Thursday, September 13, 2012

 SELLERS: Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $24,995,000
SIZE: 6,800+- square feet, 5-6 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama awoke at the crack of dawn this foggy but clearing morning to a covert communique from a kindly tattletale—let's call him Benjamin Bigapple—who kindly let us know the 25-foot wide New York City townhouse Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick (allegedly) snatched up last year for $18,995,000 is back on the market with a new and significantly higher asking price of $24,995,000.

Property records Your Mama peeped show the deed last transferred in March 2011 to a obliquely-named trust handled by Frank Selvaggi, a fella well known amongst all us nosy property gossips as the business manager of Miz Parker and, we presume, any number of other notable and/or high net worth individuals. The townhouse sellers, as per property records and reports from the time of the March 2011 sale, were Malaysian media mogul Clive Ng and fashion model Farrah Summerford who themselves picked up the 165-year old red brick townhouse in the busy heart of Greenwich Village in June 2000 for $5,034,000.

The selling couple—we assume they are (or were then) romantically linked—converted the property back to a 6,800-ish square foot single family house in the early Aughts, according to listing information from 2009 that we dug up on the interweb. Current listing information and marketing materials indicate the elevator-less townhouse has five bedrooms, five full and three half bathrooms, and seven working fireplaces. Listing information from 2009 indicated the townhouse is also equipped with a bunch of other fancy stuff like a five-zone HVAC system, a phone system with 11 (and up to 250) active lines, and state-of-the-art security that includes a video intercom and five cameras with 24-hour time lapse recordings and on-demand accessibility from any computer from anywhere in the world.

A terrific stoop—and who doesn't love a New York City stoop?—rises to the parlor floor foyer that connects to both the formal living and dining rooms that can be separated by pocket doors but that together stretch forty-plus feet from the front clear through to the back of the house. A powder pooper for guests was well placed for privacy at the far end of the foyer/stair hall and a wonderful wet bar was advantageously nestled into an alcove in the dining room. A glass-paned door in the booze nook opens to a finely- and no-doubt expensively-engineered floating staircase that descends to the lower level and completely landscaped rear garden.

The garden floor, Boffi brand center island kitchen may be an annoyingly long schlep from the parlor floor formal dining room but it is something to behold, lavishly finished with bone-colored hardwood floors and giant slabs of marble and comfortably endowed with a kitchen-sized pantry and the full complement of top-notch and/or commercial-grade appliances. An adjoining breakfast area links to the thickly-planted, bi-level backyard.

The front of the garden level has a convenient under-the-stoop service entrance, an exceptionally generous storage closet, a small but agreeably located half bathroom, and a petite but hardly minuscule bedroom (with fireplace and private pooper) most likely to be occupied by a live-in domestic worker or possibly pressed into use as, we can easily imagine, a home office, Pilates studio, fetish suite, recording studio and/or etc.

There are two, small and window-free bathrooms on the third floor that service three guest/family bedrooms, two of which are, to say the least, awkwardly shaped. The full-floor master suite on the fourth floor offers two walk-in closets/dressing rooms plus additional closets space, full-width private terrace with garden view, and a bedroom-sized bathroom outfitted with a free-standing soaking tub, separate shower, two sinks, and a discrete cubby for the crapper.

The uppermost floor contains an voluminous, forty-plus foot long sky-lit family room with wood floors (that may or may not be antique) and a long wall of almost floor-to-ceiling magazine racks, bookcases and display shelves. A half bathroom saves time and energy climbing stairs and a small, separate office could be converted to a bedroom in a pinch. The basement level has a laundry room, lots of storage space, a couple of flexi-use rooms, and a three-quarter bathroom.

Back in March (2012) when all us celebrity property gossips were punch drunk with rumors and reports about the Parker-Brodericks picking up a pair of side-by-side townhouses on a leafy street in Brooklyn's Brooklyn Heights 'hood, there were more rumors and reports—kick-started by the celeb sleuths at the New York Daily News—about the (allegedly) itchy-footed couple "quietly shopping" their newly acquired Greenwich Village townhouse "after remodeling" but "having never moved in."

The thing is, as the more eagle-eyed children have probably already noted, current listing photos show the spacious interior spaces all done up with the nearly exact same day-core as was seen in the listing photos from September 2009. The sameness isn't just with the choice and configuration of the furniture but it goes right down to the art on the walls and the collection of perfume bottles on the slender mantel in the bedroom-sized bathroom in the fourth floor master suite. There are some very subtle differences—i.e. the earlier, 2009 listing photos don't show blue-grey bath mats on either side of the bathtub in the master bathroom—but they're so as to be inconsequential to the overall identicalness.

So, what's happening here, children? Were the current photos regurgitated from the previous listing in order to protect the privacy of the Parker-Brodericks? Did Matt and Sarah Jessie purchase the urban mansion fully furnished and decorated down to the wood-framed mirrors over the parlor floor mantels, the seal grey, tufted velvet wing back chairs in the living room that look to Your Mama like they probably cost more than our BMW, and the pair of abutted, matching, marble-topped round tables in the dining room? We'll let y'all chaw on and hash out that dilemma for yourselves.

In addition to the up-for-grabs Greenwich Village townhouse and the two red brick townhouses in Brooklyn they may (or may not) have acquired earlier this year, the Broderick-Parkers' property portfolio currently contains, according to our sources and resources, a 4,000+ square foot townhouse in the West Village bought way back in April 2000 for $2,995,000 as well as a couple of small houses in the Hamptons—one of which is ocean front—purchased in two separate transactions in the summer of 2005 for a total of $6,600,000.

Due to the three hour time difference between the east and west coasts, their apparent sleeplessness, and our molasses-like abilities, the ever-industrious kids at Curbed got their discussion of the matter up before we did.

interior listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty
exterior photo: Nicholas Strini for Property Shark

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