Rupert Murdoch Pockets $2.5 Million on Sale of New York City Townhouse
SELLER: Rupert Murdoch
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $27,500,000
SIZE: 4,920 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 full and 3 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: A New York City townhouse owned by Australian multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch has been sold, according to property records, for $27.5 million to an as yet unrevealed mysterious buyer shielded behind a seemingly inscrutable and generically named corporate entity. The 85-year-old media tycoon, much in the news the last few months having somewhat surprisingly married Mick Jagger’s 60-year-old ex-wife Jerry Hall in March — his fourth wife — and just this week having Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes resign amid a mounting myriad of sexual harassment allegations, purchased the extensively updated and seriously sophisticated mid-19th-century Greek Revival-style townhouse in March 2015 for $25 million. Less than five months later he caught a classic case of The Real Estate Fickle and in early August flipped the soignée urban residence back on the market at $28.9 million.
Listing details show the elevator-equipped 25-foot wide house, located on a pleasantly tree-lined block in the West Village, measures in at 4,920-square-feet over four floors, plus a finished basement and a roof terrace, with four en suite bedrooms and a total of four full and three half bathrooms. The impeccably and expensively outfitted residence features separate formal living and dining rooms on the high-ceilinged parlor floor, a garden level combination kitchen/informal dining/family room that spills out though a solid bank of windows to a terraced backyard plus a gym, screening room and walk-in wine cellar in the basement. One bedroom is tucked up behind the kitchen on the garden level making it suitable as a live-in domestic suite, there are two en suite guest/family bedrooms on the top floor, and the master suite privately occupies an entire floor with fireplace, fitted dressing room, spacious bathroom, and private terrace with garden overlook.
Mister Murdoch, who presides over a fortune estimated to be about $11.5 billion, is a property gossip column staple who additionally owns a the top four floors of the almost freakishly slender One Madison tower that he picked up in early 2014 for $57.25 million. The media mogul quickly put the top three floors — approximately 7,600-square-feet with five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms according to digital marketing materials — back on the market with an asking price of $72 million but after more than a year on the market with no takers the triplex penthouse pad was taken off the market. As a matter of fact, StreetEasy shows the penthouse was de-listed today. On the west coast, where in early 2015 he sold his spectacular long-time estate on a prominent hilltop above Beverly Hills to his youngest son James for $30 million, the Australian tycoon continues to own a 13-acre vineyard property in a gated enclave in the Brentwood area his snatched up over the summer of 2013 for $28.8 million and, as far as we know, he continues to own a home in London’s posh Mayfair neighborhood and we assume he owns at least one home in his native Australia.
Listing photos and floor plan: Dolly Lenz Real Estate
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