Photo: Myrna M. Suarez/Getty Images
Billy Joel seems to have sold his two-bedroom, two-bath Nolita condo to his daughter, Alexa Ray Joel. As Crain’s first reported and as records confirm, the Elizabeth Street apartment went for $4.5 million in a transaction between the two family members’ trusts.
The singer first bought the place for $3.3 million in 2010 after a divorce from then-wife Katie Lee. From older staged photos, the 1,600-square-foot apartment looks like something a bachelor might pick up: There are dark herringbone floors, moldings and millwork that have been painted black, and a similarly moody black kitchen. The building, 211 Elizabeth Street, was a ground-up Roman and Williams project with seven stories and 15 units that’s long been popular with celebrities like Karlie Kloss and Josh Kushner, Gabriel Byrne, and Elie Tahari.
The transfer was largely a formality: Alexa, a downtown girl, appears to have been already living in the apartment for years. (Soon after Joel bought it, the New York Post reported that his daughter was seen “moving out of her West Village digs.”) The handover of 211 Elizabeth is just one of a few of Joel’s recent real-estate moves: He has been trying to sell his enormous Oyster Bay estate, and last year, before he publicly announced that he was diagnosed with a brain condition called normal pressure hydrocephalus, he bought a $10.7 million house in the Hamptons down the street from Alec Baldwin.