building at 19 East 88th Street

The 11/24/2009 sale of 12C for $250,000 caught my eye, as being worth maybe three times that, but then it turned out to be even more interesting. It's an estate sale, the previous owner having died in 2002. Seven years for the estate to unload it, and the executor and buyer live a block away from each other on Staten Island. Even weirder, I'd met the deceased maybe 15 years ago at the funeral of his brother, who'd also lived at 19E88. His estate finally sold 5B in 2007 for a normal $700,000-something. You'd think the heirs would've pushed these things along, but both brothers were unmarried and childless, and maybe the cousins or whomever could bide their time.