First came legal comeuppance for Bernard L. Madoff. Now comes social revenge: A scion of one of the nation’s bluest, blue-blood families has been selected to sell off the Manhattan penthouse that belonged to the Queens outsider who scaled Wall Street before being exposed as a fraud.
Serena Boardman, the great great-granddaughter of banking and railroad tycoon George F. Baker and a fixture on the A-list social circuit, was chosen by the U.S. Marshals Service to sell Madoff’s Upper East Side apartment.
Boardman, a senior vice president of Sotheby’s International Real Estate, has a lucrative sideline of disposing of the baubles of onetime masters of the universe - often to the celebrities and trust-fund pals with whom she spends time.
She recently sold the brownstone belonging to Marisa Noel Brown - daughter of Walter Noel, whose Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund lost $7 billion to Madoff.
Also on her plate is the five-story limestone mansion at 22 E. 71st St. which had been leased by accused Ponzi-schemer and former gallery owner Larry Salander. The property, which is owned by Boardman’s brother-in-law, Aby Rosen, is listed at $75 million, making it the city’s most expensive residential listing.
For the 39-year-old heiress who parties with Paris Hilton and Oscar de la Renta, work and play are inseparable. Whether attending the Spring Gala of the New York City Opera or celebrating Sean “Diddy” Combs men’s fragrance on his yacht in St. Tropez, Boardman is always cultivating contacts.
“She’s very well connected,” David Patrick Columbia, a principal at the New York Social Diary, a Website that chronicles Manhattan’s upper crust told Bloomberg News. “When she gets an apartment or house to sell, she already knows people who might be interested in it.”
Those ties have paid off. In 2008, Boardman was listed the top broker in the U.S., with $255 million in sales, according to REAL Trends, a Denver-based research firm.
Among her notable deals: Steve Roth’s $25 million purchase of Gianni Agnelli’s 778 Park apartment; the sale of the 730 Park co-op previously occupied by art collector Adam Lindemann and his former wife, Elizabeth; and Jonathan Tisch’s purchase of a co-op at 2 East 67th Street for $48 million.
Boardman and her Sotheby’s colleague, Anne Corey, have listed the Madoff duplex at 133 E. 64th St. for $9.9 million. They describe the three-bedroom, four-bath cooperative, where the convicted swindler lived until his sentencing in June, as a “sophisticated penthouse duplex” on Sotheby’s website, and include photos and floor plans.
“It’s not like you’re quietly trying to sell something - the genie is out of the bottle,” Boardman told Bloomberg News. “It’s a very open, straightforward approach.”
She said the brokerage plans to donate part of its commission to a Madoff restitution fund. All three Madoff homes are being sold by the U.S. government to try to pay back his victims. The other homes, in Montauk, Long Island, and in Palm Beach, Florida, are listed for $8.75 million and $8.49 million, respectively, with the Corcoran Group.
Although singleminded in pursuit of a deal, Boardman has no need to be a working girl. She is the daughter of billionaire financier Dixon Boardman and interior designer/heiress Pauline Pitt, whose great-grandfather founded First National Bank, which later became Citibank.
Her sister, Samantha, is married to Rosen, the real estate tycoon.
After graduating from Brown University, where she majored in Art History and Political Science, Boardman worked at Sotheby’s auction house in the European and English Furniture Departments, according to her Sotheby’s profile. In 2001, she started with Sotheby’s International Realty and has sold more than $800 million worth of property.
In 2004, the New York Post described Boardman as one of the city’s most eligible bachelorettes: “Pro: She’s blond, beautiful, and rich. Con: You’d better be too, if you want to date her.”
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3 Comments
#1. Ian Green 09.17.2009
So, how do you fix errors in these Muckety things? Surely you are not suggesting that Pauline Pitt is the daughter of two sisters? So which S. Boardman (Samantha or Serena) is she the daughter of? (Also, I still want to be able to create my own Mucketys. Any progress on that front?)
#2. Ian Green 09.17.2009
Oh, I see! Gotta what which way those arrows go! As there is no time component shown in the mouseovers, it’s hard to see that an arrow saying “daughter” may be pointing at the mother!
#3. Ian Green 09.17.2009
I guess I should read that as “daughter” (of) –>
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