Bethenny Frankel Prepares to Take Loss in Lower Manhattan
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Despite “design and home décor” being her self-described #sidehustle , Bethenny Frankel’s real estate dealings are looking like a losing game. The reality TV star turned diet booze and snacks baron’s former Manhattan loft, on a cobblestone street in the bustling heart of Soho, is now available at just under $4 million, a small fortune below the too-optimistic $5.25 million she wanted when it was initially listed more than 2.5 years ago amid a blitz of publicity and, more troubling, more than $200,000 less than the $4.2 million she paid for the loft-style condo just about five years ago.
Frankel, who’s already moved to a substantially larger loft nearby, stands to lose even more when the mountain of money she poured into a bespoke renovation is factored into the equation. Configured with two ample, en suite bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, the almost 2,400-square-foot spread features 14-foot ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace in the living room, walnut floors throughout, soundproofed windows and a comprehensive home automation system.
A slender, fifty-foot entrance gallery passes a private powder room and laundry area before it opens to an airy, open-plan living and entertaining space. With white marble countertops on high-end cabinets imported from Germany, the state-of-the-art kitchen is completely open to but two steps above a combination living and dining area flooded with light through three, mahogany-trimmed arched windows, one of which opens to a small balcony that hangs over the busy street. Bedrooms open off the entrance hall. Both have floor to ceiling windows into an airshaft gussied up with a landscaped “green wall,” while the master suite also includes an expertly designed pass-through closet and dressing area plus a marble-sheathed bathroom complete with steam shower.
Interestingly enough, the condo is not listed with “Million Dollar Listing New York” star Fredrik Eklund, Frankel’s pal and co-star on the 2018 Bravo reality series “Bethenny and Fredrik,” but rather with The Leonard Steinberg Team at Compass.
The Skinny Girl mogul, who left the “Real Housewives of New York” earlier this year and announced a multi-year partnership to develop television projects with MGM Television and Mark Burnett, has bought and sold a number of homes in New York and the Hamptons over the last several years. Her current holdings include the aforementioned 4,000-square-foot loft in , featured last year in Architectural Digest , a multi-acre compound in Bridgehampton, N.Y., purchased in 2013 for $2.65 million, and an investment property, also in Bridgehampton, she acquired in late 2017 for a tad more than $2 million, quickly renovated and now has on the market at not quite $2.6 million after it was initially listed about 15 months ago at a wee bit under $3 million. Frankel also spends a great deal of time in Boston, where she and her Grateful Dead loving real estate executive and film producer boyfriend Paul Bernon recently acquired an elegant townhouse in the tony Back Bay neighborhood that she’s featured and fawned over several times on her social media accounts.
