The buyers, Michael D. Daffey, a former Goldman Sachs executive, and his wife, Blake Daffey, paid $51 million for the townhouse, a steep discount from the original asking price.
A longtime Goldman Sachs executive expects to do “a complete makeover — physically and spiritually” before settling into the Upper East Side mansion where Jeffrey Epstein had resided.
Michael D. Daffey, who is retiring as the chairman of the investment bank’s global markets division in London, and his wife, Blake Daffey, paid $51 million for the grand limestone building at 9 East 71st Street, according to city records. The couple, using a bridge loan and cash, according to a spokesman, made the purchase through the limited liability company Back to New York 71.
The widely reported sale went into contract on Feb. 4 and closed March 8. It was recorded in New York City property records on March 19, becoming one of the city’s largest closings for the month.
The mansion had entered the market with an $88 million price tag in July 2020, less than a year after Mr. Epstein’s suicide in a Manhattan jail cell, where he was being held on sex-trafficking charges. With no takers, the asking price was then slashed to $65 million in early January.
Adam D. Modlin, the founder of the Modlin Group, was the listing broker for the property and also represented the Daffeys in the transaction. He said he had a nondisclosure agreement and could not discuss details of the sale.
But a spokesman for the Daffeys, Stu Loeser, said the couple saw the mansion “as a place with a lot of potential,” and have enlisted their go-to interior designers Timothy Haynes and Kevin Roberts to overhaul the space.
“The first order of business is a complete makeover — physically and spiritually,” Mr. Loeser said, adding that the renovations were expected to take a year to 18 months to complete.
The couple also own a four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom penthouse at 25 Bond Street in NoHo, which they are now putting on the market.
The Daffeys are looking forward to relocating back to New York from London, where they have been living since 2005, Mr. Loeser said.
“Their goal is to spend more and more time in New York,” he added. “They’re confident that New York is going to come back from its current challenges stronger than ever.”
Mr. Daffey, an early investor in Bitcoins, had worked for Goldman Sachs since 1994. His retirement this month was disclosed in February.
The neo-French Classic mansion sits between Madison and Fifth Avenues in the Lenox Hill neighborhood, a short walk from Central Park. The building, 50 feet wide and seven stories high, has around 28,000 square feet of interior space that includes 10 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms and a two-story reception area.
The structure was designed in the early 1930s by the architect Horace Trumbauer for Herbert N. Straus, an heir to the Macy’s fortune, but Straus died before it was completed. It later became part of St. Clare Hospital, then housed the private Birch Wathen School.
In 1989, Mr. Epstein’s mentor, Leslie H. Wexner, the founder of L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, bought the building from Birch Wathen for around $13.2 million and converted it into a private residence after extensive renovations. At the time, it was the highest recorded price for a townhouse.
Mr. Wexner never moved in, but Mr. Epstein did. In a 1996 interview, he said, “Les never spent more than two months there.” Public records show that in 2011, a deed to the property was transferred to Mr. Epstein’s Virgin Islands-based company, Maple Inc.
Mr. Epstein, a billionaire financier, was charged with running a sex-trafficking operation that lured dozens of underage girls to the mansion, as well as his home in Palm Beach, Fla. Funds from the mansion sale were expected to be transferred to a compensation program for the victims.
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
"complete" - Google News
March 22, 2021 at 11:46PM
https://ift.tt/3scQN9B
Jeffrey Epstein’s Mansion to Undergo ‘Complete Makeover’ - The New York Times
"complete" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Fvz4Dj
https://ift.tt/2YviVIP
No comments:
Post a Comment