Friday, 20 September 2013

End of Week Pick Up Sticks: Judge Judy

Famously forceful, cantankerous, and occasionally hostile television judge Judy Sheindlin continues to shake up her impressive residential real estate portfolio. In May (2013) she and her husband, Jerry—a former television judge himsef, sold their five-room pied-a-terre at the super-snooty Sherry Netherland on New York City's Fifth Avenue for $8.5 million to a high-cultured Philadelphia-based couple, dollar store pioneer Bernard Spain and his sophisticated, social, and always meticulously maquillaged wife, Joan.

At almost the exact same time in May (2013) that the Judges Sheindlin dumped their digs at the Sherry in New York City, the $45 million dollar a year earner laid out $10.7 million for a five bedroom condo-crib the size of suburban macmansion in the heart of Beverly Hills at the swish Montage Beverly Hills, the same luxury hotel and condo complex where Oprah Winfrey (allegedly) owns a $14 million part-time residence.

Now comes word via the property obsessed peeps at The Real Deal that the 14-time Daytime Emmy nominee—always a Showbiz bridesmaid never a bride—and her hubby shelled out $8,500,000 for a spacious duplex penthouse atop a full-service co-operative building designed by the inestimable architect Rosario Candela and built in 1929 in Midtown Manhattan's sleepy and still pretty damn swanky if not terribly fashionable Sutton Place nabe.

Digital listing details, which include a delectable floor plan, show the two-floor aerie has four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, two wood-burning fireplaces, a roomy living room with three exposures, a wood-paneled library, a formal dining room, and a colossal center island kitchen with a temperature controlled walk-in wine cellar that can accommodate 900 bottles of booze. A private terrace wraps entirely around the upper level living spaces. Monthly maintenance charges ring up to $7,363 but the proudly churlish yet wildly popular lady judge (reportedly) earns $123,000 per day so, you know, she could probably dig up seven grand every month in the seats of her private jet.

This is not, as it turns out, the first time Judge Judy and Mister Judge Judy have owned an apartment in the Sutton Place area. Three years ago, according to property records we peeped, they quietly sold a three bedroom and 4.5 bathroom duplex penthouse with two terraces in a luxury post-war tower on Sutton Place South. Miz Sheindlin and her husband, Jerry, also own a swanky condo in Naples, FL, and a baronial estate they had custom built in high-nosed Greenwich, CT. We've read they keep a place in Wyoming but, honestly butter beans, we don't know a thing about that.

listing photos and floor plan: Stribling