The New York City Plaza Hotel has gone condo for some amazing prices, with a new record set for one of the units at 50 million dollars. When we first reported on the pricing in December of 2005, pricing was expected to top out at 35 million dollars for the Duplex and Triplex Penthouses at the Plaza, but the new record eclipses these lofty goals by 15 million dollars. The New York Observer has the story:

According to a source, an apartment at the newly-refurbished Plaza Hotel has gone to contract for at least $50 million, which quite easily makes it the biggest apartment sale ever in New York City.
Since late 2005, that title belonged to the sharp-tongued hedge fund sovereign Daniel Loeb, whose full-floor penthouse at 15 Central Park West reportedly cost $45 million. It isn’t clear if this mammoth Plaza deal, like Mr. Loeb’s, is for a combined-unit apartment–but Stribling broker Sassy Johnson has said that some buyers are combining up to five units each.
Marx would be livid! But The Plaza has always been a land of miraculous, magical affluence: Eloise mixed stiff martinis for Truman Capote in the Grand Ballroom, while Frank Lloyd Wright took his Oak Room tea with Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Sinatra waltzed beneath the Palm Court’s stained glass.
But things have been different since August 2004, when New York developer El-Ad Properties, headed by the Israeli-born developer Miki Naftali, bought the Plaza for $675 million. El-Ad is spending $400 million to refurbish the 805-room hotel: When it opens in October, the Central Park landmark will have 182 private condos and 130 hotel rooms–plus 152 units that owners will live in for about a quarter of the year before renting them out. via The New York Observer.

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