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A mystery couple has purchased Greenwich Village’s most expensive townhouse for $72.5 million — surpassing the previous record by $14.3 million.
The Wall Street Journal broke news about the off-market deal on Wednesday. The Compass agents who brokered the deal — Clayton Orrigo and Joshua Wesoky — declined to share specific details about the buyer and seller. However, public records show the seller is an entity connected to Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei.
The telecommunications magnate purchased the 12,000-square-foot property in 2016 for $30.9 million. The nearly 200-year-old home was originally two separate townhouses; however, one of the previous owners combined it into a single, 45-foot-wide property.
Orrigo, who represented the buyers, said the couple will use the home as a pied-à-terre — the term used to describe a property that’s used for vacations, workweek accommodations or other occasional purposes. Pieds-à-terre come with extra hurdles, such as heftier down payments, higher interest rates and other stricter lending requirements for homebuyers financing the purchase.
Even if a homebuyer makes a cash purchase, they must consider the possibility of paying extra taxes. New York State legislators have been pushing for a pied-à-terre tax that would apply to condos and co-ops with an assessed value of $300,000 or more.
Properties with an assessed value between $300,000 and $4.99 million would be taxed at a 10 percent to 13.5 percent rate. Meanwhile, properties with an assessed value of $5 million or more would be taxed at a 0.5 percent to 4 percent rate. Lawmakers have struggled to get the tax passed, despite estimates it would generate $390 million in annual tax revenues.
WSJ said the mystery buyers’ purchase aligns them with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who purchased a downtown condo for $80 million in 2019. The publication also highlighted two other record-breaking sales on the Upper East Side — a mansion that sold for $77.1 million in 2019 and a commercial townhouse that sold for $90 million in 2018.
