The colossal Manhattan real estate story of Edgar Bronfman Jr., Seagram liquor grandson and Warner Music Group CEO, has finally taken a comparatively imperfect turn. Eight months after he sold his East 64th Street townhouse to a Russian oil billionaire for $50 million, even though he paid $4,375,000 for the property in 1994, his 11-room apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue has gone to contract for somewhere between $20 and $21 million, a source said, well below the original $24 million asking price.

Meanwhile, the duplex penthouse he bought at the Carhart Mansion on East 95th Street last October for around $19 million, and put on the market in April for $24.  read more »

Russian-born and Harvard-educated finance billionaire Leonard Blavatnik has signed a letter of intent to buy a $150 million apartment on East 77th Street, The New York Post is reporting this morning.

"The price would be twice as large as the previous record listing in New York City, and nearly $50 million more than last year's sale of the De Menil estate in East Hampton, believed to be the priciest residential transaction in the country," Braden Keil writes.

Readers of the Manhattan Transfers column will know Mr. Blavatnik's name. Back in 2005, he tried to buy Mary Tyler Moore's 5,740-square-foot prewar coop on the eighth floor of 927 Fifth Avenue, but his $18.5 million offer was rejected by the exacting co-op board. The rejection seems to have stuck: the same thing happened when the co-op board at the San Remo on Central Park West rejected his bid to buy and combine three units into a massive aerie overlooking Central Park.  read more »

It's official: Oil tycoon Len Blavatnik has paid exactly $50 million for his friend Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s townhouse at 15 East 64th Street, the second biggest New York townhouse deal ever.

The sales deed was filed in city records this morning, the day after iconic uptown broker Linda Stein was found murdered in her posh apartment. Upper East Side real estate always works weirdly.  read more »