She’s come a long way from being Kathy Hilton’s gal Friday who would pick up Paris and Nicky from school, drive them around to trendy shops, and take them ice skating.
Reality TV veteran turned low-cal booze baroness turned multimillion-dollar house-flipping real estate investor and dedicated philanthropist Bethenny Frankel, now splitting her time mostly between a townhouse in Boston’s Back Bay, where her film producer fiancé Paul Bernon is based, and the Hamptons, where she’s recently completed a decorative redo of her vintage Bridgehampton home, has put her New York City loft up for sale — again — with an asking price pushing up on $7 million.
Now listed with a team of agents from Douglas Elliman, Noble Black, David Son and Erik Ternon, the “Real Housewives of New York City” alum first listed the 4,000-square foot, Soho loft in April, at the exact same price, with fellow Bravolebrity Ryan Serhant, but took it off the market almost six months later.
The multi-hyphenate entrepreneur, who in 2019 signed a lucrative deal with MGM and super-producer Mark Burnett to produce reality TV programming but bounced out of the deal earlier this year so as not to be “shackled,” acquired the fourth-floor condo on a bit of a whim in 2017 for $4.2 million. She wasn’t really looking to move, she told Architectural Digest at the time of the purchase, but thought it was just too good of a deal to pass up. And, when you’ve sold your cocktail company for 100 million big ones, as she did in 2011, you can act without reservation on a $4.2 million real estate caprice.
She proceeded to give the spacious loft a total make-over that included refinishing the floors pale grey, painting the radiators and window frames black, and transforming the kitchen into a sleek culinary haven fit for the healthy eating gourmet chef that she is. Two fireplaces were also added, one in the main bedroom and the other in the family room, the latter of which also sports a concealed bar and marble accent wall.
Facing busy lower Broadway, the loft is currently configured with two bedrooms and three bathrooms, with the potential to add at least two more bedrooms. One potential bedroom is set up as a home office, complete with a cheeky sign over the sofa that reads “I know it all”, and another has been incorporated into the sprawling, celeb-style main suite. A strikingly spare, minimalist fireplace is over-mounted by a huge flat-screen TV in the sitting area of the main bedroom, a serene space bathed in a sumptuous palette of pale champagne, soft white and light lilac. The spider-veined white-marble bathroom is large enough to float a huge soaking tub in the center of the room, the lavishly fitted walk-in closet is where Frankel once displayed a colorful collection of designer handbags, and a separate, glammed-up dressing room is for, well, getting glammed up.
Other highlights include a key-lock elevator that opens directly into the loft’s spacious foyer, 11-foot ceilings, and original columns that preserve a hint of the building’s turn-of-the-century charm. There’s also a custom-crafted stone and marble bar in the living room, an integrated sound system, custom lighting, and motorized window shades. Oh, and don’t forget the nearly $10,000 in monthly maintenance charges, which include the property taxes.
In addition to her philanthropy — her BStrong organization has raised and donated millions in disaster relief across the country and around the world, Frankel is a consummate hustler who always seems to have her manicured hands in a number of money-making pots. No longer on RHONY — she left the show for the second and, she says, final time in 2019 after appearing on 8 seasons, the OG cast member now pulls down a paycheck as the host of an eponymous podcast (“Just B with Bethenny Frankel”) on which she sometimes weighs in with her unfiltered and often lacerating opinions about the often boozy antics of her former cast mates.
She also sells Skinnygirl-branded lines of cookware, apparel, snacks and supplements, and, for at least the last handful of years, has bought, fixed up and sold multimillion-dollar homes in the Hamptons and, more recently, in Greenwich, Conn., where she’s already earned small fortune flipping a couple of homes, and earlier this year dropped $4.5 million on a home that, ever the savvy, deal-making businessperson and PR pro who knows how to keep her name in the press and the dollars rolling in, she’s fixing up in conjunction with upscale kitchen retailer Williams Sonoma.
