Billionaire Richard Saghian Pays $31 Million for 111 Murray Street Penthouse
Richard Saghian, the founder and chief executive of Fashion Nova, has bought the last unsold penthouse at 111 Murray Street in Tribeca for $31 million. The deal closed on October 26. Penthouse 1 covers 7,700 square feet, with five bedrooms, six full bathrooms, a library, an eat-in kitchen and views across the Hudson and East rivers. At roughly $4,000 a square foot, it gives the 45-year-old a Manhattan base to go with his homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach.
The price says more than the buyer. In 2024 the developers set the penthouse at $50 million in an amendment to the building’s offering plan. It came to market in September 2025 at just under $34 million and closed at $31 million, 38 percent below the filed figure. The tower’s other penthouse sold in 2025 for $28 million against a $45 million plan price, almost the same discount. For executives and family offices who price trophy property, the distance between what a developer files and what a buyer pays at the top of Manhattan has become the most useful number in the deal.
A $19 million gap at the top of Tribeca
111 Murray Street is a 157-unit tower developed by the Witkoff Group, Fisher Brothers and New Valley Ventures. The partners bought the site for $200 million in 2013, took a $445 million construction loan in 2015 from lenders including Blackstone, M&T Bank and Deutsche Bank, and added a $650 million inventory loan from Blackstone in 2017. The building opened in 2018. Penthouse 1 was finished only this past summer, eight years later, and it was the final sponsor-owned unit.
Why sponsors price to close
A developer holding finished, unsold apartments pays common charges, property taxes and interest on that stock every month. The last units also keep the project’s books open, which delays the point at which partners and lenders can settle accounts. That pressure produces what CEOWORLD Magazine calls the last-unit discount: the concession a sponsor accepts to retire its final inventory, which can run well past anything market conditions alone would explain. Both penthouses at 111 Murray cleared at close to 38 percent under their plan prices. The pattern held across two separate buyers in two separate years.
The broker roster tells the same story. Douglas Elliman’s Emily Sertic has run sales at the building since launch, and Ryan and Emilia Serhant of Serhant represented the buyer. A decade of marketing for one tower is a long time to wait for the last check.
How Saghian buys property
The Tribeca purchase fits a record that is now hard to read as coincidence. Saghian often buys from sellers who need to sell, and he often pays in cash.
In March 2022 he won The One, Nile Niami’s 105,000-square-foot Bel-Air house with 21 bedrooms and 42 bathrooms, at a bankruptcy auction. The hammer price was $126 million, about $141 million with the 12 percent buyer’s premium. Two months earlier the auction house had marketed it at $295 million and drawn no offer; Niami had once talked about $500 million. The house still lacked a certificate of occupancy when Saghian bought it.
In October 2024 he paid $30 million in cash for two neighboring houses on North Bay Road in Miami Beach. In June 2025 he paid $32 million in cash for a 13,000-square-foot spec house at 1414 Donhill Drive in Beverly Hills, about $12 million under the asking price, after 26 days on the market. The seller was a developer that had bought the lot for about $6.5 million in 2021.
His one large commercial deal was a company purchase. In August 2024 Fashion Nova bought 407 North Maple Drive in Beverly Hills, a 175,000-square-foot office building, from Tishman Speyer for $118 million to use as its headquarters.
“At the top of the property market, the filed price is the seller’s hope and the closing price is the truth. Buyers with cash and patience are being paid for other people’s deadlines, and lenders should price that in,” said Prof. Dr. Amarendra Bhushan Dhiraj, CEO and Editor-in-Chief, CEOWORLD Magazine.
Cash as bargaining power
Taken together, the disclosed purchases by Saghian and Fashion Nova since 2022 come to about $352 million. In three of the five deals the seller was under time pressure: a bankrupt developer, a spec builder carrying a finished house, a sponsor with one unit left. A cash buyer who can close quickly is worth a lot to each of them, and Saghian has priced that value into those deals.
The fortune behind the purchases
Saghian started Fashion Nova in 2006 after leaving college, opening the first store in the Panorama Mall in the San Fernando Valley. The company grew online by turning runway and celebrity looks into cheap clothing within weeks and selling it through Instagram influencers. Cardi B released two collections with the brand. Fashion Nova is private and does not publish accounts. Its annual sales are reported at around $2 billion, and Saghian’s net worth is estimated at about $2.1 billion.
Concentration risk
Those figures point to a fortune held largely in one private company, in a business that depends on speed and social-media reach and has very little tolerance for missed trends. Fashion Nova has also drawn regulatory attention. In 2020 it agreed to pay $9.3 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges over shipping delays, and in 2022 it paid $4.2 million to settle charges that it kept negative reviews off its website. Seen in that light, roughly $350 million of buildings and land in three of America’s most liquid prime markets is a sensible hedge against a volatile operating business. Trophy homes are a poor investment by yield. They are a decent store of value when the rest of a balance sheet rides on consumer taste.
