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Rupert Murdoch Relists His West Village Apartment

by | Jun 20, 2016

The man, the myth, the legend, also known as Rupert Murdoch just relisted his West Village residence for $28.9 million. While it may be a one of a kind apartment, this does seem a little strange: he bought the NYC mansion in March 2015, to only relist it five months later in August 2015.

headerHaving failed to sell it in August last year, Murdoch has put the unit back on the market. This doesn’t seem particularly controversial in its own right since because the New York real estate market moves so quickly, it’s always worth trying to sell again.

What is a little more difficult to wrap your head around is that the media mogul hasn’t dropped the asking price to encourage interest, nor has he even kept the asking price the same. He’s increased it by $4 million. Anyone who has ever tried to sell a property knows that adding $4 million to the asking price doesn’t really help increase buyer’s interest.

So how do you explain a 4 million dollar increase to potential buyers? What could even increase the value of this apartment by nearly $4 million in such a short time span?

The Cost of Selling

However, this sudden jump in price actually has a simple explanation: selling a house can be expensive. There is usually a 10% transaction cost (based off of the gross sales price) when you factor in realtor commissions, title fees, real estate taxes, and other closing costs. All of the above is traditionally passed on to the seller.

Now, while some of us might find it hard to feel sympathetic for a man estimated to be worth $12.7 billion, $4 million in fees is still quite a chunk of money.

Not everyone has the audacity to hike the price by $4 million to make up for those fees when reselling only a year after buying. However, it does highlight a part of property transactions that people often don’t plan for – fees and other expenses.

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