Exclusive | Why tiny NYC home is on sale for just $9m after owner sunk $16m on it

A six-story Upper East Side townhouse that cost its owner over $16 million to buy and renovate is now on the market for just under $9 million — a staggering $7 million loss.The seller, who requested anonymity, bought 238 1/2 E.83rd St.

in January 2013 for $2.6 million and spent $13.6 million tricking out the place — adding levels and installing custom-made marble floors, mahogany panels, an elevator, central air and a sophisticated security system.“He did it knowing full well he likely wouldn’t get [his money] out,” co-listing agent Brown Harris Stevens’ Maggie Peters said during a tour of the property.“It was like a vanity project.”His loss is a buyer’s gain.“Anybody who’s buying it is getting an incredible bang for their buck,” Peters said.Two major factors are driving the discount: width and location.At just 14 feet wide, the 4,400-square-foot house is narrower than the city average of 18 to 20 feet, according to co-listing broker Barbara Fox of BHS.“It’s width sends most people running, but yet it doesn’t read like a narrow, dark townhouse,” Peters said.

“It really doesn’t.”It is also situated between Second and Third avenues, well removed from the tony enclaves west of Lexington Avenue.The block features a psychic, a copy store, an auto repair shop and small residential buildings.Inside, the owner, who primarily resides in Connecticut, spent $13.6 million completely transforming the property, converting it from a two-family building into a single-family mega-home.

The gut renovation added three stories, six distinct outdoor spaces and entirely new mechanical systems.The house, Peters added, “is a bit of an anomaly on the block.”The home has three to four bedrooms, five bathrooms and three powder rooms, with a separate ground-floor apartment with its own street entrance.Upon entering the foyer at the stoop entry level, there is a distinctive patterned inlaid marble, which some potential buyers have deemed “too visu...