By Gus Saltonstall
There have been a pair of developments in the real estate world of A-list actors on the Upper West Side.
Actors Liam Neeson and Robert De Niro are both in different stages of selling their former neighborhood apartments.
Starting with De Niro, the “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas” star’s ex-wife Grace Hightower just sold their former home at The Brentmore at 88 Central Park West, according to multiple publications, including The Real Deal. The five-bedroom condo on the corner of West 69th Street and Central Park West sold for $18 million.
The sales price is actually around $3 million less than the $20.9 million that the couple paid for the apartment in 2006, according to property records. The apartment comes with four bathrooms and a large media room.
Last year, photographer Annie Leibovitz also sold her apartment in 88 Central Park West for around a $1 million loss on her original purchasing price in 2011.
In the other recent Upper West Side real estate celebrity news, Neeson is again looking to sell his apartment at the Park Millennium at 111 West 67th Street. He recently re-listed his five-bedroom, five-bathroom home on the 28th floor of the luxury condo building for $10.75 million.
This comes almost a year after Neeson first listed the apartment for $12.75 million. The legendary actor and longtime Upper West Sider, who is now 72 years old, bought the apartment with his late wife Natasha Richardson in 1999 for $3.9 million.
Neeson also owned a co-op at 91 Central Park West, between West 69th and 70th streets, from 1995 to 2010, along with a unit at 80 Central Park West, between West 68th and 69th streets, from 2019 to 2022.
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Which. What is up with an apartment selling less than it was paid for 20 years ago? I would guess that it is because of all the luxury condos that have been built in recent years. Increased supply lowering the prices?
Carrying costs and tax burden. As properties age they require expensive maintenance. The City has increased real estate taxes at above inflation for 15 years. This depresses prices.
My guess is a recent assessment on the roof, heaters, elevators, the fund is too low, etc.
An assessment can dampen a price.
This is exactly what people don’t understand. Building more apartments even luxury apartments lowers the rents and prices of older buildings. Gentrification is a good thing.
who cares
You do, enough to comment
You, apparently – and enough to comment.
I do, enough to comment!
Exactly, less talk about the rich please
Thrilling news for landlords, I suppose.
Liam owned 8 units at some point for all the relatives
De Niro is a small, nasty man.
Whats your real opinion of him?
😄
My real opinion would never make it past review.
I think he’s a hero. Suit yourself.
He snubbed you for an autograph?
MAGAs hate DeNiro
Let me know when Kid Rock produces a performance like Godfather 2. Adios DOPO
Yes, new supply of luxury apartments is hurting co-op sales. But there is more going on as well.
Their has been a shift in high income households for time being at least preferring to rent over buying.
Worries over economic and or political situations. High interest rates. Not planning to remain in NYC long enough to make purchasing then having to sell an apartment worth bothering.
Happily for them there are many choices of new construction high end luxury rentals such as 1 Columbus Circle. Then you have no small number of persons renting out their units in all these new luxury condo buildings.
https://www.businessinsider.com/super-luxury-apartments-rent-rentals-2024-7
Co-ops are suffering because people have fallen out of love with whole board approval package bit. People don’t want to hear about “landmark building” with extensive roster of current or past famous shareholders.
Finally not everyone has forgotten about recent covid pandemic. If something similar ever happens in city again people want to be able to simply pack up and leave without worrying about selling.
Annie Leibovitz listed her apartment back in 2023 for $8.6 million, this after having bought the place for $11.4 million back in 2014
It took two years but Ms. Leibovitz was able to unload her apartment for good deal more than asking. That she didn’t bother from start asking $12 million speaks to range of things including perhaps fact Ms. Leibovitz simply overpaid. It happens….
There were several sales at the Brentmore in 2024, all went for above asking.
She didn’t overpay at the time of purchase. That was the market rate.
Zzzzzzz
Why so many snarky comments? If a few of us can’t get along on a comment section in WSR, how can we expect our country’s populous to get along?
