At Home With Leonard Pincus

It seems that just about every wickedly wealthy financier and stinking rich socialite wants to get in on the publicity circus that follows buying, selling, or simply listing a private residence at an unfathomably high price.

We've got Donald Trump and his freaky follicles down in Palm Beach hoping to get $125,000,000 for his flip property that looks like drug lords hideout Your Mama. There's mega rich dee-vorcee Suzanne Saperstein in Los Angeles trying to dump her palatial pile of faux Versailles for $125,000,000 and her 123-acre Simi Valley horse farm for $75,000,000. And let's not forget Leonard Blavatnik, a Russian born magnate of a man who makes spectacular sport of buying high priced digs all over the world including coughing up a rumored (and denied) $150,000,000 for 30,000 square feet of penthouse opulence atop the soon to be refurbished The Mark on the Upper East Side.

And last week, the usually quite discreet white haired financier Lionel Pincus, who ferries Princess Firyal of Jordan around to all the best dinner parties and charity functions of the bejeweled and big bank account set, has tossed his hoity toity hat into the ring by dumping his sprawling duplex at the posh Pierre on the market with a blistering $50,000,000 price tag.

Which is a billionaire's bargain when you consider that filthy rich financier Martin Zweig has spent more than three years trying to unload his tremendous triplex penthouse co-op at The Pierre for an unfathomable $70,000,000.

The Corcoran listing agent for Mister Pincus' duplex has yet to release interior photos, but if the floor plan is any indication of the extreme and obscene lavishness of the interior appointments, Your Mama would bet our left arm they will cause half of the Upper East Side to gasp collectively thereby sucking most of the oxygen out of the air all up and down Fifth Avenue.

Let's have a look-see at what $50,000,000 buys someone with enough liquid assets to feed, clothe, and educate half of Africa. Get ready kids, because the numbers are staggering.

The recently renovated co-op occupies the entire 30th floor, half the 31st floor and measures 6,678 square feet which calculates to a jaw dropping $7,498 per square foot. The listing for the property indicates 14 rooms, the masterful Max Abelson at the New York Observer reports there are twelve rooms, and Your Mama counts fifteen. There are 10 foot ceilings, more than 80 feet of park frontage by our calculations, 4-6 bedrooms depending on how you count or who you talk to, 5 full and three half bathrooms, 39 windows, 31 closets plus 4 walk in closets, 2 wood paneled dressing rooms, two kitchens (and one large pantry), two laundry areas, two paneled libraries, 2 sitting rooms, one exercise room, 1 staff office (natch), 5 star hotel amenities, $27,443 per month in maintenance fees, and according to the listing, the notoriously demanding board at The Pierre requires a minimum of 46% as a down payment...that's $23,000,000 for the math impaired.

Maybe Lakshmi Mittal, a steel tycoon for whom fifty million clams is pocket change, needs a little New York City pied a terre?