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Russian Billionaire Buys Daughter $88M New York Pad

15 Central Park West.
Google Street View
15 Central Park West.

The New York Post simply called it "the best Christmas present ever."

And would you disagree? Dmitry Rybolovlev just bought his 22-year-old daughter Ekaterina Rybolovleva a 6,744-sq-ft penthouse overlooking New York's Central Park. The price tag? $88 million.

According to Forbes, the price paid makes it the most expensive apartment in Manhattan. Here's a bit more from Forbes:

"The apartment, in one of the toniest post-war buildings in Manhattan, has 10 rooms including 4 bedrooms, a wraparound terrace of more than 2,000 sq. feet, 4 bedrooms and 2 wood burning fireplaces.

"'This sale is an outlier. It works out to be about $13,000 per sq. foot, the highest on record, for anything, that has ever occurred,' says Jonathan Miller, chief executive of real estate appraiser Miller Samuel, 'What is ironic is that when [former Citi Group chairman] Sandy Weill bought it for less than half this amount, he paid the highest price per sq foot to date in that building, around, $6,400 per sq. foot. He is again setting a record.'"

Vanity Fair predictsthe pad will become a "glorified dorm room." If you're itching to see what this place looks like, check outthe listing page, which includes a floor plan. RT has also procured a couple of picturesand Vanity Fair has a long write-up about the building from 2008. With its $2 billion in sales, 15 Park West, it writes, is "the most lucrative [building] in the world."

Rybolovlev, by the way, made his billions as a fertilizer mogul and according to RT also has also paid $100 million for Donald Trump's home in Palm Beach Florida.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.