First Resale at Billionaires’ Row Megatower Nabs Full $33 Million Asking Price

A Connecticut-based hedge-fund manager has purchased a three-bedroom apartment at New York’s 220 Central Park South, the country’s most-expensive condo tower, for its full asking price of $33 million, according to the buyer’s agent. The deal is the first closed resale in the building.

The property sold for 23% more than the seller paid a little more than a year ago, bolstering hopes that the Billionaires’ Row megatower can hold its value despite the plunge the New York market took as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The buyer is Igor Tulchinsky, founder and chief executive of WorldQuant, a hedge fund and quantitative investment management firm based in Greenwich, Conn. The Belarus-born executive moved to the U.S. with his family at 11 and founded his company in 2007. The firm, which is at the forefront of a quantitative push in investing, is known for searching for patterns in torrents of data.

Mr. Tulchinsky’s real-estate agent, Ryan Serhant, said his client is “delighted to be a resident of this iconic building and is a strong believer in the future of New York City.”

Mr. Tulchinsky couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The seller, a limited-liability company named 220 March, first signed a contract for the unit in 2015 but closed for about $26.79 million in 2019, once the construction of the building was complete, records show.

The roughly 3,200-square-foot apartment, which was listed by Jessica Campbell of Nest Seekers International, has views across Central Park as well as the Hudson River. It has 11-foot ceilings, solid oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, according to the listing.

The building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, is clad in Alabama Silver Shadow limestone and has a string of high-end amenities, including a pool, an athletic club, a basketball court, a rock climbing wall, a game room, a candy bar and a private restaurant. Other buyers at the tower have included entertainer Sting and hedge-funder Ken Griffin, who bought a roughly $238 million unit there, setting the price record for a U.S. home, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The deal is the first resale to close in the building, meaning all other prior sales were by the building’s original developer, Vornado Realty Trust. Some developers now institute a rule at their buildings that forbids buyers from reselling within the first year in order to prevent competition with their own listings. However, most of the original sponsor units at 220 Central Park South have already sold.

The apartment sold after only about a month on the market, a very quick turnaround in what has been a volatile market for New York luxury homes. The seller’s return on investment is particularly notable given that sellers in other Billionaires’ Row megatowers have not fared so well in recent years amid an influx of high-end inventory across Manhattan. At One57, sellers have made percentage losses in the double digits in the past few years, records show.

But appraiser Jonathan Miller cautioned that one sale doesn’t necessarily guarantee positive returns for other sellers in the building.

“One sale doesn’t make a market, just to be a wet blanket, but it does show that, for Billionaires’ Row, it’s case by case and building by building,” he said. “Not all Billionaires’ Row buyers are experiencing the same conditions.”

Mr. Serhant, whose company Serhant brokered the deal through its Signature division, said the deal is evidence of renewed activity in New York in the wake of the pandemic.