Louis C.K. Takes Big Hit on Sale of Manhattan Townhouse to Downtown Restaurateur

He has climbed his way back from a brief professional exile after he was called out in 2017 by numerous women for his propensity to expose himself to female colleagues; he won a Grammy in 2020 for his comeback standup special and in January, he sold out Madison Square Garden in a performance streamed live to his website. Louis C.K. is not, however, having much success in the lower Manhattan real estate game. In less than six months, the controversial and still very popular standup comedian has lost well over a million bucks on the sale of two downtown properties.

Now self-financing some of his showbiz projects, such as last year’s film “Fourth of July,” C.K. sold a West Village condo in December for $1.9 million, $550,000 less than he paid eight years earlier. And now, he’s just unloaded his unpretentiously appointed West Village townhouse for $5.8 million, $700,000 less than he paid for the nearly 200-year-old house back in 2012. Trimmed with black shutters and white trim work, the handsome red-brick house was built as part of a long row of Federal and Greek Revival buildings developed by brahmin John Jacob Astor.

With 13 rooms over four floors, the more than 4,800-square-foot building can be utilized as a single-family home with five bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms or as two independent units. With its own under-the-stoop entrance, the garden level has two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room and a closet-sized kitchen, while the upper triplex contains three (and potentially more) bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, along with a double parlor living and dining space and a second-floor gym/rec room.

One of the townhouse’s more interesting features are the glass floor panels that filter light down from a large skylight above the main-bedroom’s spacious dressing room all the way down to the dining room on the parlor floor. In addition to the scruffy, tree-shaded backyard outside the eclectically updated parlor-level eat-in kitchen, there’s a small terrace just off a second-floor room used as a children’s study and art space.

C.K. initially asked $8.5 million but the price quickly dropped to a more realistic $6.5 million before it enticed a serious buyer. Carl Gambino and Justin Montero of Compass had the listing; Kiran Mummidichetty, also with Compass, represented the buyer, an LLC easily linked to Sean Cunningham, the Irish-born publican and proprietor of Meatpacking District mainstay bar and grill The Brass Monkey.

Though C.K. has lost $1.2 million on the sale of two properties, last fall he still had the dough to splash out $3.85 million for a fixer-upper in a prime co-operative apartment house on swanky lower Fifth Avenue. Tax records show he also still owns the Shelter Island, N.Y., getaway he bought nearly a decade ago for almost $2.5 million.