The Importance Of The Latest Penthouse Sale In New York City’s Most Expensive Neighborhood

Every city with a strong luxury market always has a few ‘bellwether’ properties that are worth tracking to get a sense of how things will play out in the coming year. In Tribeca, the most expensive neighborhood of New York, the 57-story building at 56 Leonard fits all the criteria: the building makes an architectural statement, but is not a vanity piece, developers took an already-bullish neighborhood and raised the price bar for the luxury segment and, after developers put plans on hold during the recession, it made a splash with its first sales run—selling more than 90% of its units within nine months to total one billion in sales. 

But the staying power of a building is in its resale activity, which is why the 4-bed, 4.5 bath penthouse going under contract at its most recent asking price of $22 million is important to note. The final sales price has not been disclosed, but out of the thirteen units that are for sale in the 145-unit building, only one has a higher asking price—another of the penthouses, asking $29 million. Most of the remaining units are asking from $5-11 million. This penthouse, which sold for $26.5 million a few years ago, did need to come down in price a few times—from a brief high of $30 million—to the asking price of $22 million when it went under contract a few weeks ago. (Update: a source tells me agent Sahar Ziv of The Tavivian Team repped the buyer and it is rumored to have closed a little under $20 million). Its sale is a sign the top of the market is still healthy, just not where it was a few years ago.

“These properties are selling to the buyers at what the buyers are willing to pay if the buyers aren’t completely unrealistic,” said listing agent for the condo, Toni Haber of Compass. “Any $10 million plus properties when the market surges again—which it will—these are going to very happy buyers. This is an architectural masterpiece that will never be built again in Tribeca, perhaps all of New York City. The land was bought approximately 12 years ago, with the air rights. It’s too expensive, too complicated to ever be duplicated again.”

Sales at 56 Leonard is one reason Tribeca has maintained the top spot as New York’s most expensive place to buy a home. In 2017, the year the building was completed, there were 66 sales (combined of new purchases and resales) in the building, with a median price of $6.9 million, which raised the ceiling for the entire neighborhood. Even though there weren’t as many sales in the building in 2018 (since most of them had been purchased) it had already set the precedent for Tribeca. The area reached the top of the list again for 2018 with an overall median sales price of $3.85 million (fully $850,000 higher than the holder of the second spot, SoHo), according to Property Shark.

It’s also worth noting this unit is a 5,492 square foot condo, and is one of ten penthouses in the Herzon & de Meuron-designed building, nicknamed the ‘Jenga’ building given the block design of each floor. The building’s architectural design means that no two floorplans are alike and, perhaps inspired by the one-of-a-kind nature of the building, the architects custom-designed several pieces for the units. Here’s another peek inside for an example: the black granite kitchen island created to look like a grand piano with the subtle effect of a waterfall overhead (that also serves the practical purpose of hiding the oven hood and lighting). 

The listing is still live for the time being so head to its information page to see more photos of the interiors.

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This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.