The Latest Selloff at 432 Park Ave

[00:00:00]Two apartments just hit the market at 432 Park Avenue in New York and these things are priced at almost a hundred million dollars each. The first one is on the 64th floor. The seller originally purchased two units in the building and then spent over 40 million dollars on a three-year renovation to combine the apartments into a single 8,000 square foot unit. The second one is on the 88th floor and this seller also bought an unfinished unit back in 2016 and then spent [music] tens of millions of dollars customizing it to his taste.

[00:00:34]Today, we are talking about my personal favorite building in all of New York City, 432 Park Avenue. And if you've been watching for a while, you know that I'm not joking. Even though this building does get some hate, I personally love this place. We've talked about 432 Park Ave a couple times here on the channel in the past. This skyscraper has been all over the news due [music] to a bunch of lawsuits and issues that the residents who live here have dealt with since it was built.

[00:01:00]Let's do a quick recap on the backstory of this property for anybody who's not up to speed and then let's take a look at these two new insane listings at one of the most controversial buildings in the world.

[00:01:14]So, if you've watched my previous videos on 432 Park Avenue, then you can probably skip ahead here. But for anybody who hasn't, here's the quick backstory. This tower is located at the corner of 57th and Park in Midtown Manhattan. It's considered what they call a supertall skyscraper. It was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and it was originally co-developed by CIM Group and Harry Macklowe back in 2015.

[00:01:38]The building stands 1,396 feet tall. It's got 96 floors, 125 total units. It cost them over a billion dollars to build and it was a huge hit right out of the gates. Before the building was even finished being built, units started selling and by 2015, they had 90% of the units sold for an estimated total sales volume of $3.1 billion. As far as the look of the building from the outside, people either love it or hate it passionately, and for the people who do hate it, it doesn't help where the architect got his inspiration from. Rafael Viñoly famously shared that the design of the exterior of this building was inspired by a Josef Hoffmann wastebasket from 1905. In other words, the design was inspired by a trash can. A little weird, but also a little awesome. But either way, critics aside, 432 Park Avenue, generally speaking, did spend its first couple of years being celebrated. Although it didn't take too long before complaints from residents who actually lived here started to come in. Before we get into those complaints, let's lighten the mood for a minute and talk about the sponsor of today's episode, Baseline. Baseline is a banking and bookkeeping platform built specifically for real estate investors. When you're a landlord using Baseline, every property gets its own checking and savings account, so nothing gets mixed together. Rent deposits go in, transactions get tagged automatically, and your books stay updated in real time. No spreadsheets, no chasing tenants for payments. You can check on all of it from your phone wherever you are. What's even better, too, is that come tax season, you're not scrambling to get your records together.

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[00:03:43]Thank you to Baseline for sponsoring today's episode. Now, let's get into some of those bigger complaints at 432 Park. I could pull from one of a ton of different examples, but a big one that stands out is when there was a major plumbing leak on one of the mechanical floors in 2018 that sent water cascading down through the building causing water damage in 35 separate units. This was one of at least 20 separate plumbing leaks documented between 2017 and 2021.

[00:04:11]Another big issue is that with a building being so thin, it sways noticeably in high winds which not only can be uncomfortable if you're living there, but it also has impacted the elevators. These elevators were designed to slow down when swaying happens, but on multiple occasions they have completely shut off sometimes even trapping residents inside. Besides plumbing and elevator issues, the noise arguably is the worst part. When 430 Park sways in the wind, residents describe creaking, banging, and clicking so loud and constant during storms that they can't even sleep. This is the kind of stuff that you wouldn't expect to happen in a brand new construction building, especially a building where residents spent literally tens of millions of dollars each for their apartments. So, understandably it didn't take long before these residents escalated things to a whole 'nother level. In September of 2021, the condo board filed a lawsuit seeking 125 million dollars in damages citing floods, faulty elevators, and intolerable noise. The complaint called this one of the worst examples of sponsor malfeasance in the development of a luxury condominium in the history of New York City. Then in April of 2025, the condo board filed another lawsuit against Macklowe and CIM seeking 165 million dollars in damages this time alleging that the developers concealed cracks in the building's facade from buyers and city inspectors as a part of a deliberate and far-reaching fraud.

[00:05:45]That was a mouthful, but it was also a high high high-level overview of the drama. Let's move on to talking about some of these new crazy units at 432 Park Avenue that just hit the market.

[00:05:59]Let's start with apartment number 64, which is the more expensive of the two, asking $90 million for a condo. It's got four bedrooms, six bathrooms, 8,000 square feet. That asking price puts them at $11,197 per square foot. And for any of you guys out there who are thinking about buying this thing, if you do, your HOA dues are going to be $34,000 per month.

[00:06:24]The sellers on this one are an investor named Bennett LeBow and his wife Jacqueline. They bought the unit in 2015 for about 45 million bucks. Like I said at the start of the video, technically they actually bought two units at that time, and then they spent the next 3 years combining those two units into one massive suite. The renovation was estimated to cost them around $40 million, which means that these guys have about $85 million into this apartment, not including the holding costs. The ceilings in here are over 16 feet tall and it's got some crazy design details, like these stone columns, for example, over here. They were hand-carved in Italy and then had to be hoisted up through the window by crane.

