SELLERS: Geraldo Rivera and Erica Levy
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $7,200,000
SIZE: (approx.) 2,500 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Geraldo Rivera’s high-floor apartment on the tony Upper East Side of New York City has come up for sale at $7.2 million. Listing details declare the three-unit combination spread is “Rarely available” but, in fact, this very apartment was available just 1.5 years ago when the famously mustachioed radio host, tabloid television pioneer and Fox News regular bought it for $5.6 million. It doesn’t take a mathematics wizard or even a bejeweled abacus to see that Mister Rivera and his fifth wife, former television producer Erica Levy, have high hopes to turn a $1.8 million profit on the property not counting, of course, carrying costs, improvement expenses, and real estate fees. The approximately 2,500-square-foot aerie, a combination of two studio apartments and one one-bedroom unit, is currently configured with three and potentially four bedrooms and three full bathrooms.
A quick comparison with listing details and floor plans from the Riveras purchased the apartment show a dense cluster of closets were replaced with a walk-in wet bar in the otherwise featureless foyer that opens to a living room that makes a lengthy 31-foot-plus stretch to a bank of picture windows that provide desirably unobstructed and undeniably spectacular western views over Central Park and the elegant apartment houses that line Central Park West. The adjoining dining area also has open city and park views through a large window and leads to a somewhat small and not especially high-end kitchen with quotidian gray and white speckled granite counter tops, perfectly ordinary white raised panel cabinetry, and inexpensive rental-grade appliances. French doors in the living room open to a den that’s conveniently adjacent to bathroom and easily converted to an additional guest or family bedroom while the two more guest/family bedrooms at the rear of the apartment share a wee and windowless hall bathroom. The master bedroom is described in listing details as “double sized” with “huge picture windows” and, indeed, it does extend to 22-feet long with large windows and open views. Much less impressively and certainly not optimally, the master bathroom, slathered in money green marble and equipped with a steam shower, is not accessible directly from the master bedroom and is instead located across the hall.
Residents of the luxurious and well located but otherwise undistinguished 40-floor tower are treated to a bevy of white-glove services and amenities such as 24-hour doormen and concierge, valet parking at an on-site garage, a private health club, and an glass-enclosed swimming pool that opens to a roof-top terrace with spine tingling city, park and bridge views.
Mister Rivera, the first contestant eliminated on the most recent season of “Dancing With the Stars” and a competitor on the 14th season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” where he came in second behind Leeza Gibbons and raised an astonishing $726,000 for charity, previously owned a smaller unit on a lower floor in the same building that was bought in August 2011 for $3.4 million and sold in August 2015 for $3.96 million. The Riveras also continue to own a multi-residence compound in a discreet, private and low-key waterfront enclave in Edgewater, NJ, that came up for sale in May 2015 with an asking price of $3.75 million. Alas, the price tumbled to $2.3 million before the quirkily non-contiguous compound — the houses that comprise the compound sit across a narrow lane from one another — was removed from the open market in October (2016).
Exterior image: Christopher Bride for Property Shark
Listing photos and floor plan: Adriana Arciello (via Street Easy)
