One of Manhattan’s most notorious real estate fakes is back in the spotlight — and the deal still stinks.
The Atelier, a 475-unit tower built in 2007 on the remote corner of 42nd Street and 12th Avenue, has long garnered attention for the eye-popping $85 million price tag on its so-called penthouse.
The penthouse listing comes with some truly outrageous incentives, including a house in the Hamptons for one summer, two Rolls-Royces, a Lamborghini, a yacht, season tickets to the Brooklyn Nets, weekly dinners at Michelin-starred restaurant Daniel, a private chef for a year, a butler, a $2 million construction allowance for renovations — and, oh yes, a flight for two to outer space.
Even though the place has been on and off the market since 2013, the New York Times wrote about the penthouse and its bonkers list of incentives this week. There’s just one problem: The apartment, which purportedly measures 15,000 square feet, doesn’t actually exist — and it likely never will.
As The Post previously reported, the Atelier penthouse — which is made up of the full 45th floor and half of the 44th floor of the 46-story building at 635 42nd St. — actually consists of roughly a dozen individual apartments. Public records show that the different units (some of which are occupied) are owned by numerous distinct entities and persons.
Moreover, that $85 million asking price is wildly divorced from the realities of Manhattan’s slumped real estate market, where prices for apartments in the city’s top towers are being slashed. It’s the most expensive home publicly on the market in New York City, per StreetEasy. But in the Atelier itself, an apartment on the supposed penthouse level (unit 45D) is on the market for $1.89 million. Multiply that number by 12 and you have a more realistic value for such an apartment.
“This penthouse isn’t consistent with how a market behaves,” says real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller. “These perks actually narrow the pool of buyers. Because let’s say you love the apartment, but do you also want to pay for a trip to space? There’s a disconnect.”
Industry experts tell The Post that the pie-in-the-sky asking price is likely razzmatazz drummed up to draw prospective buyers’ eyeballs to the condo tower more generally in the hopes of selling its less expensive units. You could call it the city’s most ambitious bait-and-switch.
Unfortunately, the marketing stunt seems to be working. After all, the Times fell for it hook, line and sinker in its puff piece, titled “Perk for the Ultrarich: Buy an $85 Million Apartment, Get a Trip to Space.”
In it, they interview Dan Neiditch, the broker for the “penthouse,” whom The Post exposed last fall as a manipulative building boss. He is being accused of running the building like a “gulag,” according to a complaint filed with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement by attorney Massimo D’Angelo, who is representing the building residents.
Not only is Neiditch’s company, River to River Realty, the Atelier’s exclusive brokerage, he is, as the Times notes, the president of its condo board and the building’s manager — a highly irregular pairing of roles that reeks of self-dealing.
The Times also points out that “last year city law enforcement agents conducted a raid on the building over illegal rentals arranged on Airbnb.” The paper of record fails to mention that as board president and building manager, Neiditch was also likely complicit in the alleged short-term rental scheme.
“They were running this building like a hotel,” says an Atelier resident, who asked not to be identified because of possible retaliation from Neiditch, and added that residents are facing a $25 million defamation suit for speaking out about shadiness in the building.
Several members of the building’s board were slapped with summonses for Airbnb violations, as were two entities called Yin and Yang Construction and White Glove Corporate Cleaning — both represented by a lawyer who has also represented Neiditch. Neiditch even appeared in court as representative of those companies.
“I’m not going to say that Neiditch is pocketing [the Airbnb] money,” the anonymous resident told The Post in November. But, considering his prominent role in the Atelier and the apparent river of illegal Airbnb money flooding through the building, the resident added, “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”
“The $85 million apartment … [is] a relative bargain … at $5,667 a square foot,” the Times writes, failing to mention that what is being sold is merely the idea of a penthouse rather than an existing unit.
And not to quibble about mere facts, but the Times also incorrectly states on two occasions in its story that the penthouse hit the market “last year.” A quick Google search shows that it was widely written about in 2016 — and first listed well before that, in 2013.
It’s a shame that a well-known bad actor in New York’s already muddy real estate market is able to peddle hokum for self-gain apparently at the expense of the hundreds of people who call the Atelier home.
“There is nobody to defend us,” says Eugenia Elliott, who adds that she was fined by the board because she started a residents WhatsApp group chat to discuss problems in the building. “The only thing to do is to go to court. A lawsuit [against Neiditch] is going to cost us $100,000, which is ridiculous.”