Anyway, back to the rich and famous — the article would be more interesting if you let your readers know whether these R & F intend to stay in Manhattan and just look for another place or whether they’re moving elsewhere — if indeed you know.
Because people are really hurting right now, living paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford prescriptions and groceries. All while extremely wealthy people say things like “let the poors move to Nebraska,” the modern equivalent to “let them eat cake.” These condo sales do nothing to benefit the working class people of this neighborhood. The West Side Rag should be a news source of the people and for the people; the UWS is infamously a radical and socially political region of NYC, our news media should reflect that.
“The UWS is infamously a radical and socially political region of NYC”
Surely you must be joking. It’s a famously wealthy residential neighborhood full of young families and old people, not revolutionaries.
Community erasure due to gentrification is an act of violence against the movements and people that fought for and preserved this neighborhood for decades before the wealthy started crossing Central Park. This neighborhood helped produce tenant activists like Bruce Bailey and the Columbia Tenants Union, El Comité, the restablization movement, Cathy Hawkins and Liberty House, the people who rehabbed all of the city owned buildings off of Columbus and Amsterdam Avenue in the 1980’s, and examples like the famous fight against Zeckendorf and the Lotus Garden on 96th and Broadway. We can’t let our kids forget the important movements and people that shaped our neighborhood for decades.
Gentrification saved this neighborhood from being the seedy, crime-ridden open-air drug den it used to be in the 1970s. “Act of violence” lol
I know people who live in Nebraska. There’s nothing wrong with moving there . If it improves your quality of life then it should be considered. The ‘poors’ in Nebraska have houses and cars. They can afford NYC vacations.
Cities like New York are the cornerstones of our civilization. How we treat the marginalized in our society speaks to our character as a nation. What the “poors” of Nebraska don’t have is public transit, public museums, public healthcare, public housing, and some of the best public schools in the country. A kid with no money can take the train for free and see some of the best art, hear some of the best music, absorb dialects and interact with another person literally from every country in the world. Why would you want it any other way?Cities should be where the neediest people live in close proximity to public resources, and it’s the wealthy who should live in remote locations where they can afford to have everything they need delivered and available on demand. The wealthy should not be allowed to take over what few dense spaces we have been able to build in this country.
I hope you are never in any position to social engineer your vision for how ppl should live—your ‘these ppl should live here and these ppl should live there’ is creepy—how would that be enforced?— and I’m betting the good folks of Nebraska have more going on than you give them credit for—also your earlier comment that these condo sales do nothing to benefit working class ppl—I guess you are not aware transfer taxes and other taxes are paid to the city and state during these big real estate transactions
The point is gentrification is social engineering with the sole purpose of displacing working class people to make rich people even richer. When the wealthy fled the city 50 years ago, they left behind people who had to fend for themselves; the city became highly desirable only because of culture OUR people created in the 70’s and 80’s that’s still lauded today. When wealthy people realized the suburbs were a mistake, their kids started turning up by the thousands moving into previously affordable areas and taking away housing and culture that sustained working people for decades. The new buildings though program 421-A incentivizes giant tax loopholes that further deplete the neediest people from social service lifelines. I have no problem with you people bragging about your greed, but don’t act like you’re doing anyone any favors, especially working class people. Rich people get everything in life, why can’t you just let us have what little slice of urban life we have left? Is it that important to you to become even wealthier than you already are?
People prefer the city over the suburbs because it minimizes their commute so they can spend more time with their families. The UWS is highly in demand because its right next to Midtown, not because of the culture of the 1970s.
Not true. They may not be riding the subway, but kids in the Midwest have access to all of these public programs, and they also interact with people from all over the world. Everything is not as white-bread-middle-class as you might imagine. You should really take a drive cross country someday.
Feel free to publish UWS Pravda, while leaving the WSR alone…
Grace Hightower is not Robert DeNiro. Please eliminate the superfluous comma after “Hightower” and it will make sense.
Thanks.