Where the discount story runs out
The 38 percent figure flatters the buyer. Offering-plan prices are set by sponsors and filed with the New York Attorney General’s office, and they are often aspirational, particularly for penthouses that will not be finished for years. Measured against the September 2025 asking price, the concession was closer to 9 percent, an ordinary negotiation at this level.
At about $4,000 a square foot, Penthouse 1 remains an expensive apartment. The One works the same way: Saghian bought it far below its marketing price, but the house needed significant further construction, and the $295 million figure was never tested by a buyer. A discount to a number nobody paid is a weak measure of value. The stronger evidence is the repeated structure of his deals, which shows a buyer who looks for forced or motivated sellers and walks in with cash.
What happens from here
The Tribeca deal adds New York to Saghian’s holdings in Los Angeles and Miami Beach and closes out a project that took more than a decade to sell. The more consequential signal sits with developers. If the last penthouses at a tower backed by Witkoff, Fisher Brothers and Blackstone financing clear at close to 40 percent under plan, the plan prices still attached to unsold sponsor inventory elsewhere in Manhattan deserve skepticism.
Billionaire Richard Saghian and Fashion Nova property acquisitions, 2022–2026
| Property | Date | Price paid | Size (sq ft) | Approx. $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The One, 944 Airole Way, Bel-Air | Mar 2022 | $141M (incl. 12% premium) | 105,000 | $1,343 |
| 407 N. Maple Dr., Beverly Hills (Fashion Nova HQ) | Aug 2024 | $118M | 175,000 | $674 |
| Two homes, North Bay Road, Miami Beach | Oct 2024 | $30M (cash) | Not disclosed | n/a |
| 1414 Donhill Dr., Beverly Hills | Jun 2025 | $32M (cash) | 13,000 | $2,462 (incl. furnishings) |
| 111 Murray St., PH1, Tribeca | Oct 2026 | $31M | 7,700 | ~$4,026 |
Executive takeaways
- What changed: Manhattan’s last sponsor-held penthouses are selling at large concessions to filed prices, and a cash-rich founder has taken the final one at 111 Murray Street.
- Why it matters: offering-plan prices are now a poor guide to clearing prices at the top of the market, which affects how lenders value inventory and how buyers open negotiations.
- What leaders should do next: buyers with liquidity should look for sponsors holding final units; lenders and developers should stress-test inventory loans against recent closing prices, which now sit far below filed ones.
Over the next 12 to 24 months, the indicators to watch are the clearing prices on remaining sponsor penthouses in Manhattan’s newer towers, whether Saghian sells any of his older Los Angeles houses, and whether Fashion Nova’s sales hold up as tariff and trade changes reshape the economics of low-cost apparel. The penthouse is a single deal. The pattern behind it, liquid buyers collecting the cost of other people’s deadlines, will outlast it.
“Founders who built fortunes on fast-moving trends tend to want something slower on the balance sheet. A Tribeca penthouse is the opposite of a seasonal collection, and that contrast is much of its appeal,” said Despina Wilson, Executive President, CEO ATELIER.
Key insights and takeaways
- Richard Saghian paid $31 million for Penthouse 1 at 111 Murray Street, 38 percent below the $50 million the developers filed in 2024 and about 9 percent below the September 2025 asking price.
- Both penthouses at 111 Murray cleared at close to 38 percent under their offering-plan prices, which suggests sponsor-filed figures at the top of Manhattan now overstate what buyers will pay.
- The last-unit discount is the concession a developer accepts to retire final inventory and close a project’s books; carrying costs and lender settlement make it larger than market conditions alone would explain.
- Disclosed property purchases by Saghian and Fashion Nova since 2022 total about $352 million, and three of the five came from sellers under time pressure: a bankrupt developer, a spec builder and a sponsor.
- For family offices and investors, cash and the ability to close quickly remain the strongest negotiating tools in prime real estate, especially where sellers face debt service or bankruptcy deadlines.
Have you read?
Willie Nelson’s $200 Million THC Drinks Brand Faces Federal Ban.
Martine Rothblatt Sells $5.5 Million in United Therapeutics Shares.
Mark and Brett Levy Plan $21.8 Million Solar Project.
Hylton Kallner’s R51.3 Million Pay Surpasses Discovery CEO Adrian Gore.
Mukesh Ambani’s Jio IPO Attracts Record $77 Billion Bids.
Follow CEOWORLD Magazine on: Google News, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Facebook.
Note: The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of CEOWORLD Magazine, its Editorial Board, or management. Content is provided "as is," may contain monetized links, and is not professional advice. See our Ethics & Guidelines for details. Reproduction requires prior written permission.
Contact info@ceoworld.biz for inquiries or media requests.
