If Vladimir owned a Penthouse in New York City we would probably know it, right? Maybe. Maybe not. With all of the sanctions against oligarchs happening right now, it’s only a matter of time before we start reading about the seizure of prominent properties owned by oligarchs in New York City. We know of a couple homes already owned by oligarchs although we don’t know if they own office buildings or how much commercial property is in their portfolio. Everybody knows that real estate is one of the best asset classes of a diversified and well-balanced portfolio. It’s certainly better than a yacht or a jet.
The seizure of property is nothing new to us. There has been a bevy of publicized seizures and sudden sales of property owned by criminals. The ink on Jeffrey Epstein’s $50M townhouse sale at 9 East 71st Street is still fresh. The final sale was much lower than the original asking price of $90M but significantly higher than the 20M Epstein paid for it. His side-chick Ghislaine Maxwell saw the writing on the wall in her townhouse so she sold 116 East 65th Street for $15M in 2016 – before she went on the lam. Most of the time, the public becomes aware of transactions like these when the real estate agent on the deal picks up the phone and blabs. They blab because they want to see their name in the paper with the quote “Broker Jane Doe did not comment or return calls” which I guess is accurate because you can’t return a call that you initiate.
It’s the deals you don’t hear about that are interesting to me. Most of these transactions are handled by agents who are smart enough to be discerning and realize that 5 minutes of fame for the gram does not build a reputable business. Also, most of these sophisticated private clients are not hiring insta-celebrity or billboard brokers. They are hiring a handful of trustworthy agents who honor discretion and privacy.
But back to the oligarchs. I don’t think Vladimir’s agent would be brave enough or dumb enough to call the press, and I’m certain that if he/she had sold him an apartment, they had never met in person and he/she never knew who the ultimate purchaser was. Ignorance is bliss. Unless agents are required to do something, they won’t do it. I think it’s high time we added some responsibility to the due diligence process an agent has to undertake when representing a client.
In my career, I have transacted with ex-presidents, ex-president’s girlfriends, presidents of Fortune 500 companies, politicians, celebrities, billionaires, and a man who’s wealth dwarfed most billionaires. None of these transactions were publicized and their identities are not in the public domain.
So... in order to figure out where Vladimir’s penthouse is, we would have to rely on other “intelligence”.
The 19-year-old, who rejected Elon Musk’s $5,000 offer to delete his Twitter account, recently launched two new automated Twitter accounts.
These two profiles give live updates of the private jets’ movements along with pictures of maps locating them. They’ve been very helpful with tracking yachts on the run. Penthouses don’t have a tail number like jets but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack Sweeney figures out a way to get the information on real estate somehow.
99% of condo purchases are bought in an LLC, so a plain search won’t be much help to him.
The first location he might look would be Billionaires Row on 57th Street. Littered with the most high end sales in New York City, and per capita in the world (with maybe the exception of Monaco), the lights in these luxury apartments stay off most of the year. Look at the skyline and you’ll see! Sometimes the thing we are looking for is right in front of us.
These sales make up less than 0.5% of all New York City sales, but they generate 99% of the press.
I’m not sure if Putin has a penthouse in New York and I’m not sure we will ever know the answer, but I know some of his cronies do and it’s only a matter of time before we find out.
Side Bar:
Every now and then I hear a story and ask myself “How on earth did I not know about this!” I recently read “Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire” by Hans Greimel and William Sposato. If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s an eye opener!
Let’s do this.
-Shaun