Posted by Leonard Steinberg on November 21st, 2011

Christmas is almost upon us but some really good girls have had a visit from Santa a wee bit early: The 22-year-old daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitriy Rybolovlev received an $88 million penthouse condominium located at 15 Central Park West in her stocking from her daddy — the most expensive residential transaction in residential Manhattan real estate to date. A new record has been set for New York at just a bit over $ 13,000/sf.

A company associated with Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitriy Rybolovlev, signed a contract to purchase the 6,744-square-foot, full-floor penthouse, resplendent with massive 2,000sf terraces and un-obstructed panoramic views of Central Park just a few weeks after it was listed. The penthouse currently owned by banker-extraordinaire Sandy Weill was designed by Robert A M Stern, the king of nouveau-riche-wanting-to-look-like-old-money architect, and Mica Ertegun (the queen of old money-helping-the-nouveau-riche-look-like-old-money designer)who did the interiors recently featured in Architectural Digest.

Dmitriy Rybolovlev made his fortune in Russia’s ‘wild west’ period creating a fertilizer empire which he subsequently sold…. and was acquitted of murder.  For those who think Dmitriy over-paid, please be reminded that he paid half-price when compared to his 54-year-old Russian steel tycoon brother, Vladimir Lisin, with a fortune of 15 billion pounds, who bought a 300-year-old Park Place London mansion earlier this year for about 140 million POUNDS…..thats almost triple what Dmitriy paid for his daughter’s little crash pad.