One of the most unique townhouses in all of New York City is on the market in an attempt by its owner to cash in on the city’s sizzling real estate scene. Here are the details:
- The owner is Carlos Slim, whose net worth is around $76 billion, making him one of the top three richest men in the world.
- The townhouse is a 20,000-square-foot, Beaux Arts-style beauty at 1009 Fifth Avenue facing the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- It is called the Duke Semans Mansion.
- The price is $80 million.
- The listing comes five years (2010) after the Mexican telecom kingpin paid $44 million.
According to Bloomberg News, the reason for selling is simple: It was an investment.
“This house was bought through a real estate firm in our group that’s dedicated to this type of investment,” Arturo Elias Ayub, a spokesman for Slim, told Bloomberg, adding: “We think it was a good investment for the company to buy it at that time, just as we think this is a good time to sell it.”
While the listing shows no interior shots of the 8-story, red brick and limestone mansion near 82nd Street, the interiors are said to be decked out with hand-carved wood paneling, gold leaf-trimmed fixtures and intricate plaster friezes.
If the property fetches anywhere near its list price — which in this day it ought to — the Duke Semans Mansion would far exceed the existing record for the price paid for a NYC townhouse, which was $53 million for the Harkness Mansion at 4 East 75th Street way back in 2006.
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