Financier lists Brooklyn Heights townhouse for $18M

212 Columbia Heights last sold for $11M in 2012

212 Columbia Heights (Leslie J. Garfield)
212 Columbia Heights (Leslie J. Garfield)

After a month of record-breaking sales, a Brooklyn Heights townhouse hit the market asking $18.25 million.

The asking price on the 8,250-square-foot home pencils out to $2,212 per square foot. As a comparison, a mansion a couple of blocks away that’s about 3,000 square feet larger recently sold for over $25 million.

The six-bedroom home at 212 Columbia Heights listed last week. It appears to be owned by financier Mark Werner and his wife Dawn, according to property records. The couple bought the home in 2012 for $11 million. At the time, it was the priciest sale recorded in the borough since 2003, according to the Brooklyn Eagle.

Werner is an adviser to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management; he previously co-founded Amherst Pierpont Securities and led Bank of America’s global markets team.

The townhouse is 25 feet wide, spans five stories, has a private outdoor garden and views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline. The structure originally dates to 1855, though the home was recently gut-renovated. Original flooring, fireplace mantels and plaster moldings have been preserved and restored.

212 Columbia Heights is a couple of blocks from 8 Montague Terrace, the 11,600-square-foot townhouse that billionaire Vincent Viola and his wife Theresa sold last month for $25.5 million. The deal made it the highest price ever recorded in the borough. The sale penciled out to $2,202.

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Both the Columbia Heights and Montague Terrace properties are parallel to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway overlooking the New York Harbor.

The listing agent on 212 Columbia, Ravi Kantha of Leslie J. Garfield, said “a turn-key house at this price is a relatively good value.” He pegged the cost of a renovation at $600 per square foot. He added the recent improvements would allow a buyer to move-in immediately. “You’re not spending two to three years of going through the headaches of a gut renovation in New York City.”

Kantha, who shares the listing with Matthew Lesser, pointed to sales of 218 Columbia Heights and 192 Columbia Heights, as examples. Both properties sold for about $12 million in 2018, and both are now being renovated.

Last week, the average per square foot price of eight Brooklyn townhouses that went into contract asking more than $2 million was $1,078.

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