Venture capitalist Michael Loeb is taking his champagne problems to court.
The founder and CEO of an investing firm sued his neighbor over alleged water damage to the interiors of his townhouse on 41 East 72nd Street, according to court documents filed in New York on Monday.
At the center of his gripes about the damage is the hand-printed, gold-leaf wallpaper that he installed around the home during an extensive renovation effort in the late 1990s. Loeb, who sought to restore the home to its 1880s Neo-Grec glory, sourced the wallpaper from a mother-son team in Japan, “who carried on a multiple generation vocation of adhering gold to paper.”
The complaint states that around two years ago, Loeb began to notice water coming into his home, which he alleges came from an opening in his neighbor’s side of the party wall and from a parapet on the adjacent property.
His attorneys claim that the owner of the home at 39 East 72nd Street — once the childhood home of socialite Gloria Vanderbilt — ignored Loeb’s repeated requests to mitigate the water infiltration.
Loeb ultimately hired his own team to repair the damage, but he’s suing his neighbor for the cost of the work, which amounted to more than $180,000.
Loeb’s neighbor bought the property, configured as a three-family home, for $32.2 million in 2022. The neighbor is identified in the city register only as the Pinkhart Trust with Elliot Levine as the trustee.
Neither Loeb’s attorneys nor an attorney linked to the trust responded immediately to a request for comment.
Loeb is the founder and CEO of investment firm Loeb.nyc. He co-founded Synapse Group, a consumer magazine marketing company, in 1992, and the firm was acquired by Time Inc. in 2006. Loeb’s father is the late Marshall Loeb, a renowned business journalist and editor of Money and Fortune magazines.
Not so fast…
For the last two years, brokers, especially those at the high-end of the market, have echoed a common refrain: foreign buyers have returned to New York City. Now there’s data to back up their claims.
An analysis from The Real Deal showed that in the first half of 2025, there has been one international buyer for every two international sellers — a ratio the city hasn’t seen since the first half of 2020 before the pandemic halted foreign buyer activity. The sales volume of property purchased by foreign buyers has also doubled compared to the same period last year.
Several brokers pointed to Asia as the main source of international buyers, especially those coming from China, where the housing market is enduring a major downturn.
“In the last few months, we did have a nice steady amount of traffic with especially Chinese buyers,” said Serhant’s Kayla Lee, who heads sales at the Huron in Greenpoint and Vesta in Long Island City. “The Chinese economy is taking a downturn. There’s a lot of things happening, and a lot of people trying to get money out of the country.”
NYC Deal of the Week
The priciest deal to land in the city register this week was a duplex penthouse at 885 Park Avenue, which sold for $20 million or roughly $3,300 per square foot.. The buyer was Michael Milstein, the son of Milstein Properties founder Howard Milstein, and his wife, Claudia.
Unit PHA/B, which last asked $27.5 million, spans 6,000 square feet and has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms and a 3,200 square foot wraparound terrace.
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Foreign buyers and sellers are going strong in New York City
Milstein heir buys $20M Park Avenue penthouse