Somewhere on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 84th Street, a seven-bedroom duplex changed hands for $89.5 million last week. The building isn’t finished yet. The listing was never public. And the buyer, as is customary at this particular altitude, will remain unnamed.
The sale sets a new record for the Upper East Side is the most expensive condominium ever sold in one of Manhattan’s most storied neighborhoods. But the number is almost secondary to the method. This is how luxury real estate works now at the very top of the market: quietly, selectively, through networks most people never get access to. The building at 1122 Madison Avenue didn’t need a public launch to move $360 million worth of property. It needed the right phone calls made to the right people at the right time.
The Address That Earned Its Price
William Sofield has spent his career making things that last. The founder of Studio Sofield whose portfolio stretches from fashion houses to some of Manhattan’s most admired residential projects that took on 1122 Madison with something close to a manifesto. He quotes Maurizio Gucci when he explains his thinking: “Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.”
At most luxury towers, that kind of statement is marketing. At 1122 Madison, it’s structural. Sofield insisted on cladding all four sides of the 22-story limestone tower in hand-laid stone — not just the front elevation, which is where most developers stop. “In New York, you often get what I call the ‘hot knife through butter’ situation,” he told Robb Report. “You have a beautiful facade and a great cornice, but then it’s as if it got sliced off at the side and the rest is brick.” The building sits at the corner of East 84th Street and Madison Avenue, steps from Central Park and directly in the sightline of anyone crossing through the park past the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The penthouse that just sold spans the 20th and 21st floors: seven bedrooms, a double-height great room designed as a modern interpretation of a classic Upper East Side mansion, and nearly 2,000 square feet of private outdoor space. The rooftop terrace looks north and west across Central Park, south down Museum Mile, and east toward a Midtown skyline that rewards the altitude. Completion is expected in mid-2027. The buyer is committed to a version of this apartment that exists, as yet, primarily in renderings and Sofield’s imagination.
The building launched in January. By the time most people in the industry had read the coverage, 18 of its 26 residences were already in contract of over $360 million in deals at an average of $5,400 per square foot, with prices raised four times since opening. The penthouse went at full asking price. None of this happened on Zillow.
Whisper listings or pocket listings, or off-market sales, depending on who you ask — have been a feature of ultra-luxury real estate for years. The template, according to brokers who work in the space, is 220 Central Park South: the Ken Griffin building, the most expensive residential sale in American history, sold out entirely without a single public listing. “It was, to date, the highest-profile building ever sold out,” says Scott Hustis of Paradigm Advisory. “The building was completely sold off market.”
For developers, the logic is clean: control pricing, avoid the scrutiny of days-on-market, test appetite without announcing vulnerability. For buyers, the appeal is different but equally rational. There is status in being invited before the doors open. There is privacy in transacting without the wider market knowing your plans and particularly for executives who can’t signal a move before a corporate announcement, or families who would rather not field neighborhood speculation while their children are still in school. The record-setting penthouse sale at 1122 Madison carries the particular satisfaction of a deal that the public learned about only after it was done.
ForUptown, Reconsidered
The sale lands at a moment when the Upper East Side is doing something it hadn’t done in a while: leading. In mid-2025, the neighborhood led all of Manhattan in luxury contract activity, with nearly half of all homes priced above $4 million going into contract there. The area long associated with old-money co-ops and doormen who remember your parents has been quietly repositioning that helped by new developments like the Surrey residences and the long-awaited reopening of the Frick Collection following a five-year renovation.