The White House, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons / Google Maps
An Upper East Side townhouse has quietly changed hands, and its well-known owners walked away with barely more than they paid for it nearly two decades ago.
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The sellers are business news anchor Maria Bartiromo and her husband, Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of the asset management firm WisdomTree. The couple sold their limestone townhouse at 213 East 62nd Street, between Second and Third Avenues, for $7 million, Crain’s New York Business reported Tuesday, citing a deed filed with the city.The buyers were a trust and a shell company linked to Peter Morse, an auto industry executive and commercial brake pad manufacturer, and his wife, Gina, an executive in the same business, according to city records. The Morses paid cash.
The deal came together quickly. The contract was signed October 5 and the sale closed October 30, a shorter gap than usual, according to Crain’s, which noted that a month or more is more common. Bartiromo and Steinberg don’t appear to have marketed the house publicly.
On paper, the sale looks like a small win, since the couple paid $6.5 million for the house in 2007. But Crain’s noted that sum would be worth about $10.5 million in today’s dollars, so the pair appear to have lost money once inflation is factored in.
The 19-foot-wide, 3,700-square-foot house sits inside the landmarked Treadwell Farm Historic District. The district covers stretches of East 61st and 62nd Streets and was designated in 1967, making it one of the city’s oldest historic districts. The house has five bedrooms, four and a half baths and four working fireplaces, plus a 39-foot-long rear yard. Public records from the 2007 purchase show it was built in 1899, and the couple bought it from a relocation company for less than its $6.9 million asking price. The New York Observer reported at the time that it also had a 32-foot-long kitchen, a wet bar between the second-floor dining and drawing rooms, and a second-floor balcony overlooking the garden.
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The sale comes about two months after Fox parted ways with Bartiromo, ending a run of roughly 12 and a half years. Status reported that she’d shared internal Fox guidance about coverage of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election claims with the White House. Fox described her exit to TheWrap as a “business decision,” and Bartiromo has disputed that she was fired, Crain’s reported. Before joining Fox in 2014, she spent about two decades at CNBC, where she hosted “Closing Bell” and “On the Money with Maria Bartiromo.”Have a news tip? Send it to us here!
