The Quiet Listings
By
Max Abelson 2/03/09 11:33pm
In the middle of these cartoonishly dismal times,
what’s a cosmetics executive to do if she wants to ask nearly $100 million for her penthouse? She’ll put it on the market without actually putting it on the market, just like a venture capitalist, a widowed philanthropist, a pharmaceuticals mogul and a Victoria’s Secret billionaire have recently done.
According to two sources,
Sandie Tillotson, the senior vice president and co-founder of Nu Skin Enterprises, a massive direct-selling cosmetics company (products include a Creamy Hydrating Masque Nourishing Treatment and IceDancer Invigorating Leg Gel), has quietly put an
$80 million price tag on her
Time Warner Center penthouse.
She paid $29 million for it in early 2005, and renovated the condo from about 8,300 square feet of raw space into a five-bedroom
pied-à-terre.
One reason for the spate of these very hushed listings is embarrassment over asking such huge sums during such a hugely depressed time. On the one hand, sellers don’t want to seem uncouthly, insensitively ambitious; and then again they most certainly don’t want to seem desperate: “Some of the prices are so egregious and greedy,” a broker who has one of New York’s biggest listings said this week. “Why would you put the thing on, have friends speculate on why you would or wouldn’t be selling? You do it quietly, and if someone gives you the right number, then great.”
Considering that no single piece of New York residential real estate has ever sold for more than $53 million, is it slightly awkward to be asking $80 million for an apartment this winter? “No, I don’t think so,” said
Sotheby’s broker
Eva Mohr, who confirmed that she’s handling Ms. Tillotson’s penthouse, and will be the listing broker if it officially comes on the market. “I think people have something in their mind, and if that’s what people want to ask, then that’s what they’ll ask when they’re ready to ask it.”
Ms. Mohr wouldn’t discuss her client or the apartment except to say, “It feels like you’re sitting on top of the world. You can see all the way to the Tappan Zee Bridge, and you can see all the way up to Connecticut, and all the way over to Pennsylvania.” She paused and thought about that, then said, “I think it’s safe to say you can see all of New Jersey.”