Martha Stewart pays $12M for UWS condo

Martha Stewart tied up a condo buy at an iconic building on the Upper West Side. 

The home and hospitality business woman and her daughter, television host Alexis Stewart, paid $12.3 million for a duplex at the Belnord — a 213-unit redevelopment project on Broadway and West 86th Street, according to a deed first reported by Crain’s New York. 

The purchase comes about a year after Stewart found a buyer for her West Village triplex. The 9,500-square-foot condo at 165 Charles Street, reported to be her daughter’s New York City home, sold in July for $31 million, down from its initial $53 million asking price in 2019.

The Stewarts’ new home is at the top of the 12-story building developed by Westbrook Partners, which took over the project in 2021 from HFZ Capital. The firm is now embroiled in an onslaught of litigation, with former executive Nir Meir facing criminal charges alleging he orchestrated an $86 million fraud scheme. 

When sales launched in 2017, the Belnord’s offering plan set the asking price for the Stewarts’ pad at $18 million. It later dropped to $13 million, as the developer lowered other prices at the building to contend with a slowing condo market in the years ahead of the pandemic. 

The apartment has six bedrooms, living room with a fireplace, formal dining room and views of the building’s landscaped courtyard. 

Corcoran’s Richard Ziegelasch represented the Stewarts in the deal. Douglas Elliman’s Maya Kadouri had the listing. 

Exterior images of the Belnord are known as the fictional co-op called the Arconia in Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” 

The 1900s rental building-turned-condo has a projected sellout of $1.3 billion, but sales progress is slow because the developer is renovating and offloading units as they become available. So far, the developer has sold about half of the units with prices ranging from $870,000 to nearly $14 million, according to Marketproof. 

Martha Stewart sold her company — Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which published her magazine known as Martha Stewart Living — to Sequential Brands in 2015 for around $353 million. Her latest ventures include marijuana-derivative-infused candles and a cover photoshoot for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue last year. 

— Sheridan Wall

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