[00:07:04]It's kind of interesting because these buyers could have afforded any unit in this entire building, but what some people do in these super tall skyscrapers is they actually intentionally pick a lower floor, so you actually get a bit of a view and you're not just staring out into clouds. The designer of this unit was a guy named Tony Ingrao, and the wife Jacqueline, she told the Wall Street Journal that she and Tony would meet five times per week to talk about all these little design details, and they even flew out to Europe a couple of times to pick out finishes. Like in the kitchen, for example, she had to go out to Switzerland to look at these cabinets.

[00:07:38]This is a Swarovski chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It would be a wild experience to live here. I mean, this is where she sits down and does her makeup every morning. This is where you brush your teeth. This is where you get ready for the day. And this is where you get to go to bed every night. The owner of this unit, Jacqueline, is on the condo board actually, and she insists that the whole lawsuit we talked about a minute ago will be soon resolved and that remediation work is already being done to the building. And the listing agent, Fredrik Eklund, says that in light of the timing of all this, he thinks that it's actually a great time to buy in 432 Park right now. Maybe he's right. I'll let you guys decide. New York locals, let me know what you think down in the comments.

[00:08:16]Moving on to our second listing, penthouse number 88. This one's way higher up. It's almost on the top floor actually. Priced at 88.5 million dollars, they're asking about a million dollars per floor, I guess. This one's got four bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and it's a little larger at 8,200 square feet. Those HOA dues though, they must be based on your unit size cuz if you buy this one, you're going to be paying 34,400 dollars a month. So, the seller on this one is a guy named Lewis Sanders. He's an 80-year-old Wall Street investment manager. Lewis and his wife, Alice, paid 61 million dollars for this unit directly from the developer in 2016.

[00:08:53]Then, just like the other unit we looked at, they bought this place unfinished and then they hired a designer named Andrew Sheinman to do all the interiors.

[00:09:00]We don't know how much they spent on the remodel. Mansion Global said it was in the tens of millions of dollars, which I believe it. I mean, as someone from Arizona, I can't imagine how complicated it would be to renovate a condo on the 88th floor of a building in the middle of Manhattan. The reason that these guys are selling seems to be the same reason that a lot of people are migrating out of both New York and LA. They're migrating to Florida. They already own two homes in Palm Beach, and they just bought another 20 million dollar condo in West Palm Beach a few months back.

[00:09:32]So, yeah, I guess they're saying bye to New York. By the way, we looked at the crazy HOA dues on both of these units, but we didn't really talk about what those HOA dues cover. For the cool price of around $34,000 per month, you're gaining access to a bunch of amenities at this place, including a private restaurant, on-suite dining and room service, a residence lounge, a wellness center, a 75-ft indoor swimming pool, a yoga studio, a full-service spa, 24-hour door attendance, a concierge desk, and on-site parking.

[00:10:04]>> Totally worth 34 grand a month. Even though there is a lot of controversy surrounding this place, I will say it's not like we're dealing with a Millennium Tower situation where this building's actually at risk of falling over or anything. So, because of that, there are actually still units that are selling here. If you just scroll through the recently sold properties on Zillow, there's about 16 apartments at 432 Park Ave that have sold in the last couple of years, priced anywhere from 1.35 million all the way up to 65 million. That was for a unit on the 79th floor.

[00:10:35]>> With that being said, though, the HL Real Estate Network and 5W released what they call the 10-year loss index. This report here ranks New York City residential buildings where buyers have lost the most amount of money. What they found on this report was not good for a lot of the buildings along Billionaires' Row, but especially not good for 432 Park Ave. The research found that across the board one in three Manhattan condos resold at a loss between July of 2024 and July of 2025.

[00:11:04]With 157 Trump Tower and 432 Park leading the list for underperformers.

[00:11:09]The biggest loss at 432 Park specifically was when billionaire Thomas Petterfy resold his 84th floor unit for just 13.5 million dollars in 2024. That was 40% below his 2016 purchase price. I really wish that there was a way that you could run like a YouTube poll on here or something because I'm very curious which side of the fence you guys fall on, whether you love or hate this building. I will say, regardless of which camp you fall into, you got to admit this building's iconic. I mean, for one, the views are about as good as you can get. The exterior facade is unlike anything else in the Manhattan skyline, that's for sure. And even though the units are crazy expensive, there's always going to be a handful of buyers in the world who are looking to park money in a property on Billionaires' Row, hovering right over Central Park. And as far as the whole people losing money situation, let's be real, if you can afford a $50 million apartment and you can afford the 30-plus thousand dollars per month in dues and taxes and all that stuff, then you're probably not going to lose all that much sleep at night if you lose a couple million dollars when you go to sell that unit. It'll be interesting to see what these two that we looked at today sell for. I'll see you guys next time.