Epstein mansions in New York and Palm Beach for sale for $110 Million

The palatial mansions in New York City and Florida owned by Jeffrey Epstein, where the notorious financier was accused of running an elaborate sex-trafficking scheme involving underage girls, will be listed for sale for a combined $110 million.

The homes include Epstein’s townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a seven-story, 28,000-square-foot residence near Central Park that is one of the largest single-family homes in New York. On the market for $88 million, it would be the largest recorded townhouse sale in the city’s history.

Along with his Florida home, a nine-bedroom property on the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach, Florida, the two sites are the first in Epstein’s vast real estate portfolio to be listed after he hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell nearly a year ago.

The Palm Beach property is listed for sale for nearly $22 million.

The proceeds will go to Epstein’s estate, which recently opened a compensation fund for his alleged victims. His estate is valued at more than $600 million.

A lawyer for the estate did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The New York listing makes no mention of Epstein, whom federal prosecutors accused of luring dozens of girls, some as young as 14, to engage in sex acts during naked massages. Investigators said they found lewd photographs of girls in a safe in his Manhattan mansion when Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.

Former employees of Epstein said that hundreds of people visited his Palm Beach home over the years to provide him massages. Federal prosecutors said that Epstein shuttled dozens of girls between his Upper East Side mansion and the compound in Palm Beach.

The sale of the two homes was reported by The Wall Street Journal.

At roughly 50 feet wide and 100 feet deep, the seven-story mansion in New York is one of the largest townhomes to become available for sale. But the luxury market in Manhattan was already softening before the virus took hold in March, and the pandemic has made well-heeled buyers scarce.

The real estate firm selling the New York property, the Modlin Group, describes the site as one that “could easily present itself as a palatial consulate, embassy, foundation or a museum to once again house some of the world’s greatest works of art.”

Quarantine measures in March, including a temporary ban on in-person house tours, virtually froze the housing market in New York City, and it remains unclear how sales and pricing will fare going forward.

In Manhattan, the number of contracts signed in June, the latest indicator of buyer interest, was down 76% compared to the same period last year, according to the brokerage Douglas Elliman.

Epstein’s properties are being listed for sale three weeks after his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was charged with luring multiple underage girls to him. Maxwell facilitated his sexual predation, prosecutors said, by recruiting girls to participate in sexualized massages of Epstein and also participated in some of the abuse.

Epstein was never supposed to become the owner of the opulent stone house on the Upper East Side, on East 71st Street between Madison and Fifth avenues.

In 1989, Epstein’s mentor, Leslie H. Wexner, the founder and chairman of L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, bought the Beaux-Arts home for $13.2 million, then the highest recorded sale price for a townhouse in Manhattan.

Over the following years, Wexner granted Epstein broad authority to handle his personal fortune, allowing Epstein to amass huge wealth and ingratiate himself with the rich and powerful in New York and beyond.

In the 1990s, Epstein acquired the Manhattan mansion from Wexner and bought properties around the world, including his own island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and an apartment in Paris.

Before Wexner bought the townhouse, it had been a longtime private school. Wexner spent years converting it into a lavish estate but never moved in. After Epstein’s arrest last year, Wexner accused him of stealing “vast sums of money” from him.

The Manhattan mansion is for sale during a pronounced decline in the luxury market. Since the end of March, only 12 townhouses listed for more than $4 million have entered contract in Manhattan, down from 40 in the same period last year, according to Donna Olshan, president of Olshan Realty.

The most expensive townhouse to enter contract since the pandemic was a 25-foot-wide, 8,760-square-foot home on the Upper East Side last listed for $24.9 million — down from an original asking price of $38 million in 2016, she said.

When asked about the $88 million Manhattan townhouse listing price, two people familiar with the home laughed. A third scoffed.

“There’s been nothing in that price point” that is selling, said Fran Katzen, a luxury real estate agent with Douglas Elliman. Other agents pointed out the significance of $88 million, calling it a common marketing plot to lure Chinese buyers, who regard the number as lucky.

But the stigma of past ownership and a moribund market may not derail a sale.

“This is perhaps one of the best homes in all of New York,” said Paula del Nunzio, an agent with Brown Harris Stevens who specializes in townhouse sales. The sheer size and flexibility of the double-wide layout, coupled with its prime location, may be enough to attract a buyer, she said.

The most expensive townhouse sale to date in New York was the roughly $77 million sale last year of a nearby mansion on the Upper East Side once owned by Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse Magazine.