Jon Stewart is facing online backlash after saying Donald Trump’s case overvaluing his properties was “not victimless,” and sleuths found his own records.
nypost.com
Hopefully, an opinion piece correctly counters the op's article enough to calm the MAGA frenzy.
The New York Post made the curious decision to promote Tim Pool's laughably false accusation that Jon Stewart committed some sort of fraud regarding the 2014 sale of his Manhattan penthouse, amplifying the notorious right-wing troll's claim to the point where Stewart's name trended on The...
www.mediaite.com
Perhaps the most ludicrous part of this whole article is that an
NYC-based real estate reporter is apparently pretending a 6,000 square foot penthouse in Tribeca isn’t fairly sold for millions of dollars. Searching the
Post’s own archives finds a Nov. 2014
article reporting that Stewart bought the condo in 2005 for $4.5 million. Selling that same property almost a decade later for $17.5 million isn’t outlandish for the Manhattan real estate market, and Jacob’s article included a YouTube realtor video with a tour of the spacious property. The video is from 2021, so presumably includes some renovations or upgrades since Stewart owned it, but the penthouse’s layout, massive size, and panoramic views wouldn’t have changed.
The
Post does mount a half-hearted complaint on behalf of Stewart’s buyer, financier
Parag Pande, who sold the condo for “a nearly 26% loss” in 2021. Besides the fact that this is when the city was climbing back from the pandemic, it still doesn’t justify the accusation that Stewart inflated the value by a “staggering 829%” or anything close to that. And even the article at real estate news website The Real Deal that Jacob links regarding Pande’s purchase notes multiple reasons for the reduced price besides the pandemic, including a lack of luxury amenities (full-time doorman, pool/sauna, gym, etc.) that buyers at that price point were now expecting and the fact that Pande hadn’t renovated since buying the condo, with the listing broker quoted as saying that “pretty much everyone” who looked at the unit “said they would do a lot of renovation work.”
Current real estate values in the area further drive home the point. Another 6,000 sq. ft. Tribeca penthouse not too far from the one Stewart owned is
currently on the market for $24,450,000 (and has some absolutely lovely “chevron wood floors” and “a freestanding soaking tub facing the Empire State Building,” among other stunning views of the NYC skyline).
Past sales in Stewart’s specific building show even the units that were half the size of his (and not on the penthouse level) still selling for millions of dollars.
A 6,000 sq. ft. Manhattan condo being listed for only $800,000 at any point during this past decade seems as likely as getting a visit from Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Bigfoot all in one afternoon, but this scurrilous attack was never about actual real estate reality;
it seems the temptation to hurl the “hypocrite!” label at a Trump critic was too much to resist.