NY coops and cooperative apartment sales: prices, buyers, sellers, details, and deals

Kathryn Roche, a brand management consultant at LaPlaca Cohen and Goldman Sachs managing director Harold P. Hope III, just paid $7.303 million for an enormous 11-room co-op apartment at 1100 Park Avenue.

Roche and Hope have been married 4½ years.

According to public records, the seller was Stephanie Griswold, daughter of the late Robert Fairchild, a member of the Fairchild family publishing dynasty.

Griswold sold high and bought low: she closed on a 2 bedroom penthouse co-op at 49 east 96th Street last fall, paying just $1,736,875. That’s a wise strategy.

The dining room and living room in this Carnegie Hill co-op overlook Park Avenue, while the master bedroom, a second bedroom, and the library face East 89th Street.

Curiously, this co-op has no less than three maid’s rooms. One maid’s room is currently a home office and another is used as a storage room.

Don’t worry: for $7.3 million, Hope and Roche also get another private storage room in the co-op’s basement, adjacent to the cooperative’s own “state-of-the-art” gym.

There appears to have been a bidding war on this high-floor co-op, since it sold for $103,000 over the original $7.2 million asking price.

Hope must have had a banner year at Goldman Sachs, despite the SEC’s lawsuit against his firm, and Goldman Sachs’ just-released stellar quarterly earnings report.

Brown Harris Stevens Managing Director and SVP Alina Pedroso had the exclusive, getting a contract signed in exactly three weeks after it went on the market in November 2009.

Photo credits: Brown Harris Stevens

Verizon pitchman Paul Marcarelli just sold his 2 bedroom, 1½ bathroom co-op apartment at 41 Fifth Avenue for $1.255 million.

Marcarelli paid $799,000 for a new condo in Williamsburg last fall in The Rialto at 150 N. 5th Street in Brooklyn.

You can take a tour of this renovated co-op in the heart of Greenwich Village with listing broker Laurie Silverman.

Given how long it took Marcarelli to sell his co-op, the apartment appears to have been crying out to him, “Can you sell me now?”

It was first listed for $1.425 million in July 2009, but it sold for 12% less.

Although the co-op is in the heart of Greenwich Village in a Rosario Candela building, it seems to have a few drawbacks. These include a huge $2,000/month maintenance, and a rather smallish size. Not exactly a family home, but a perfect starter co-op.

Doug Valenti and Terri Valenti just bought a Soho loft co-op at 12 Wooster Street for $2.15 million using a living trust.


The Valenti’s make their home in Silicon Valley. Doug Valenti is the Chairman and CEO of QuinStreet, a performance marketing and media company.

Terri Valenti is an adjunct economics professor and an experienced college football linesman.

The 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment is located on the fringe of southern Soho between Canal and Grand Streets.

The stylish loft kitchen has the standard luxury tools: a Sub-Zero fridge, silent Miele dishwasher, along with a Viking stove and oven.

It appears that a portion of a rainforest was destroyed to make the loft’s custom storage cabinets: they listing described them as being “harvested from South American woods”

Sotheby’s brokers Camille McKinley and Mark Thomas Amadei had the exclusive for the sellers.

Neighbors in the building include:

• Photographer James Dee and wife Saralah Dee
• Wesley Wang a founding Managing Director of Phoenix Partners Group, a derivatives brokerage firm.