A Gilded Age property on the Upper East Side has dramatically sold days before a potential foreclosure for $18.3 million — far less than its original $30 million asking price in 2021.
The 30-foot-wide, French Renaissance-style edifice is at 14 E. 69th St. between Fifth and Madison avenues.
The buyer is domestic, a source told Gimme.
A bidding war required potential buyers to commit to an all-cash deal, forgoing engineering inspections and allowing the seller to stay for 60 days after closing, according to the Olshan Luxury Market Report, which was the first to write about the deal.
The residence, which had been owned by the same family for almost 50 years, had most recently asked $26.5 million.
“It’s a fantastic deal,” the seller’s rep Alex Carini, of the Carini Group, told Gimme Shelter. “It’s the only 30-footer between Fifth and Madison avenues — besides Carlos Slim’s house — on all of the Upper East Side.”
Carini was referring to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who listed his mansion at 1009 Fifth Ave., at 82nd Street, for $80 million in January 2023. That 20,000-square-foot behemoth spans 27 feet along Fifth Avenue and 100 feet along East 82nd Street
Slim bought the property — billed at the time as the only private mansion on Fifth Avenue — for $44 million from the late ex-Soviet Union businessman Tamir Sapir in 2010.
At 13,006 square feet, the five-story East 69th Street home is currently subdivided into an owner’s duplex and four one-bedroom apartments with a medical office on the ground floor. It is, however, ready to be restored to single-family status.
Original details include a circular wooden staircase, multiple woodburning fireplaces, crown moldings, hardwood floors and high ceilings. There’s also an elevator and a landscaped terrace. The owner’s duplex is on the second and third floors, with two rentals on the fourth floor and two more on the fifth.
The residence was completed in 1893. Designed by Lansing C. Holden, it was built as a single-family home for Josephine and William Buchanan, and converted into mixed-use commercial and residential units in 1944.
Current real estate taxes are $192,101 a year, according to the same Olshan report.