Paul McCartney takes fat loss on Fifth Ave co-op

Beatles legend sold penthouse co-op for $7M below purchase price

Paul McCartney in front of 1045 Fifth Avenue (Getty Images, LoopNet/Illustration by Steven Dilakian for The Real Deal)
Paul McCartney in front of 1045 Fifth Avenue (Getty Images, LoopNet/Illustration by Steven Dilakian for The Real Deal)

Help! An ex-Beatle needs somebody to … advise him on real estate.

Paul McCartney and his wife, Nancy Shevell, recently sold their penthouse co-op unit at 1045 Fifth Avenue for $8.5 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. The sale price is barely half of the $15.5 million the couple bought it for in 2015.

The apartment went through several price cuts before being sold to the (magical) mystery buyer. The unit was listed for $12 million in June before being reduced to $10.5 million, which is the asking price under which it went into contract in October.

The apartment was in “white box” condition, according to the listing. The unit overlooks the Central Park reservoir and includes about 40 feet of floor-to-ceiling windows with terraces, the Journal reported.

Developer Manny Duell, who built the property in 1967, bought the apartment as a gift to his wife, the Journal reported. She lived in the unit until her death in 2014 at the age of 92.

Serena Boardman of Sotheby’s International Realty represented McCartney and his wife in the transaction. CB Whyte of Douglas Elliman represented the buyer.

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McCartney’s co-op isn’t the only Beatles real estate in the news lately.

George Harrison’s childhood home was on the auction block late last year. Harrison moved to the Liverpool home in 1949, when he was six years old, and lived there until 1962. The Beatles and the Quarrymen rehearsed at the three-bedroom townhouse in suburban Speke, at 25 Upton Green, in the late 1950s.

The BBC reported the home was sold for 171,000 pounds, equivalent to about $232,722.

McCartney’s brother-in-law John Eastman, an entertainment lawyer, spent $26.5 million for a Carnegie Hill co-op last July. The unit is at 1133 Fifth Avenue, fewer than 10 blocks from McCartney’s recent sale.

[WSJ] — Holden Walter-Warner