Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Drops $27.5 Million on Manhattan Penthouse

Former Google CEO and notorious real estate baller Eric Schmidt has added another trophy to his fat property portfolio: a 6,400-square-foot penthouse in New York City’s fashionable NoHo neighborhood. Jointly listed with Michael Ives at Sotheby’s Int’l Realty and Adam Modlin at Modlin Group, Schmidt is in contract to buy the duplex that carries a last asking price of $27.5 million. The New York Post, first to report the news, also disclosed that the flat is merely an “investment” property. With common charges of $12,457 and annual taxes of $206,376, the four-bedroom condo is being sold by former Goldman Sachs executive Michael D. Daffey, who, having just bought Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion for a whopping $51 million, presumably doesn’t need it any more.

With enormous private terraces, including a roof deck with a hot tub, the penthouse boasts some luxe features, such as a fireplace in the primary bedroom suite, along with a soaking tub in the en-suite, a home office with another fireplace, and a kitchen with built-in espresso machine, pantry, and wooden breakfast counter. That said, the staging in the listing photos is a little tired — those ubiquitous Ligne Roset Togo chairs again? —  and the terraces could use a few plantings to take away the bleak industrial feeling.

Schmidt, who’s worth about $20 billion, famously has more homes than some people have fingers or toes. On the East Coast, there’s a waterfront property in Miami Beach, a mansion on Nantucket, and another Manhattan penthouse, this one in the Flatiron District, which he bought in 2011 for $14.6 million and was featured in Oliver Stone’s 2010 “Wall Street” sequel, “Money Never Sleeps.” Tax records show he also owns a second unit just below the Flatiron penthouse that he scooped up in 2014 for $8.9 million.

In addition to his main home, a multi-structure compound in Atherton, Calif., one of the highest-priced zip codes in the U.S., his West Coast holdings include two big spreads in Montecito, a $20 million estate he bought in 2007 from Ellen DeGeneres and the so-called Villa Solana, which he scooped up last year for $30.8 million. He also has a couple of noteworthy homes in L.A.’s Holmby Hills, a $22 million mansion he bought in 2014 from Gregory Peck’s widow Veronique and, his most recent purchase, the Jay Paley Residence, which he acquired earlier this year from the estate of William Barron Hilton for $61.5 million.