944 Fifth Avenue – A Look at Recent Co-op Deals and Owners

The cooperative apartments at 944 Fifth Avenue offer something that few other New York City apartment buildings can boast about: full-floor apartments for their owners overlooking Central Park.


Barbara Walters and her dog Cha Cha Walters own the entire sixth floor apartment.

In February 2008, the 10th floor apartment sold for $26 million in a sale by the Adrienne H. Malvin Living Trust to Morgan Stanley Managing Director Jay Mantz (inset) and his wife Jennifer Mantz. Mantz is Global Co-Head of Morgan Stanley’s Merchant Banking Division, responsible for the investment bank’s real estate, infrastructure and private equity investing businesses.

Mantz appears to have parlayed his expertise as a real estate investment professional when buying and selling co-op apartments at 944 Fifth for his family.

In May 2007, the couple bought the fifth floor apartment (inset, below) in the building for just over $16.5 million from the estate of Lilyan S. Lindemann.

Lindemann and her late husband Joseph, a cosmetics and pharmaceuticals manufacturer and philanthropist, lived in the apartment.

Less than a year later, the Mantz’s flipped their fifth floor apartment for $20 million, for a $3.9 million profit, getting a huge 21% return on their initial investment.

The buyers were Robert Mnuchin and Adriana Mnuchin. He spent more than 30 years trading stocks at Goldman Sachs, and she created the Tennis Lady and Cashmere-Cashmere boutiques for women before the couple opted to open an art gallery on the Upper East Side, and a Connecticut spa retreat called the Mayflower Inn.

Within a month of selling the fifth floor unit to the Mnuchins, the Mantz’s bought the 10th floor apartment for $26 million.

Photo credit: Pension Real Estate Association