By:  Serach Nissim

A Manhattan townhouse sold for $57 million in an off-market transaction.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the sale of an Upper East Side historic mansion marks a continuing trend of townhouse sales in the Big Apple.  The 22-foot-wide townhouse, first built in the 1879, was sold with its furnishings.  The home had been updated in the Neoclassical style in the 1930s.

Loy Carlos of Serhant, who represented the seller together with brokerage founder Ryan Serhant, said the deal was initial shown virtually– over FaceTime. The deal was almost sealed before the buyer even saw it in person, he added. The home boasts roughly 9,200 square feet of space, excluding two floors below street level.  It features six bedrooms and additional staff rooms, Mr. Carlos said.

The mansion was recently gut-renovated and is in pristine condition and ready to move into.  The property has a private indoor pool and sauna, he added.  The sellers had tapped an impressive number of Italian artisans to create the finishes, Mr. Carlos said. Some of the interiors were designed by Achille Salvagni, an Italian architect famed for designing ultraluxury yachts, he said.

The agents said the price of the house was in the low-$50 million range, and that the furniture added several million dollars to the transaction.  The buyer is based in South Africa, and has ties to the financial industry, as per sources for the WSJ.  The seller was an entity tied to Felice Lasalvia di Clemente– an executive in the Italian organic grocery store industry. The seller had purchased the townhouse in 2012 for $16 million, as per property records. Mr. di Clemente could notimmediately be reached for comment.

The buyer was represented by Adam Solomon and Assad Masri of Douglas Elliman. The deal took a year to complete, complicated by a language barrier, as well as the fact that the buyer wanted to wait for the renovation to be completed before closing, the reps said.  “There were a lot of moving parts,” Mr. Masri said.

The deal adds to the trending hot streak for the luxury townhouses in New York City—which have become a rarity, and well sought after.  In September, a mansion on Fifth Avenue sold for $50 million in an all-cash deal, having been previously occupied by the Permanent Mission of Serbia to the United Nations.  That 30-foot-wide townhouse was one of the city’s last Gilded Age mansions, boasting 20,000-square-feet of space, 34-foot-high ceilings, and 17 fireplaces.

That home, however, was in the need of major renovations, which were expected to cost the buyer an extra $20 million. Also in the same month, real-estate developer Keith Rubenstein sold his townhouse at 8 East 62nd Street in the Upper East Side for just below $50 million, having first listed the home in 2016.  Mr. Serhant told the WSJ that his company is “continuing to see action and traction in the super prime market, despite global economic uncertainty.”