Business

KATE BAIT

The city’s distressed bankers might be putting their properties on the market, but at least the Hollywood elite still seem to be in a buying mood.

Director Sam Mendes, husband of Kate Winslet, recently checked out the penthouse at 99 Jane St. in the celebrity-family-friendly West Village. And we hear Winslet is popping by to take a look sometime soon.

The four-bedroom, 4½-bath condo apartment listed at $14.5 million is 4,365 square feet inside and comes with 4,500 square feet of exterior space on the rooftop garden.

The happy (even after Mendes filmed Winslet’s steamy “Revolutionary Road” love scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio) couple are looking for a family-size home with room for their 5-year-old son, Joe, and Winslet’s 8-year-old daughter, Mia, from a previous marriage.

The penthouse belongs to money man Bruce Bent Jr, and his wife, Rebecca, a food writer. Bent is senior vice president of the Reserve Management Company, founded by his father. The firm was in the news last year when one of its money market funds “broke the buck,” meaning its shares fell under $1, losing value after suffering large losses from debt issued by bankrupt Lehman Brothers.

Bent had purchased 99 Jane’s only two penthouses and combined them into one unit. He originally put it on the market for $16.5 million in December. Jennifer Lopez, Kate Hudson and Meg Ryan have also looked at the penthouse.

Listing broker Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens had no comment.

Alpine & dandy

Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia recently plunked down $15 million for a six-bedroom mansion in Alpine, NJ, but he’s hardly the only big name interested in the area.

Just 7.8 miles from the George Washington Bridge, Alpine — which tied with Fisher Island, Fla., as the most expensive ZIP code in the United States last year — has recently seen Bruce Willis checking out multiple properties. Willis visited a $59 million former 10,000-square-foot English-style house that comes with 27 acres of land. (John Travolta also looked at the estate before the death of his son, Jett, in January.)

Meanwhile, Britney Spears, who is already renting a home in Alpine for $30,000 a month, is house hunting in the $20 million range. While we’re told she loved houses she saw, they all had privacy issues: big homes on relatively small lots too close to the curb. (That’s a problem with a lot of $20 million homes in Alpine — they are on 2 acres or less.)

At least the home Britney is now renting, while on 2 acres, is sideways from the road, so the front door doesn’t face the street.

If Britney decides to up her price range, she’ll get a lot more privacy.

The $59 million mansion Willis saw was part of the late Henry Clay Frick Jr.’s 63-acre estate, which was sold for $58 million to real estate tycoon Richard Kurtz in 2006. While Kurtz left the mansion intact on 27 acres, he subdivided the rest into 13 lots, including the sites of two homes currently under construction. The prize is a 32,000-square-foot mansion on 5 acres that was listed until a week ago at $52 million. After rejecting an offer around $36 million, Kurtz took it off the market and, we hear, plans to move in with his wife, Patti.

The over-the-top house has 11 bedrooms, more than 20 bathrooms, an indoor basketball court, a movie theater, a grand ballroom, a pool and tennis court.

Broker Dennis McCormack of Prominent Properties Sotheby’s International Realty, who had represented Frick and Kurtz in past deals, had no comment.

‘Mean’ business

Comedian Lisa Lampanelli is laughing all the way to the bank. The “Queen of Mean” just closed on a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,100-square-foot condo at 2250 Broadway on the Upper West Side. Lampanelli spent $1.32 million, just under the asking price. Broker Dolly Lenz of Prudential Douglas Elliman could not be reached for comment.