Exclusive | Famed NYC co-op stands to become a luxury loser as $67.5M home faces a $55.5M discount

A Fifth Avenue co-op could become the biggest loser in New York City real estate history — and it’s in a building already flooded with discounted home sales.But perhaps that’s why members of Manhattan’s high society are now looking to live there.A full-floor residence in the Sherry-Netherland where an alleged Chinese spy once lived is in contract — its last asking price was $12 million.

In 2015, its owner paid $67.5 million cash for it.That’s a staggering $55.5 million loss on the unit if the deal closes for that sum.Another apartment that last sold for $11.1 million in 2011 is listed for $1.6 million, marking an 85.6% drop, according to StreetEasy.“At these prices, the apartments are being given away,” quipped one broker with listings in the building, a skip away from the posh Plaza Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street.Another broker who has traded there for 20 years added: “It’s getting to the point where owners are asking if they can just leave their keys at the front desk and walk away.”The nearly century-old building’s sales prices are in freefall as its monthly maintenance fees soar to some of the highest that the city has ever seen.In context, that in-contract $12 million unit comes with an extraordinary $85,654 a month in maintenance fees for the regular operation of the building.

And that’s on top of additional one-time “assessment” fees for things like fixing the building’s brick exterior, or fixing the old wood-paneled elevators, brokers said.Experts told Gimme Shelter that those ever-rising monthlies are having a direct impact on pricing inside the famed building, which has been home to Diana Ross, Francis Ford Coppola and Judge Judy Sheindlin.Those fees have almost doubled in the past 10 years, from $6.67 per square foot in 2016 to $12.15 in 2026, according to data compiled by appraiser Jonathan Miller, of StreetMatrix.The fees also pay for hotel-style services, including daily housekeeping and evening turn-down servic...