Friday, June 13, 2008

Celebrity Real Estate Porn


So I'm perusing the Real Estate section of the New York Times to look at overprice apartments that I can never afford when I stumbled across this little tidbit. Mariska Hargitay, from my favorite TV show, Law & Order: SVU is selling her apartment in the O'Neill Building in Chelsea. The O'Neill building is one of those beautiful cast iron buildings on the 19th Century Ladies Mile, that were preserved in the 1970's before developers could tear them down and put up soulless buildings, the way they have in other sections of New York. The couple paid $7MM for the apartment, after selling their apartment down in TriBeCa that had a private garage.

The apartment is for sale through Corcoran for $8.25MM. Amazing, it a year the apartment appreciate by over $1MM! What gets me though are the monthly charges, over $2,000 for maintance and then a further $7,000 a month for taxes. That's like $9,000 on top of the $8.25MM! The apartment is gorgeous, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of having not one but 3 terraces. And there is certainly enough space with 2 bedrooms on the lower level, plus a den, and a laundry room. The Upper Level has the master bedroom, bathroom, a dressing room which like a walk-in closet but bigger and a terrace. What I love though, is the gold dome that you can see from the terrace. That's pretty cool.

The reason for the movie is that Mariska and her husband Peter Hermann's 2 year old son just got into pre-school on the Upper East Side, and all his little friends live up there too. Thankfully, her real estate agent, Robby Browne at Corcoran has a lovely property that she and hubby can buy and move into if they so desire. Check this out:


According to Corcoran's web-site: Historic 1866 clapboard house with front and rear garden. This rarely available 25' wide singly family home is in excellent condition and ideal for both easy living and elegant entertaining. Currently configured as 4 bedrooms with 5 bathrooms, the house also features a windowed eat-in kitchen, wood paneled library, living room, formal dining room, butler's pantry, elevator, gym, and finished basement with laundry. The 50' south garden is splendid with mature plantings and a clapboard tree house. Nineteenth century details include wide plank wood floors, multiple working wood burning fireplaces, crown moldings and high ceilings. The house is centrally air conditioned and flooded with sunlight both front and rear.

All for the rock bottom price of $12.5MM! Don't worry for how Mariska and hubby are going to pay for it. According to the Times, she makes $7MM a year in salary and residuals from Law & Order: SVU which is shown like 24 hours a day it seems like between MY 9 and the USA Network.

Stay cool!

EKM

1 comment:

Kwana said...

Love REP. So much fun!