john paulson

It's hard to feel sorry for the hedge fund managers. They not only have lavish New York apartments they also often have sprawling Hamptons vacation homes. Today we consider the case of John Paulson, founder of Paulson & Co. In January, he plunked $41.3 million for a Southampton estate known as Old Trees. Of course this meant selling his existing Southampton home. Paulson bought the home for $12.75 million in 2006 so when he put it on the market in April he priced it at $19.5 million, anticipating a tidy profit. No takers so in late August he dropped the price to $16.9 million. In October he finally got a nibble but he had a buyer with a signed contract walk away from the deal. Paulson really needs to unload this puppy so now it is down to $13.9 million which means he resigned himself to not making a huge profit on the sale. What do you get for your money? The 6,8000 square foot cottage has seven bedrooms and an enclosed pool with a sauna room. It is on three acres and has a private master suite with a sitting room and two separate baths and has a charming cottagey decor.

As the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties reminds us, on Thursday, Mr. Paulson testified on Capitol Hill at a closely watched hearing on whether hedge funds require more regulation.
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From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--A four-story Upper East Side townhouse 152-156 East 81st Street, shown above, has gone on the market for $45 million. It has a a 3,000-square-foot garden, 38-foot-wide drawing room. two libraries and one sitting room; a parlor-floor dry bar and a "wine cellar/grotto" in the basement. The listing is here.
--Moby is an investor in a a four-floor, six-room, three-bedroom unit at Landmark 17 which was sold to gas broker Javier Loya and his interior designer wife Lucinda for $4.35 million.
--Michael Novogratz's a former Goldman Sachs partner who is behind Fortress Investment Group and officially became a billionaire last February his company went public once rented a 5,000-square-foot loft at 400 West 14th Street that had listed for $37,500 per month. The hedge fund executive's family even made changes to the rental. Now they've moved to their renovated Tribeca apartment and the their old apartment is listed at $29,000 a month. Check out the listing here.

From the Real Estalker:
--Stephen Dorff has listed his Chelsea apartment. It was our estate of the day on Friday.
--Faith Hill and Tim McGraw have listed their Beverly Park estate, it is our photo-heavy estate of the day later today.
----Lawyer Chris Darden has put his Tarzana home on the market for $2.199 million.
--Madison Hildebrand, a real estate agent who appears on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing show has listed his Malibu townhouse for $1.27 million.


From the LA Times Hot Property:
--Ving Rhames has listed a five-bedroom home in Brentwood. It was our estate of the day on Saturday.
--American pop artist Edward Ruscha has listed his Malibu beach house for $7.15 million. The listing is here.
--Barbi Benton, Hugh Hefner's former live-in girlfriend, Hee Haw star and frequent Fantasy Island and Love Boat guest star, has listed her Bel-Air home with her husband, George Gradow, a real estate developer.The pair live in Aspen and have rented the Bel-Air home to a variety of celebrities including Prince, Mariah Carey and Michael Caine. The property website for this elaborate home is here.
--Nicole Murphy, Eddie Murphy's ex-wife has re-listed her Calabasas house, asking $8.495 million. Last October it was on the market at $9.95 million. The listing is here.
--The Beverly Hills estate of three-time Oscar-winning songwriter Ray Evans is listed for sale at $9.995 million. Evans, with his partner Jay Livingston penned "Que Sera, Sera," "Silver Bells" and "Buttons and Bows." He lived in this mid-century modern house for more than 50 years. It's a real beauty, check out the property website.
--The owners of Stonepine the Stonepine Estate Resort in Carmel Valley, Gordon and Noel Irwin Hentschel have put their longtime Bel-Air home on the market for $18 million. The French Normandy-style home also rents for $65,000 a month. The listing is here.
--Beck has listed his Malibu home for $2.399 million. The listing is here.
--Tori Spelling has listed her home in the Westwood area of Los Angeles for $2.395 million.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Actress Annabeth Gish has paid $1.65 million for a 1,476-square-foot house in Valley Village.
--A seven-bedroom house in Sherman Oaks once owned by model Rachel Hunter has been listed for $3.495 million. The property website is here.
--A five-bedroom home in Encino where Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen spent a good amount of their youth is on the market for $2.795 million. The listing is here.
Public records reveal that Brad Garrett got $7,500,000 for his five bedroom home in Hidden Hills.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--Alexis Stewart has relisted her bright white TriBeCa apartment at the same price, $12.4 million, with a new broker. The listing is here.
--A 16-room duplex at 1030 Fifth Ave. has been reduced by $13 million since it first went on the market last June for $47.5 million. The owners are still set to make a profit though, they paid just $2 million for it in the 1980s. The listing for the now $34.5 million apartment is here.
--Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit has sold a four-bedroom co-op at 300 E. 85th St. to Pantelis Apessos, a fellow Citigroup executive for $2.25 million.
--John Paulson, a hedge-fund manager who pocketed as much as $3 billion last year on bets against subprime mortgages, had a buyer with a signed contract walk away from his $16.9 million listing on Ox Pasture Road in Southampton. The home is still on the market, the listing is here. Meanwhile Paulson has spent more than $41 million for a 10-acre estate down the street known as Old Trees.

