The well-heeled are doubling down on double-wide mansions.
The latest?
A 41.5-foot Upper West Side combined townhouse — whose width makes it a mansion by local standards — asking a record $85 million that has gone into contract. Its final sale price isn’t yet known, but should it sell for that sum, it will rank as the city’s priciest townhouse sale in history, according to StreetEasy records. And it comes just weeks on the heels of another multimillion-dollar townhouse transaction downtown.
Just off of Central Park, 48-50 W. 69th St. spans 19,600 square feet in 25 rooms across eight levels with multiple oversized outdoor entertaining areas throughout. The home includes a 2,000-square-foot full-floor primary suite, woodburning fireplaces, a 55-foot indoor lap pool, a Jacuzzi, a fitness center and a yoga space.
Bigger seems to be better.
“There is a demand at the uber trophy level for extraordinarily large, beautifully renovated properties,” said luxury real estate broker Donna Olshan, president of Olshan Realty, who noted in her firm’s weekly report that the West 69th Street deal was the priciest among 32 contracts signed last week for Manhattan homes priced at $4 million or more. “The amount of wealth at the very top is mind boggling. There always seems to be a buyer for a rare property, painting, car, collectible.”
The seller purchased the two neighboring townhouses on West 69th Street for $24.5 million in 2012 and combined them into a single-family townhouse, Mansion Global reported. That doesn’t mean the combination was easy or well-received by neighbors. French businessman Pierre Bastid and his jazz-singer wife Malou Beauvoir reportedly rankled their neighbors during the seven-year process — some of whom moved elsewhere due to feeling fed up with the significant excavation the couple undertook.
Its listing agent Jim St. André of Compass assured The Post, “It’s a record-setting price. It sets a new bar for townhouses across the city.”
If it’s anywhere near the asking price, 48-50 W. 69th St. would beat out the more than $70 million shelled out for a West Village double-wide townhouse in April — which combines two former walkups into a single residence — at 105-107 Bank St. That home spans roughly 13,000 square feet.
“The double-wide market is in significant demand,” said Leslie J. Garfield’s Matthew Lesser, who listed the Bank Street house. “We are in contract to sell 34-36 E. 70th St. and recently sold 34-36 E. 63rd St. and 35-37-39 E. 63rd St.”
The 40-foot-wide “Hangar Club” mansion at 34-36 E. 63rd St. sold in February for $46.75 million.
The property at 35-37-39 E. 63rd St. is a 61-foot-wide mega-mansion split into seven ultra-luxury residential rental apartments that Lesser sold in March for $34.5 million.
The Bank Street house is close in price to the downtown record $72.5 million Away’s Jen Rubio and boyfriend Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, paid for a combined townhouse in the same area in 2024.
It’s not uncommon for the affluent to cobble together neighboring townhouses in a city with limited space.
“Over the past year Manhattan townhouse sales have expanded significantly in size, up 29.9% annually to 5,487 square feet,” said market analyst Jonathan Miller.
Manhattan’s high-end market is going strong.
“The market seems to be skewing towards larger-sized sales, a reflection of robust financial markets, and [an] expanding wealth gap,” said Miller, director of markets for StreetMatrix real estate analytics platform. “The idea that price records are being broken seems to be a regular thing in the Manhattan housing market after exiting the pandemic era.”
