Downtown’s West Village isn’t just catching up to Billionaires’ Row — it’s starting to eclipse it.
A newly built West Village townhouse on 105-107 Bank St. is now in contract for more than $70 million, one of the most expensive residential deals ever south of 14th Street and the latest sign that the city’s center of wealth has shifted to this affluent area.
The six-story residence, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects and developed by RoundSquare Builders, spans roughly 13,000 square feet and was created by fusing two century-old walkups once tied to John Lennon, and avant-garde icons John Cage and Merce Cunningham.
The developer paid just over $18 million for the properties in 2021 and 2022, then rebuilt them into a single trophy home with a skylit floating staircase, elevator, a 40-foot-wide footprint and a roughly 2,000-square-foot primary suite, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the transaction.
A quick history lesson: In 1971, before the conversion, Lennon and Ono rented a modest two-room top-floor apartment at 105 Bank St., seeking anonymity after leaving the highly visible St. Regis Hotel, according to the Daytonian.
The West Village walk-up at the time, complete with a spiral staircase to a rooftop garden, offered the privacy they couldn’t find uptown, allowing them to move through the neighborhood largely undisturbed.
The townhouse deal lands just shy of downtown’s current townhouse record of $72.5 million, but it underscores something bigger: ultra-luxury demand is no longer concentrated along Midtown’s Billionaires’ Row corridor, home to supertall luxury towers.
Data compiled by Jonathan Miller of StreetMatrix shows that downtown pricing is now going head-to-head with the area.
Average price per square foot in the Village area is roughly $8,591, compared to about $9,664 uptown. But the gap is narrowing fastest at the very top of the market, where a cluster of mega-deals is redefining the ceiling.
In just the past two years, buyers have scooped up more than $1 billion worth of homes priced above $20 million downtown. A duplex at 150 Charles St. in the West Village sold for $60 million.
At 80 Clarkson, in Tribeca, a deal is in contract for roughly $129 million — a downtown record. Back in the West Village, a penthouse at 140 Jane St. asking $87.5 million is also in contract, while new inventory continues to push pricing higher with each release.
Even more telling: downtown has seen more $30 million-plus sales in the last five years than in the entire previous decade.
“This isn’t a migration, it’s an expansion,” Miller told The Post. “The surge in ultra-luxury sales downtown reflects a broader universe of demand rather than a shift away from Midtown. What we’re seeing is the luxury market adding new centers of gravity, with downtown emerging as one of the most compelling.”
Unlike Midtown, where developers can build sky-high towers, downtown’s strict zoning and landmark protections severely limit new supply. Large-format homes like the Bank Street townhouse are extraordinarily rare, and often require years of assembly, approvals and construction.
“In general, replicating this scale for a private residence is extremely difficult and time consuming,” Matthew Lesser of Leslie Garfield, who repped the townhouse, told The Post. “Combining side-by-side properties or purchasing contiguous apartments in a building to create a floor-plate like Bank Street is both not for the faint of heart nor and very challenging to source. I’ve noticed an increase in demand from buyers looking for these treasures.”
That scarcity is reshaping how the ultra-wealthy approach the market.
Instead of buying turnkey units in glassy towers, they are stitching together townhouses, acquiring adjacent properties or paying premiums for developers who have already done the work. The result is a new class of “horizontal mansions” — sprawling, highly customized homes that simply can’t be replicated at scale.
“The West Village becoming a billionaire playground is something I’ve watched steadily gain momentum over the past decade,” Douglas Elliman agent Keyan Sanai told The Post.
He pointed to a wave of striking deals that signaled the shift early on, including a roughly $45 million purchase of 27 Christopher St. that ultimately ballooned into a near $100 million project after renovations, as well as multiple compound-style assemblages by buyers like Sean Parker and Steve Cohen.
More recently, buyers have shown a willingness to commit tens of millions before construction even begins.
“Alf Naman’s project at 125 Perry St. stood out. He sold a penthouse for $58 million off a rendering before the existing garage was even demolished. That kind of buyer confidence speaks volumes,” Sanai said.
The demand is being fueled in part by who is working downtown. Over the past decade, major firms including Google, Deloitte and Jane Street have expanded their footprint near Hudson Square, the West Side Highway and the World Trade Center, bringing a new wave of ultra-high earners who want proximity, privacy and discretion.
At the same time, the West Village’s character remains tightly preserved, with zoning rules limiting height and density.
“Zoning restrictions in the West Village are extremely tight,” Sanai said, noting that buyers have adapted by building across rather than up.
“I’ve always described Manhattan as a bit like Inception: people want to live in Manhattan, but they want to live somewhere within Manhattan that doesn’t feel like Manhattan, a ‘dream within a dream,'” Sanai said. “If you asked across all price points, ‘If budget weren’t a factor, where would you live?’ I’d be confident that a majority would say the West Village.” Sanai said.
