Exclusive | NYC mansion asking record $85M finds a buyer as the ultra-wealthy flock to homes of rare scale

The well-heeled are doubling down on double-wide mansions.The latest? A 41.5-foot Upper West Side combined townhouse — whose width makes it a mansion by local standards — asking a record $85 million that has gone into contract.Its final sale price isn’t yet known, but should it sell for that sum, it will rank as the city’s priciest townhouse sale in history, according to StreetEasy records.

And it comes just weeks on the heels of another multimillion-dollar townhouse transaction downtown.Just off of Central Park, 48-50 W.69th St.

spans 19,600 square feet in 25 rooms across eight levels with multiple oversized outdoor entertaining areas throughout.The home includes a 2,000-square-foot full-floor primary suite, woodburning fireplaces, a 55-foot indoor lap pool, a Jacuzzi, a fitness center and a yoga space. Bigger seems to be better.“There is a demand at the uber trophy level for extraordinarily large, beautifully renovated properties,” said luxury real estate broker Donna Olshan, president of Olshan Realty, who noted in her firm’s weekly report that the West 69th Street deal was the priciest among 32 contracts signed last week for Manhattan homes priced at $4 million or more.

“The amount of wealth at the very top is mind boggling.There always seems to be a buyer for a rare property, painting, car, collectible.” The seller purchased the two neighboring townhouses on West 69th Street for $24.5 million in 2012 and combined them into a single-family townhouse, Mansion Global reported.

That doesn’t mean the combination was easy or well-received by neighbors.French businessman Pierre Bastid and his jazz-singer wife Malou Beauvoir reportedly rankled their neighbors during the seven-year process — some of whom moved elsewhere due to feeling fed up with the significant excavation the couple undertook.Its listing agent Jim St.

André of Compass assured The Post, “It’s a record-setting price.It sets a new bar for townhouses across the city.”I...