The massive triplex penthouse at the Pierre Hotel — once the city’s most expensive listing asking $125 million — has finally found a buyer after four years of price cuts and renovations.
Public records show a buyer, listed only as 795 Properties, LLC, just shelled out $44 million for the property, a steep drop from the most recent asking price of $57 million and a whopping $81 million less than the initial ask. On a per square foot basis, the purchase price for the 12,000-square-foot spread works out to around $3,666 per square foot, down from the original $10,416 per-square-foot price tag.
Seller Barbara Zweig, the widow of financier Martin Zweig, listed the 16-room co-op at 795 Fifth Avenue after her husband’s death in 2013 but slashed the price several times. In 2015, after the unit failed to sell for $63 million, she took the apartment off the market. She had it staged to give it a “more contemporary living style,” Brown Harris Stevens’ Mary Rutherfurd, who had the listing with Leslie Coleman, said at the time. Before Rutherfurd and Coleman, Sotheby’s International Realty’s Elizabeth Lee Sample, Brenda Powers and Serena Boardman had the listing.
The pad, which spans the top three floors of the iconic hotel, was once the Pierre’s ballroom. It has a library, four terraces and private elevator, and it costs $51,840 a month to maintain.
Martin Zweig purchased the triplex in 1999 for $21.5 million, a record at the time, according to Forbes. He listed it for $70 million in 2004, but ultimately pulled the apartment off the market. Barbara Zweig moved to a $12 million pad on the 24th floor after her husband’s death.
It’s no secret the luxury market has cooled over the past two years — or that the buyer pool for expensive pads is thin. Just just 61 properties sold for more than $30 million since 2012, according to an analysis by The Real Deal. Even at the peak of the market in 2015, there were just four sales over $60 million.
The Pierre currently has six active listings — including the co-op owned by late financier Lionel Pincus, which is asking $70 million. The duplex, on the 30th and 31st floors, belonged to Pincus’ longtime companion, HRH Princess Firyal of Jordan.