Schnabel Schleps Uptown, Hires Fancy Broker for Chupi
Well, someone is getting fancy. Julian Schnabel has hired Brown Harris Stevens, the hoity real-estate brokers that market big-time rich-people properties like 15 Central Park West, to sell the remaining units of his pink palace, the Palazzo Chupi (above). Sure, this makes sense, since the condos are in the range of $27–$32 million, but when we heard it we were a little disapointed, since it doesn’t really jibe with the Schnab’s bohemian, pajamas-wearing style. Except! Max Abelson over at Observer tells us the agents he picked are virtual neophytes: a sales associate named Debra Ortega, whose son his sons met at camp who has never actually had her own listing, and Paddington M. Zwigard, an agent who has never sold an apartment over $10 million, whom we imagine Schnabel chose for her awesome name. See, the Schnab is all about people and the feelings he gets from people, not stuffy stuff like credentials. “I think what he wants is a community that’s comparable to his lifestyle,” Ortega told the Observer, “someone he would feel keen about being neighbors with. I don’t think he’s going to judge if you’re a banker or artist or a top global realtor.” What about money? Does he judge you if you don’t have enough to actually buy in the Palazzo? Because that wouldn’t really jibe with his bohemian style, either. Maybe he should think about that and about the bloggers who really deserve to be in his community. We’re just saying.
Schnabel’s Palazzo Goes Mainstream With $59 M. in Broker Listings [NYO]
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This Just In: Manhattan Still Expensive!Some of the city’s biggest brokerage firms released their fourth-quarter reports on the Manhattan real-estate market this week. And the news? Holdouts hoping for a slump won’t get their reward quite yet. The breakdown:
• While other cities sink into subprime hell, the borough remains stubbornly bullish, buoyed in part by tight inventory, especially in co-ops. If you’re still looking to buy, an apartment in the borough will set you back an average of nearly $1.44 million, 18 percent more than what you would’ve paid the year before. (That’s according to valuations guru Jonathan Miller’s Prudential Douglas Elliman survey; Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens’ numbers come in slightly under at $1.43 million.)
• Prices were up pretty much across the board, with large spaces being the most in demand. (No surprise, they saw the most gains; according to Miller, three-bedrooms spiked an impressive 39.8 percent in value over the same period the previous year.)
