On the Myspace page promoting her nascent music career, Alexa Ray Joel gives her father, Billy Joel, a shout-out, saying, “My dad is a genius, and the HUGEST influence on me.” Maybe that’s why she roped him into checking out apartments with her downtown right before the holidays. Father and daughter, whose jazz-and-soul-inflected EP, Sketches, was recently released, were spotted at 299 West 12th Street, a Bing & Bing building where a studio listed with Halstead and a pair of one-bedrooms repped by JC DeNiro are currently on the market. A source says an 850-square-foot one-bedroom for $1.65 million overlooking Abingdon Square Park may have been the main reason for the visit. Alexa’s mom, Christie Brinkley, will presumably stop by under separate cover.

Uptown, the scorched earth upon which troubled doctor Nicholas Bartha’s infamous townhouse once stood may have finally sold. Listed for $8 million, the vacant lot is now marked as “in contract” on the Website for Brown Harris Stevens, which has the listing.

Related:

• Archive: “Real Estate”
• Articles by S.Jhoanna Robledo
• Table of Contents: January 15, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!