WASHINGTON — Russian billionaire and owner of Chelsea Football Club, Roman Abramovich, is in the final stages of buying a 1920s mansion overlooking Central Park in Manhattan's posh Upper East Side for a record-breaking $75 million, media reports said.
Abramovich has reportedly signed a contract to buy the 9,720 square foot, or 903 square meter, six-story home that is currently divided into three units, real estate website Trulia reported.
If Abramovich seals the deal, the $75 million price tag would set a new record sale price for a co-op in New York, outstripping the $54 million paid by music and movie mogul David Geffen last year for another Fifth Avenue property.
The Manhattan property that Abramovich is reportedly poised to buy was acquired in 2005 by British real estate developer Howard Ronson, who wanted to turn it back into the single-family mansion that it was in the 1920s, when it was built for coal magnate Edward Berwind.
But Ronson died in 2007, and his family put the property on the market last year for $72 million.
Abramovich and his longtime girlfriend Dasha Zhukova have been looking at real estate in New York for the past year, the New York Post reported.
The 47-year-old Russian tycoon, who began life as an orphan, is also said to own an eight-story property in London's Lowndes Square, several other residences around the world, and what used to be the world's biggest yacht until it was eclipsed this year by the emir of Abu Dhabi's superyacht.
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