Why no one wants to buy the ‘Versailles in Manhattan’, a magnificent US$19.75 million town house
Lavish New York town house has been on and off the market for 15 years
With steep prices for little space, the New York real estate market is known to be outrageous.
Even so, one of the city’s most lavish town houses – with more than 8,000 square feet of living space – can’t find a buyer.
Dubbed an “architectural masterpiece” and “Versailles in Manhattan” by brokers, a 15-room neo-Georgian town house can arguably add “unsellable” to its list of nicknames.
The Upper East Side town house, owned by the commercial real-estate broker Kenneth Laub, has been on the market since April 2003 and now finds itself in the hands of its 12th set of residential brokers trying to sell the home, the New York Post reports.
Newly listed with agents at Douglas Elliman and Corcoran, the price has been slashed to US$19.75 million.
That is quite a drop from its US$35 million asking price in December 2007, its heftiest price tag in the past 15 years. Word on the real estate grapevine is that no other Manhattan town house has spent as much time bouncing around the market, according to the newspaper.
Laub bought the home in 1986 for US$4 million. In 2009, when the home was still available for US$35 million, he told The Observer: “If I’m overpriced, then so be it ... If someone feels that the house is worth what I think it is worth, then they’ll buy it. And if not, then they won’t. And it’s not the end of the world one way or another.”
Even now, some real estate experts find it priced higher than its “no-man’s-land” location calls for, according to the New York Post. Its price tag is on par with sought-after town houses that hold the prestige of Central Park and Fifth Avenue locations. A town house in the same area recently sold for US$9.5 million in January, the New York Post reports.