Posted: 12:00 am
October 2, 2008
The real-estate force is apparently with Natalie Portman, who's found a buyer for her West Village condo in this descending market.
The "Star Wars" minx has just gone to contract to sell her apartment in Richard Meier's transparent tower at 165 Charles St. The condo last had an asking price of $6.55 million.
Included in the convertible three-bedroom, three-bath, fifth-floor apartment are views in three directions, a 32-foot balcony and a spacious great room. Building amenities include a 24-hour concierge, a fitness center, an infinity-edge lap pool and a screening room.
Portman, who recently ended her relationship with folk singer Devendra Banhart, bought the glassy 2,500-square-foot, river-fronting unit in 2005 for $5.7 million. She first listed the unit in June for $6.7 million. A month later, she lowered the figure to its current price.
Andy Fink and Nancy Teague of the Corcoran Group are the listing brokers.
Buy all Mean's
The price of Mean Manor just got $30 million leaner.
Leona Helmsley's 40-acre estate in Greenwich, Conn. - known as Dunnellen Hall - has been slashed from $125 million to a more svelte $95 million. The massive, 14-bedroom Jacobean residence, which went on the market in February, includes a winter garden with a 52-foot indoor pool, palatial public rooms, a theater, a wine cellar and tasting room, a gym, a music room, servants' quarters and views of the Long Island Sound. The gated grounds feature a 72-foot outdoor pool with a cabana, a tennis court, two guest cottages and a koi pond with a waterfall.
It also comes with a dubious history of former owners whose lives were ruined while living under its expansive Ludowici roof. The last of whom was Leona, who died there last year and who spent time in the slammer for writing off improvements to the spread as business expenses.
It's also where she infamously uttered, "Only the little people pay taxes" to a servant.
Christie's Great Estates still represents the property.
While residential-listing prices all over Greenwich and Westchester are dropping faster than Larry Craig's pants in an airport bathroom, we've never seen a price cut of this magnitude. It makes Mel Gibson's recent $4.5 million reduction on his now $35 million Greenwich property look a tad chintzy.
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