Posted by Leonard Steinberg on January 8th, 2014

Annie Liebovitz, the famous Vanity Fair photographer extraordinaire has just sold her ivy-clad West Village townhouse compound for $28.5 million after it sat on the market for many, many months. The compound consists of three unconnected homes: her home is at 757 Greenwich Street, her office at 755 Greenwich Street and her guest house at 311 W. 11th. Altogether it measures roughly 10,200 square feet with seven bedrooms and 5¹/₂ baths.

The West Village Compound has become a new classification in the Manhattan real estate market: in Greenwich Village, headlines were made when Noam Gottesman created the first Village mega-mansion just a few doors away on Jane Street. While some were mesmerized by the cost, others noted that a single piece of their art collection probably costed more than the entire house. Another Annabelle Selldorf-designed mega-mansion is nearing completion across the street on Greenwich and West 12th Streets. Headline-grabbing hedge-funder Steve Cohen reportedly bought the multi-townhouse site on Washington and Charles Street where rumor has it he too will build a massive single family townhouse.

The Liebovitz sale is a strong price for sure, at almost $2,795/sf. While this price is lower than other high end Village townhouses, it should be noted that for this to become a single-family functioning home will require a substantial investment. The new reality is that prime West Village houses requiring a gut renovation start around $ 2,000-2,200/sf (Our recent sale of 64 Perry Street shattered this number by selling for over $ 2,500/sf….but it did come with magnificent approved plans and it was a rare beauty). These days, a gut-renovated, prime West Village townhouse sells for $ 3,000+/sf and there are some examples of $ 3,500+/sf. That is the new reality. And its still relatively inexpensive compared to similar scaled high quality condominiums with outdoor space: a similar sized penthouse at 150 Charles Street would have cost double.