidence that New York luxury properties can provide a haven for wealth in a turbulent economy. On the practical side, the properties also provide a place to live, often with bragging rights, they said.
