TIS the season to revisit. This fall, while many people who recently agreed to buy properties are triple-checking fine print — desperately looking for typos and esoteric rules to help them get out of their contracts — those who waited to buy are seeing seriously reduced prices.
Nate Berkus, Oprah Winfrey’s favorite furniture-designing dude, is taking another look at 330 Spring St., otherwise known as the Urban Glass House. The condo building was the last project designed in part by starchitect Philip Johnson, who died before he saw it completed.
Last year, Berkus looked at a $3.1 million, three-bedroom, 3½-bathroom, 2,037-square-foot pad that was listed for more than $1,500 per square foot. This year, he is looking at a two-bedroom, three-bathroom, 1,457-square-foot apartment that is listed for less than $1,300 a square foot — significantly less than it previously sold for.
The current owner, a real estate investor, bought the apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows and Statue of Liberty and Hudson River views for $2.4 million but is now asking $1.89 million for it.
“They’re taking a price hit. That’s the way it goes in today’s economy,” says broker Tom Postilio of Core Group Marketing, adding that the buyer needed to “lessen” his real-estate portfolio.
Berkus picked up a styling tip while touring the price-chopped pad. There was a panel of fabric, like a loose curtain, on an entry-hall wall covering an electrical panel, which the designer noted that he plans to remember and use for future projects.
Roepers dope
Dutch-born financier Alex Roepers and his wife, Shafi, just bought a pricey parcel of land to play with: 4 empty acres on the ocean, right beside Dune Beach, on Meadow Lane in Southampton. They paid about $17.5 million for the land, which was owned by ex-Warnaco CEO Linda Wachner.
That land parcel was previously listed for about $25 million — and part of a package once listed as high as $65 million that included 9 other acres and Wachner’s 8,500-square-foot, 10-bedroom, 12-bathroom home that was built in 1988. In 2006, The Post broke the story about the combined package because it was the highest price ever asked for a Southampton Village home.
Wachner’s two-story house, which comes with a heated pool and tennis court, is now on the market separately for $32 million with Sotheby’s. While not exactly a teardown, people who have been inside the home describe it as “run-down” and rather matronly.
Roepers is the founder of hedge-fund firm Atlantic Investment Management. The couple recently applied to the Southampton zoning board for permits that would allow them to start building a home on the new land. We hear that Peter Marino will be the architect. Marino also designed the Roepers’ six-bedroom pad on East 66th Street and the interior of their Gulfstream IV jet, which Shafi has used to fly her pals to Palm Beach. Once, she even let a reporter aboard to document it all and rave about her “ascent” into New York society.
Bernie buzz
We hear that Bernie Madoff’s listed-for-$8.75 million Montauk house has gotten even more offers than the four we reported last week and could be getting close to a sale.
The Contemporary, although nothing special on the inside, has spectacular views because it sits on a bluff overlooking the ocean. One hundred percent of the sale goes toward reimbursing Madoff’s Ponzi-scheme victims.
Word around the house is still very hush-hush, even after a statue was stolen off the property. We spoke to the broker yesterday, who said only that she was too busy to talk to us because she was shopping. She promised to call back but never did.