Home of France’s UN ambassador up for sale
France is reportedly selling the luxurious permanent residence of the country’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York in order to raise some much-needed cash.
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According to the New York-based francophone website French Morning, the sumptuous duplex apartment on 740 Park Avenue in New York's exclusive Upper East Side will be up for sale. The French permanent mission to the UN declined to comment.
The building is known as the world’s most expensive apartment block, once housing some of the most powerful industrialists in the United States, including the Vanderbilts, the Marshall Fields, and the son of John D. Rockefeller.
The block was developed by James T. Lee, the grandfather of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who also lived there.
France bought the apartment on the 12th and 13th floors in 1978 before the New York real estate market boomed.
Real estate agents estimate the apartment will sell between 35 and 40 million US dollars, or 27-31 million euros.
However, a similar apartment was recently sold at half the 27 million euro asking price.
The sale would also save the French state between 8,000 to 16,000 euros a month in building maintenance fees.
Aside from having a vast fortune, the new tenant will also need to please the building’s notoriously stringent co-op board. New tenants reportedly have to have 100 million US dollars in cash in order to move in.
The singer Barbara Streisand and US media personality Barbara Walters were both rejected from buying an apartment there.
France has planned 12.5 billion euros worth of budget cuts in 2014.
It is under pressure to cut its budget deficit to under three precent of GDP, a target mandated by the European Union.
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