From the Wall Street Journals' Private Properties:
--The former home of Truman Capote in the Hamptons recently went on the market for $14.6 million.
--In Tel Aviv, two high-floor apartments in a planned 27-story condominium designed by architect Richard Meier have gone to contract for about $15 million each.
--James Guercio, who produced early albums by the rock group Chicago, has placed a large piece of Wyoming land up for sale for $75 million. The property has more than 80,000 acres including the legendary OW, V Bar C, Pitchfork, Wolf and LX Bar Ranches along with two downtown Sheridan office buildings, and the old Birney Store & Saloon.The listing is here.

From Newsday's Real LI:
Socialite and actress Jennifer Creel and her ex-husband Lawrence have sold a five-year-old, 3,500-square-foot home on Fisher's Island for $3.05 million.

From the International Herald Tribune's Raising the Roof:
--The Montreal Ritz Carlton has officially started selling 50 new residences starting at $1.75 million for the apartments, which range from 1,060 to 5,640 square feet. The apartments are scheduled for completion in 2010.
--Cacique, the $800 million development in Costa Rica being developed by AOL founder Steve Case has been delayed and now won't break ground until 2010, at the earliest.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--James H. Herbert II, the chairman and chief executive of the First Republic Bank, listed his penthouse at Trump Parc East on Central Park South, shown above, earlier this month for $38 million, nearly four times what he paid back in 2005. The listing is here.
--Real estate investor Keith Rubenstein and his wife Inga have spent $3.2 million on a two-bedroom duplex at 101 Warren Street in Tribeca. The duplex is smaller than the $20 million penthouse he had originally agreed to buy in the building. Rubenstein, his wife and their son, Keith Jr., will stay in the Warren Street apartment for about two years while their new East 62nd mansion is renovated.
--Enrique Norten paid $1.929 million for an apartment at One York Street, the building he designed in northern Tribeca.
--Pete Peterson, the co-founder and senior chairman of the Blackstone Group, and the chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, has bought that organization's apartment at the Imperial House co-op on East 69th Street, paying the council $3.04 million. Peterson bought the apartment so that Leslie Gelb, the council's so-called Board Senior Fellow and its president from 1993 to 2003 could continue to live there with his family.
--An apartment belonging to hedge fund manager Vedula Murti and his wife Seema Kalia and designed by Madonna's designer, Jamie Drake is now on the market for $10.75 million. The couple bought for $7,127,750 two years ago. Check out the colorful listing here.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--The loft apartment in SoHo where Heath Ledger died in January ins now listed for $26,000 a month. The listing is here.
--Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of England's Manchester United Football Club is picking up a three-bedroom penthouse in Manhattan House, at 200 E. 66th St.
--Developer Janna Bullock has bought a brand-new apartment at the Plaza for $8.78 million.

From Newsday's Real LI:
--J.Crew chief executive Millard Drexler is in contract to buy a house in Wainscott for $17 million.
--Quarterback Chad Pennington has gone into contract on his Muttontown home. It was our estate of the day earlier this month.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--The official sale price on Tom Arnold's Tarzana home was $1.8 million which was below the list price of $2.275 million and below the amount that Tom paid for the house in late 2006.
-Actor Hamish Linklater who stars on "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and his playwright wife Jessica Goldberg have put their three-bedroom home in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles on the market for $675,000. They have picked up a new home in Los Feliz that had been listed at $1.397 million for $1.362 million. The listing for the home for sale is here.
--The estate of Heath Ledger has sold his Hollywood Hills home for $2.5 million.

From the Real Estalker:
--Dallas Cowboys quarterback and Jessica Simpson's boyfriend Tony Romo has picked up a home in Irving, Texas that was listed at $699,000.
--Quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bundchen are rumored to have have paid $11.75 million for a 3.6-acre vacant lot in the same gated neighborhood in Brentwood that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lives in.
--via the San Francisco Chronicle, a penthouse in the St. Regis Residences San Francisco is being listed for $70 million. VIctor MacFarlane bought all three (unfinished) pricey penthouse units at the St. Regis back in late 2005 for a reported $30 million which set a record in San Francisco at the time. The property is around 20,000 square feet of space with four terraces and features 360 degree views.
--Rumor has it that Mel Gibson snapped up Tea Leoni and David Duchovny's Malibu mansion which was quickly on the market for $12 million.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--Hedge-fund manager John Paulson has lowered the price on his Hamptons home by $2.6 million. It is now listed at $16.9 million. He bought it for $12.75 million in 2006. The listing is here.
--Boston Celtics player Ray Allen has lowered the price of his former Seattle-area home to $5.2 million from $6 million. It was our estate of the day on Saturday.
--Former Seattle Mariners outfielder Jay Buhner has listed his custom-built home on 80 acres for $12 million, we'll be checking that one out as Monday's estate of the day.
--Manhattan's Spence School, an all-girls, K-12 private school founded in 1892, recently closed on its purchase of a $27 million townhouse directly behind its main East Side building.


From the LA Times Hot Property:
--David Barrett, a producer and director who has worked on episodes of "Cold Case," "Smallville" and "Bionic Woman," has bought a house in Toluca Lake for $1.2 million.
--John Cleese has put another Montecito home on the market, this time for $10.75 million. The listing for his Fernald Point beach front home is here.
--Studio musician Jason Sinay has sold his six-bedroom home in the Beverly Hills flats area for $6 million.