Now that's a foreclosure

Josh Barbanel has an article in The New York Times about a 'fixer-upper' in Trump Tower, of all places:

A 5,500-square-foot penthouse atop the Trump International Hotel and Tower, owned by the financially troubled Italian movie mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori, is under contract to sell for $18 million, possibly the largest residential foreclosure action ever in Manhattan. The contract, signed last month and filed in Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, identified the buyer only as a limited liability company. Yuri Gaspar, a lawyer for the buyer, said that, if another buyer makes a higher counteroffer, an auction of the property will probably be held on 22 July at the court.
Howard Margolis, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman and the court-approved broker in the transaction, said that many potential buyers had viewed the penthouse and that two had brought in the architect Charles Gwathmey to look over the property. The apartment, on Columbus Circle, has some extraordinary features, and one very big problem. It is a big open glass box, with ceilings up to twenty feet high and views from Central Park to the Hudson River. Donald Trump bought the place in 1997 for $5 million, but after separating from Marla Maples listed it for rent at $100,000 a month.
Mr. Cecchi Gori bought it a few months later for $10.4 million. The problem is that he gutted the apartment. The buyer will have to spend a pretty penny to put in pipes and walls to make it a livable space. Mr. Cecchi Gori, a producer of Italian films, including Il Postino, has been struggling to hold his business together. He was arrested last year in Italy in connection with a bankruptcy filing. He is listed as a co-producer of Everybody’s Fine, a film starring Robert De Niro, scheduled for release later this year.
Last fall, his lender, a subsidiary of the Fortress Investment Group, moved to foreclose on the Trump International apartment and two other homes he owns in London and Beverly Hills, in connection with a $30 million loan. The federal bankruptcy filing delayed the foreclosure and gave Mr. Margolis a chance to find a buyer willing to pay more.
While foreclosures have become common around the country, Jonathan Miller, the president of Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm, said the $18 million sale in Manhattan was “the largest individual foreclosure that I am familiar with in my career.”
The $18 million price works out to $3,250 a square foot, far below the asking prices of other apartments in the building. On the 47th floor, Jane Beasley, the ex-wife of Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, put her 3,660-square- foot apartment on the market in April for $28.8 million, or more than $7,800 a square foot.
But Dolly Lenz, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, who sold Mr. Cecchi Gori his apartment, said the two prices were not comparable, because the penthouse requires so much work.

Rico says he feels for the rich, with all their problems, don't you?