Category — Upper East Side

New York Judge Abraham Gerges and art educator Laurel Danowitz Gerges bought a 2800 square foot 4-bedroom, 4 bath co-op apartment for $1.4 million at the Excelsior on 303 East 57th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, according to New York City public records.


The apartment was sold by Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy broker Elayne Reimer and her husband Leon M. Reimer, a CPA.

This was a very unusual transaction since, according to N.Y.C. public records, the Reimers sold the co-op for $500,000 less than the $1,900,000 they paid for it in May 2006.

Did this experience Manhattan broker and her accountant husband overpay, or did were they able to work some legal accounting magic into the transaction? That’s the question that many real estate and accounting professionals may be asking themselves when looking at the deal.

Elayne Reimer’s real estate slogan is “Make Them Happy and Never Give Up!” Having lived in the building for so many years, she has extensive contacts in the co-op.

A year and a half ago, the New York Sun quoted Reimer saying that “Once people realize the [housing] bubble talk is a lot of nonsense, they come back and buy.”

Did that apply to Reimer’s sale?

In an interesting twist, Leon Reimer’s CPA expertise includes advising individual clients and law firms by “provid[ing] litigation support, forensic accounting and investigative accounting services to many law firms; supervise high level technical tax research and planning projects for businesses and high net worth individuals,” and more.

Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld’s 16-room New York City co-op apartment at 640 Park Avenue is the kind of asset that securities class-action lawyers salivate over.


Although the legendary investment bank filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in September, that didn’t prompt Fuld and his wife Kathy to sell their 6,200 square foot full-floor cooperative apartment on the northwest corner of East Sixty-Sixth Street and Park Avenue.

When the couple bought this gigantic “fixer upper” in March 2007 for $21 million from the estate of publishing heiress Evelyn Annenberg Jaffe Hall, an anonymous real estate broker told the New York Post that the apartment needed about $10 million worth of renovations.

The apartment has a 40-foot living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a generous dining room, both of which overlook Park Avenue. The library and master bedroom also have fireplaces. There is also a 14′ x 25′ gallery in the middle of the apartment. You can see the that there are at least four (4) rooms for staff. At this price, you also get to use a washer and dryer in the co-op. The cooperative was built in 1914 and is pet-friendly.

Fuld must be a tough negotiator; he knocked down the original $23.75 million price by $2.75 million. The original list price was more than $27 million.

Stribling brokers Kirk Henckels and Jessica Brookbanks had the exclusive for the co-op when they sold it to the Fulds.

The Fulds also have a luxury estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. Kathy Fuld must be feeling the effects of Lehman’s bankruptcy pretty hard if it prompted her to sell some $20 million of the couple’s artwork through Christies auction house.

Edgar Bronfman, Jr. just sold his 1040 Fifth Avenue co-op apartment for $21 million to Gerson Lehrman and Marjorie Lehrman.


The enormous 5 bedroom, 5 bathroom cooperative was originally listed by Bronfman for $24 million on January 26, 2008, just a week after he bought it for $19.5 million from J.B. Martin textiles executive Loic De Kertanguy and Rebecca De Kertanguy.

Bronfman, the Chairman and CEO of the Warner Music Group, former executive at media and entertainment conglomerate Vivendi Universal, and the former President and CEO of Seagram’s, the Canadian liquor dynasty and founded by his grandfather Samuel Bronfman and subsequently run by his father Edgar Bronfman, Sr. before passing on control to his second-oldest son.

Thomas Lehrman a Board member, co-founder and former CEO of the Gerson Lehrman Group, a well-respected Wall Street research firm boasting contacts with 200,000+ industry experts.  The Yale Law School graduate was recently served under the Bush Administration as Director of the Office of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Terrorism at the State Department, and before that, on the professional staff at the President’s WMD Commission.

Brown Harris Stevens power broker Alina Pedroso had the exclusive.

The 11-room apartment has 2 woodburning fireplaces, a library overlooking Central Park, and stunning views of Central Park that sweep from the Reservoir to Central Park South, with a fantastic view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur, and storied buildings along Central Park West.

Monthly maintenance charges are a whopping $8,614. The apartment includes a huge maid’s room or servant’s quarters, and a legal washer and dryer, something that many coop boards are loathe to allow.