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Only Giuliani’s Real Estate Can Save Him Now

August 14, 2024 No Comments

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty

How much money is Rudy Giuliani worth? Ever since he filed for bankruptcy after a judge ruled last December that he owed two former Georgia election workers $148 million in damages as part of their defamation-suit victory, that has been the open question. (He claimed to have only $1 million to $10 million in assets and $153 million in debts.) Now we may never know. After months of spending tons of money while claiming he has no money, a judge dismissed his bankruptcy case, but Giuliani’s lawyers claimed he couldn’t even pay the fees he owed to his creditors’s financial adviser, a basic condition of closing the case. The latest chapter in this saga has concluded with the former mayor agreeing to a last-minute deal to pay off the $400,000 he owes to the adviser. He’ll have to pay $100,000 in cash up front and then pay the rest in profits from a sale of either his Upper East Side apartment or his Florida condo. (The judge still has to sign off on the agreement.)

The stately living room of Rudy Giuliani’s apartment featured in this listing photo is a great place to record a Cameo if you’re strapped for cash.
Photo: Sothebys

Which one will sell first? Giuliani listed his three-bedroom, three-bathroom Upper East Side apartment last year for $6.5 million with the price dropping to $5.7 million earlier this year. Locationwise, it’s just steps from Central Park, and its rooms, while dated, include a wood-paneled library and a grand dining room with a conservatory — all of it suitable for a mayor but perhaps too grandiose for a podcast host. So far, he hasn’t been forced to list the two-bedroom lakefront Palm Beach condo he plans to live in full time, but it’s estimated to be worth around $3.5 million. (Giuliani’s lawyer wrote in a motion in March, “Surely the committee does not intend the debtor to join the ranks of the homeless?”) The new deal allows Giuliani to avoid testifying under oath about his finances, but it doesn’t absolve him of the roughly $540,000 he owes the IRS in back taxes or the multiple legal debts he’s still on the hook for. With the bankruptcy case settled, the former election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, will now be able to move forward in the D.C. court system to seek the $148 million they are still owed. And Giuliani will have to hunker down in whatever multimillion-dollar property he has left and appeal — or figure out more ways (perhaps more profitable than coffee) to make up the rest of what he owes.

The Jennifer Lopez–Ben Affleck Real-Estate Shuffle

August 14, 2024 No Comments

Photo: MEGA/Getty/GC Images

After a canceled tour, a panned biopic, and nonstop speculation about the status of her marriage to Ben Affleck, there’s finally some good news for Jennifer Lopez: Her Madison Square Park penthouse has finally sold after languishing on the market for seven years. As the New York Post reported, the four-bedroom, 7.5-bath duplex on 21 East 26th Street closed last week for $23 million. The buyer was an anonymous LLC from West Palm Beach, Florida.

Like other things in J.Lo’s life, selling her penthouse has been a long, bumpy journey — the apartment was first listed for $27 million in 2017, three years after she bought it, and has gone on and off the market ever since. It was last listed for $25 million in 2022 and has ultimately gone for $2 million less. According to the Post, an insider said Lopez wanted to sell the home because of its lack of privacy above bustling Madison Square Park. The Whitman building is only six stories high, and for the many millions she’s asking, its “penthouse” might not have been sufficiently high enough for those with that kind of cash. It’s perhaps why the apartment — which includes multiple terraces, staff quarters, and a private elevator landing — has taken so long to sell. The Whitman is also squished between two much taller buildings and is, in fact, the shortest on the block.

Even this gorgeous living room shown off in the listing photo for J.Lo’s penthouse wasn’t enough to move the apartment quickly.
Photo: Brown Harris Stevens

The duplex, which ultimately sold for $23 million, comes with a soaking bath but perhaps not quite enough privacy, as seen in this listing photo.
Photo: Brown Harris Stevens

Meanwhile, amid rumors of their impending divorce, Affleck has purchased a $20.5 million house in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. By himself. It’s a five-bed, six-bath house equestrian estate by architect Cliff May. Recently, the two also officially put their marital home in Beverly Hills on the market for $68 million, $7 million more than what they bought it for in 2023, after reportedly trying but failing to sell it off-market. After this sale, Lopez will now have more cash for those solo viewings she’s been on.

‘The Baldwin Property Is Lovely, But …’

August 13, 2024 No Comments

Alec Baldwin has been trying to sell his seven-bedroom, nine-bath house in Amagansett since 2022, a year after the fatal Rust shooting. He even made a forlorn video about it, in which he sadly extolled the features of the property and sounded like he didn’t want to sell it at all. Now that the Rust case against him has been dismissed, it might seem like any potential buyers put off by legal troubles can now move ahead without any qualms.

Realtors think Alec Baldwin’s farmhouse, featured in the video he made for the listing, is dated.
Photo: Saunders/Youtube

But, as multiple real-estate agents told Realtor.com, the house is maybe not worth its asking price of $19 million (down from an original asking price of $29 million). They noted that the location — north of the highway, and therefore far from the water — isn’t actually ideal, and that a portion of the eight-acre parcel is reserved for agricultural use, which means it’s not what developers are looking for. Telly Karoussos, a Douglas Elliman agent, pointed out that there are a lot of better locations at the current price point. “You have other large land options, oceanfront options,” he told Realtor.

And then there’s the actual design and décor of the 10,000-square-foot estate. Buyers who have nearly $20 million to spend are looking for something that’s move-in ready, not one that needs a renovation. The house that Baldwin has lived in with two different wives over three decades is a classic farmhouse with a somewhat stodgy Hamptons vibe. “The Baldwin property is lovely, but it is a very old home that has been renovated on multiple occasions,” Karoussos said. “The marketing even suggests that the buyer of this property might just want to build new.”

But perhaps one of the main drawbacks, some brokers suggest, is Baldwin himself. The charges against him might have been dismissed, but, as Jenny Lenz, managing director of Dolly Lenz Real Estate, put it, the actor’s “active participation in marketing the home is probably a detriment and clients have suggested it has an ‘ick’ factor.”