Oleg Cassini’s Tortured UES Townhouse Tries Again

A fabled townhouse buried in lawsuit filings is adding one more piece of paper to the stack — an exclusive listing agreement.

Brown Harris Stevens’ Sami Hassoumi took over the listing of 15 East 63rd Street, the former design studio of Oleg Cassini, who styled Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and had flings with starlets like Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly.

The new listing appeared on StreetEasy on Jan. 15 asking $39.5 million.

The stately home has been entangled in bankruptcy proceedings filed by Peggy Nestor, Cassini’s sister-in-law, for nearly two years.

Sotheby’s Louis Beit initially listed the home for $65 million in March 2024, which worked out to roughly $3,610 per square foot for the more than 18,000-square-foot townhouse. The new price comes out to around $2,190 per square foot.

Beit did not respond to a request for comment.

“I have total confidence that Sami is going to find me a buyer,” said Al Togut, the Chapter 11 trustee for Nestor’s estate.

“This is a Gilded Age mansion, it’s beautiful,” said Togut, who is selling the home in his capacity as trustee. “I will find a buyer.”

A “tortured” sales process

The home hit the open market last spring, nearly a year after Nestor, one of the current owners of the property, filed for bankruptcy.

Nestor is the sister of Marianne Nestor Cassini, who married Oleg Cassini in 1971. The pair have owned the property since 1984, although Nestor Cassini said her sister has had sole ownership since 2018.

Nestor put the property into bankruptcy in April 2023 to prevent a foreclosure sale, and as part of the reorganization plan, agreed to either secure new financing or sell the home, according to court documents.

One of the lenders with a claim on the house, Lynx Asset Services, referred to the subsequent months as the “tortured post-petition sale process” in a motion to appoint a trustee to oversee the sale of the townhouse.

Lynx alleged that it took Nestor five months after filing for bankruptcy to find a broker to market the property, and another three months of back-and-forth finalizing the exclusive agreement with Beit, which was signed and entered into court in January 2024.

Nearly three months later, the house still had not hit the market and a judge ordered the appointment of Togut as trustee because the sale “has not been proceeding in accordance with the schedule” approved by the court several months prior.

Part of the slow sales process may have been, as Togut wrote in an April 10 motion, that Nestor and her sister Nestor Cassini did not allow the Sotheby’s team to stage, photograph or market the home.

It was not until April 30, with the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Service, that the two sisters and a woman believed to be their niece were removed from the home, which was found in “disarray” and in need of cleaning to show for prospective buyers.

“Until today, Sotheby’s was completely frustrated and prevented from doing its work,” Togut wrote.

Sotheby’s initial listing agreement ran through the end of June, but was extended until mid-December (the updated agreement also corrected a point in Beit’s original agreement that she would be paid a smaller commission if there was no buyer agent).

But in the following months, under a more standard marketing process, the house failed to generate any serious offers priced at $65 million, according to Togut.

The asking price was cut in $5 million and $7 million chunks starting in August, and the home was last listed for $44.5 million in December. Togut said he chopped the price piecemeal because of his responsibility as a fiduciary.

The 25-foot-wide home has seven bedrooms and more than eight bathrooms, as well as 14 fireplaces and three terraces. It also features some Gilded Age flourishes like a white marble foyer with a curved staircase, herringbone floors and ornamented ceilings.

Leslie Garfield’s Matt Lesser, who at one point was tapped to sell the house in 2019, called the property a “trophy home,” citing its limestone facade and “grandeur inside.” But he added that a buyer would likely undertake a full renovation of the home.

A 25-foot-wide townhouse at 12 East 63rd Street closed in 2022 for $56 million, or over $4,300 per square foot. A 10,000-square-foot townhouse of the same width at 8 East 63rd Street closed for $21 million, or over $2,100 per square foot last March.

“With home sales on the block north of $55 million,” Lesser said, “the new price will be very well received.”