The Upper East Side co-op of a late pharmaceutical executive has sold after three years and for less than three-quarters of its initial asking price.
Unit 7 at at East 66th Street, owned by Sarah Solomon and the trust of her late husband Martin, sold for $37 million, according to public records. The home was originally listed for $55 million in 2022 before going through a series of price chops until its last asking price of $37 million, at which point it was taken off the market last summer.
The co-op, which is feet from Central Park, has five bedrooms, multiple wood-burning fireplaces and a dining room that seats 30. The couple, who bought into the building in 2004 for $25 million, renovated the apartment with the help of French designer Robert Couturier.
Sotheby’s International Realty’s Serena Boardman and Maria Bazo had the listing.
The buyers appear to be Rajaram Rao and his wife Anjuli Rao. In 2006, Rajaram founded infrastructure investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners, which was acquired by Blackrock in exchange for $3 billion in cash and 12 million shares.
The initial asking price may have been trying to take advantage of a historic sale that took place in the building just months prior, when a pair of co-ops owned by Paul Allen, the late Microsoft co-founder, sold for $101 million, the most expensive co-op transaction in New York history.
Julia Koch, wife of the late billionaire David Koch, was the buyer of the two homes.
The discounted sale continues a string of co-ops in high-profile buildings unable to hit their initial asking price.
Koch herself sold her 18-room co-op at 740 Park Avenue for $45 million, a 25 percent discount from the reported $60 million she sought back in 2022.
Grace Hightower, the ex-wife of Robert De Niro, didn’t even try and make a profit on her co-op at 88 Central Park West, listing it for $20 million last year, slightly under the $20.9 million she and her former husband paid for it in 2006. The apartment sold for $18 million in March.
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