So, it turns out that the sale of Courtney Sale Ross‘ double duplex apartment at 740 Park–first reported here–was indeed closed for “about $52 million,” as reported elsewhere–$52.5 million to be precise–and not the asking price of $60 million, as Gripepad initially heard. The buyers, reports Kim Velsey of the New York Observer, are Howard Marks, head of the Oaktree Capital investment firm, and wife Nancy. Gripepad’s favorite fun fact from the official city filing? Real estate taxes on the transaction totalled $1,483,125. That won’t buy you much at 740 Park, but elsewhere in Manhattan, it’s the price of a nice two-bedroom co-op. The Markses also own some prime Los Angeles unreal estate–a sprawling six-bedroom estate on Oakmont Drive in Brentwood, where their neighbors include the conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife, another Nancy. Though the Ross-Marks sale price has been touted as setting a record for the highest price paid for a single co-op apartment, it should probably carry an asterisk since it’s really two apartments. The C-line abode once belonged to screenwriter William Goldman, the D-line to William Hale Harkness of the Standard Oil family.

My scoop late last week on the sale of Courtney Sale Ross‘s double duplex at 740 Park Avenue has since been
picked up and linked by The New York Observer, curbed, and Business Insider, all of whom were kind enough to credit Gripepad. It was also picked up five days late and a credit short by The Wall Street Journal today. The Journal set the sale price at $52 million, slightly below ask. Eventually, city records will show who got that right. As far as credit goes, as the merchant John Wanamaker once said, “Courtesy is the one coin you can never have too much of or be stingy with.” UPDATE: Alexei Barrionuevo of the New York Times cites Gripepad in tomorrow’s Sunday Real Estate Big Deal column.

Could it be the halo effect of Sandy and Joan Weill‘s unloading their 15 Central Park West penthouse for $88 million? The proverbial little bird chirps that Courtney Sale Ross has finally found a buyer for her double duplex apartment at 740 Park–and got her asking price of $60 million via Kathy Sloane at Brown Harris Stevens, whose listing for it is here. Officially listed last November, though it was available as a semi-secret pocket listing long before that, the apartment is on the 12th and 13th floors of the fabled co-op. Ross and her late husband, Warner Communications mogul Steve Ross combined units in the C and D lines running the length of 71st Street that both use the building’s low-key chic 71 East 71st Street entrance. Sloane could not be reached for confirmation and the buyer is as yet unknown, but if it’s true UPDATE: a second source confirms a deal has been struck so, congratulations are due all around. And then, there’s what this says about Manhattan real estate. “The high end of the market is out of control,” raves a well-connected broker.

It’s back to #2 on the Book Soup bestseller list for Unreal Estate this week. Mmmmm. Good.

In a post-Christmas surge, Unreal Estate has vaulted back up to the #6 position on the Los Angeles Times non-fiction bestseller list.

There’s a snappy slide show of real-estate-listing photos of apartments now on sale at 740 Park on Business Insider today. There’s even a news hook for it–announced the day before–the listing of Vera Wang‘s fab duplex there. And since the item claims that I “run a blog about the building,” I figured I’d better link to show it’s still alive, even if my attention has moved elsewhere, to the west coast, for instance. But what the hey, I say. New babies tend to hog all the attention. Today’s the six-year-old’s turn. Proving there’s life in this not-quite-abandoned old blog yet.

“Otherwise Occupied,” my latest column for Crain’s New York Business, looks at bankers, Babbo, 740 Park Avenue (above) and Occupy Wall Street, and concludes: Let them eat Chef Boyardee.

….but Occupy Wall Street is currently en route to 740 Park, identified for their purposes as the home of David Koch. So what are Steve Schwarzman, John Thain, Ezra Merkin, Izzy Englander, David Ganek, Charles Stevenson, Steven Mnuchin, Thomas Tisch and Ronald Lauder–chopped liver?

I got a Google alert this morning pointing towards a HuffPo piece by an Occidental College professor named Peter Dreier that claims the 740 Park Avenue duplex owned by Steven and Heather Mnuchin (above) was sold for a measly $9 million two years ago when the Mnuchins moved to LA after Steven took over a bank there. Just for the record: not so. I doubt you could buy a closet at 740 for that price! The Mnuchins still own their place in the best little apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Curiously enough, Occidental College has a cameo role in Unreal Estate: Alphonzo Bell, the founder of Bel Air, one of the communities the book is about, was an Occidental graduate, trustee and benefactor.

The business pages at the New York Post think Ezra Merkin, a resident (above, right) of 740 Park, might be New York’s worst Blue Meanie. It seems he’s spent more fighting an arbitration award to a victim of the Bernie Madoff (above left) mess–he was one of Madoff’s big middlemen–than the size of the award itself. Ouch.