"Succession" may have bred success.
A penthouse on the Upper East Side that served as the fictional home of the character Kendall Roy in the HBO drama — a tie-in eagerly hyped by brokers in recent months as the award-winning show wrapped its final season — has found a buyer.
No. PH at 180 E. 88th St., a five-bedroom triplex condo measuring about 5,500 square feet, has sold for $24.7 million or around $4,500 per square foot, according to a deed, which indicated the transaction closed June 29. The apartment also features 28-foot ceilings, a living room with a gas fireplace and a staircase whose twisting presence on the second floor is almost sculptural. The apartment also packs in 3,500 square feet of outdoor space across multiple levels.
The exact identity of the buyer is unclear. They completed the purchase using a shell company called P’s Place LLC, and a lawyer signed the paperwork. The buyer’s real estate agent, Adam Modlin, declined to comment on his client or weigh in about whether the association with a TV hit helped seal the deal. And 180 E. 88th St.’s sales office had no comment.
But the apartment had been on the market for more than a year before it traded. It first came on in March 2022, when it was asking $33 million, though its price was reduced to $29 million in January, a few months before "Succession’s" fourth season premiered.
The seller of the penthouse, which is at Third Avenue, was its sponsor, the team of DDG Partners and Global Holdings — which started selling apartments at the 48-unit, 50-story tower in 2015 and anticipates a $312 million sell-out, even though the team still has sponsor units to unload.
A spokeswoman for DDG Partners CEO Joe McMillan said he had no comment.
Last week, "Succession," a drama about intrasibling scheming for control of a right-wing media empire resembling Fox News, scored a hefty 27 Emmy nominations for its final season, which ended in May.
The show, which debuted in 2018, has won 13 Emmys, including for best dramatic series. Kendall Roy, played by actor Jeremy Strong, is the oldest of the four children of Logan Roy, a Rupert Murdoch-esque billionaire media baron who seems constantly torn about which of his children, if any, should be his heir.
The condo 180 E. 88th St. has known drama of its own. The discovery that the developers took advantage of a zoning loophole to build a taller-than-usual tower prompted city officials to temporarily shut down construction in 2016. Two years later local leaders and neighborhood groups sued to stop the project, though unsuccessfully. The condo, which offers mostly two-bedroom to four-bedroom units, opened in 2019.
If the show’s air of opulence and power helped push a deal across the finish line, the connection doesn't seem to have worked in all quarters. Another "Succession" location, the fourth-season bachelor pad of Kendall’s brother Roman Roy, played by Kieran Culkin, still appears to be for sale despite also touting its Hollywood connections during the run of the show.
The pad, an Upper West Side penthouse at 200 Amsterdam Ave. whose developers include SJP Properties, has been seeking a buyer since spring 2021, according to StreetEasy. Its price, $38 million, hasn’t budged.
From Crain's New York Business, a sibling publication of Crain Currency