After a four-year real-estate marathon to ditch his Park Avenue digs, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs has just signed a contract to turn a $1 million profit selling his eccentric 15,444-square-foot townhouse on Park Avenue, between 74th and 75th streets, for $17 million.
The limestone townhouse, which underwent an extensive renovation in the early 1990’s, is divided into three quadruplex apartments and had been listing for $16 million. The imposing building has detailed moldings, arched windows and a large wooden door leading into the lobby. On Feb. 17, a spokesperson for Mr. Combs confirmed that a contract has been signed for $17 million.
Dolly Lenz and Jay Schneider of Douglas Elliman handled the sale.
“I can confirm it’s been sold,” Ms. Lenz told The Observer . “A contract was signed today [Feb. 17].”
Ms. Lenz wouldn’t comment on the owner’s identity, though she did tell The Observer that the property was now off the market following the sale.
Mr. Combs, the chief executive officer of Bad Boy Entertainment, bought the townhouse in November 1998 for $12 million. He had lived on the bottom four floors of the bling-bling palace and rented out the additional apartments, whose tenants included the socialite Rena Sindi. Since then, he has made repeated attempts to sell the property. In January 2000, Mr. Combs listed the spread for $15 million with Sotheby’s International Realty (the firm that was officially acquired by the $149 N.R.T. Corporation, the parent company of Manhattan’s Corcoran Group, on Feb. 17). After the apartment failed to sell, Mr. Combs most recently listed it for $15 million in February 2002, before the townhouse hit the market again on Feb. 9.
The sale at 813 Park is just the latest chapter in Mr. Combs’ unpredictable real-estate history in New York. Most recently, the New York Post reported that Mr. Combs, fresh off his marathon stunt in November, bought a 4,300-square-foot loft at 169 Hudson Street that had an asking price of $3.65 million, in the building where Aliza Waksal, daughter of former ImClone chief Sam Waksal, and condiment heir Chris Heinz, the stepson of Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry, both live.
Along with his Manhattan holdings, in March 1998 Mr. Combs bought a $2.7 million spread on Hedges Banks Drive in East Hampton that had such East End necessities as a pool and hot tub. Following a particularly raucous Fourth of July bash in 1999, he was fined $2,000 by the town of East Hampton for allegedly hosting 500 guests above the legal limit.
In April 2000, seeking seclusion from the Hamptons party scene, Mr. Combs reportedly made an offer on a seven-acre estate in Quogue that dated to 1907, but the $3.9 million bid failed to catch the place.
Recent Transactions in the Real Estate Market
Upper West Side
55 Central Park West
Two-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom co-op.
Asking: $2.99 million. Selling: $2.695 million.
Maintenance: $2,695; 50 percent tax-deductible.
Time on the market: five months.
I AM THE KEYMASTER When this structural engineer from Westchester County, who has worked on about 50 percent of the recent construction projects in the city (including the Time Warner Center), went apartment-shopping, he put his architecture expertise to good use. He and his wife were looking for a pied-à-terre , and they fell for this renovated 15th-floor apartment on Central Park West, between 65th and 66th streets. The sellers, an attorney and his wife, had a growing family and went in search of a larger apartment in the Millennium Tower at 101 West 67th Street to make room for- gasp! -the in-laws, who were relocating to the city and wanted to crash with family. Staying true to his calling, the engineer plans to renovate the place. “The buyer will be doing work to it,” said his broker, Gary Brynes, of the Corcoran Group. “The renovation will include new windows and air conditioning.” Robert Browne and Maria Pashby, also of the Corcoran Group, represented the sellers. The 2,400-square-foot apartment has six rooms and such standard Central Park West finishings as a stainless-steel kitchen, sprawling views of the park and a ground-floor maid’s room that the new owner plans to use as an office. The exclusive Upper West Side address dates to 1929 and was converted to co-op in 1940, but more notably, it was the iconic building which the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man tried to devour in the finale of the Ivan Reitman poltergeist classic Ghostbusters .
Murray Hill
415 East 37th Street
One-bedroom, one-bathroom condo
Asking: $649,000. Selling: $628,000.
Time on the market: six weeks.
KNOW WHEN TO FOLD UP The seller of this spacious Murray Hill one-bedroom in the Horizon Condo building on the corner of First Avenue near the East River worked in marketing for Palmolive, but when the consumer-products company relocated to Florida, she decided it was time to take advantage of the record-high real-estate market and cash out. “With prices so high, this is was an opportunity to sell,” said Deborah Tzuri, a broker with Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, who represented the seller, a woman in her mid-30’s. The buyers were doing some relocating of their own, as they had just arrived in Manhattan from Alabama. The couple, a doctor at the nearby N.Y.U Medical Center, and his wife were drawn to the 860-square-foot apartment’s open views of New York landmarks, including the Empire State Building and the East River. And to make their home a stylish Manhattan spread, they hired an interior decorator and planned a renovation that includes a granite kitchen and new hardwood floors.
Tribeca
85 Walker Street
Two-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op.
Asking: $1.1 million. Selling: $1.12 million.
Maintenance: $1,023; 50 percent tax-deductible.
Time on the market: nine months.
Artists, please; no starving! Here’s a way to limit the pool of potential buyers: Allow only millionaire artists to bid on your property. At this renovated Tribeca third-floor loft, classified as an artists-in-residence building, starving artists need not apply. So when this rock musician-who splits his time between Los Angeles, Miami and New York-decided it was time to unload this 2,200-square-foot loft with 13-foot ceilings in East Tribeca (near Canal Street) and relocate to Miami, it took months to find qualified buyers who could make it past the finicky co-op board (members of the building include a world-renowned painter). After nearly a year, he found an affluent creative couple who passed the board. The buyers-she’s a fiction writer who has been published in numerous journals, and he works in theater-went after the apartment and eventually outbid two other couples by paying $20,000 above the asking price. “The apartment was stunning-the owner redid everything,” said Tristan Harper, a senior vice president at Douglas Elliman. Unlike many Tribeca lofts that have museum-quality lobbies, this building retained the gritty factory feel of its late-19th-century heritage. The walk-up apartment still had its original industrial staircase, but inside the spread, 21st-century luxuries abounded. The musician had added such lavish details as Viking stainless appliances, a long kitchen island with a slate countertop, a two-person shower and self-defrosting mirrors in the master bathroom. “It was remarkable,” said Mr. Harper, the seller’s broker. “The stairs were all spooky and the hallway lights were dim. But once you open the door, it’s like entering a movie set.”
