SELL BUY PROPERTY

BUYER: Ricky Martin
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE:3,147 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Once upon a celebrity real estate time booty-shaking Puerto Rican pop star/entertainer Ricky Martin owned sleek, 65th floor pied-a-terre at the twin-towered Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan that he bought in 2004 for just about $6.8 million and sold at an enviable multi-million dollar profit in 2006 for $9,750,000.

The following year (2007) Mister Martin hauled his real estate vida loca downtown to the then and still quite haute-ish Herzog & de Meuron-designed 40 Bond building where any number of celebrity property gossips—including Your Mama—reported he (allegedly) coughed up somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000,000 for a low floor apartment with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.*

Incidentally and as a slight aside, the fancy-pants 40 Bond building in the NoHo (North of Houston) nabe, is where fashion designer Calvin Klein was reported earlier today in the New York Post to have signed a short term lease on a $25,000 per month two bedroom spread. Seventy year old Mister Klein—who can not be at all happy about the possibly pending publication of a probably embarrassing tell-all book by his blabber mouthed 21-year old former lover Nick Gruber—has sought temporary refuge at 40 Bond from  his far more grand West Village triplex penthouse after hurricane Sandy compromised and/or destroyed the building's basement level services.

Anyhoo, sometime last year Mister Martin and his long-time man-friend Carlos Gonzalez Abella packed up his/their toddler-age boy twins and shook their bon bons all the way back uptown to the full service Lucida building on East 85th Street where he/they leased a seventh floor quadruple exposure sprawler with five bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, an 800 square foot corner living room, an eat-in kitchen and a last listed monthly rent of $32,500. For the record, the apartment has been back up for lease since mid-November (2012) with a notably higher $37,500 monthly rent price. 

Today comes word slips down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine via the NewYork Post that Mister Martin has opted to own a piece of The Big Apple with the $5,900,000 purchase of a sun drenched and (essentially) south facing two-unit combination condo crib in a contemporary—some might say rather bland—10-story Peter Marino-designed building that faces Gracie Mansion and the playgrounds, open fields and dog run at Carl Shurz Park.

The eight-room apartment, according to listing information, measures in at 3,147 square feet with generous 10 foot ceilings and over-sized floor-to-ceiling windows. The floor plan included with marketing materials shows there's a proper foyer in which to greet guests and the Chinese food delivery man and a double-wide—if otherwise architecturally featureless—living/dining room with Old Timey pre-war style parquet floors. There's also a pequeño eat-in kitchen, a small (windowed) mud room off the service entrance and a fairly narrow study/den all done up in listing photos as a children's playroom.

There are, according to listing information, a total of four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms including two small(ish) guest/family bedrooms with private bathrooms. A pair of master bedrooms, at opposite ends of the apartment, both have multiple closets and attached windowless bathrooms slathered in top quality beige travertine tile.

The monthly common charges and taxes for the apartment Mister Martin (allegedly) bought total $4,729, according to listing information. The 100-plus unit building's extensive, residents only amenities include a state of the art fitness center, squash court, Pilates room, yoga studio, 40 seat screening room, golf simulator, library, arcade room and children's playrooms.

As it turns out Mister Martin has been on a bit of a real estate tear the last eight or nine months. Since at least mid-2007 he's repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to dump a walled and gated bay front mansion in Miami Beach (FL) that he bought in May 2005 for ten million dollars. At one point the 7 bedroom and 8 full and two half bathroom spread (above) was listed for $16,900,000. The asking price inexplicably climbed to $19.5 million in 2008. Alas, property records show Mister Martin had to accept a much, much lower offer when, according to property records, he finally sold the unwanted waterfront estate in April of this year (2012) for $10,600,000 to a clearly well-compensated Long Island-based computer retail executive named Richard Leeds.

In April 2007, just about the time he listed his above mentioned bay front mansion in Miami Beach, Mister Martin coughed up a star-style $16,250,000 for a nearly 10,000 square foot ocean front mansion about 10 miles to the north in sleepy but swank Golden Beach. By December of that year he'd caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estae Fickle and hoisted the five bedroom and seven bathroom house (above) back on the open market with a sky-high asking price of $22,500,000. Property records reveal Mister Martin's original asking price was wildly optimistic because he finally, at long last, sold the gated property last month for $12,800,000. A few quick clickety-clacks of the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's almost ten million less than he wanted and, even worse, a spectacular $3,450,000 less than he paid for the place five and some years ago. Ouch!

As far as Your Mama knows, Mister Martin continues to own a substantial residence in Dorado, Puerto Rico—where the American Rockefellers once owned a vacation compound—as well as, so the celebrity real estate rumors go, a casa in Madrid and a private island hideaway in Rio de Janeiro.

*In all honesty, children, Your Mama does not find much if any evidence that Señor Bon Bon bought an apartment at 40 Bond. Could be that he did and we just can't suss it out or could be that he rented in the building.

listing photos and floor plan (New York City, top): Corcoran
listing photos (Miami Beach): EWM Realtors International
listing photos (Golden Beach): Zillow