- Billionaire Ken Griffin bought a duplex in Manhattan for $45 million.
- Griffin owns over a quarter billion of real estate in New York City alone.
- The seller, Julia Koch, had been trying to sell the condo for three years.
Hedgefund manager and billionaire Ken Griffin continues his real-estate conquest after buying a historically significant duplex in Manhattan for $45 million.
The Wall Street Journal reported Griffin bought the approximately 8,500-square-foot condo from Julia Koch, the widow of late billionaire David Koch, for $15 million under its original asking price.
The Kochs purchased the condo in 2004 for around $17 million, according to the Journal, and first listed it in 2022 with a starting price of $60 million. In 2023, it was listed for $48 million.
Griffin is the CEO of the highly profitable hedge fund Citadel and famously ditched Illinois for Florida in 2022. He owns multiple properties in NYC.
The history of 740 Park Ave.
Griffin’s latest Manhattan purchase is a five-bedroom duplex at 740 Park Avenue
The condominium was built in 1930 by American lawyer, banker, and real estate investor James T. Lee, who was grandfather to former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She lived in the condominium as a child.
The building has been home to other notable tenants like John D. Rockefeller Jr. and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
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The Citadel CEO also owns a penthouse about a mile and a half away from 740 Park Avenue, which he bought in 2019 for a record-setting $238 million.
Griffin, who has a net worth of $43.4 billion, according to Forbes as of February, has spent more than $280 million on real estate in New York City alone. His real-estate footprint has also traveled south recently.
Griffin’s recent real-estate deals
Between 2020 and 2023, he spent close to $169 million on properties on Star Island, an exclusive neighborhood in Miami Beach.
In 2022, he purchased two bayfront houses in Coconut Grove, a neighborhood in Miami, for over $100 million.
And over the last decade, he accumulated 27 acres for about $450 million in Palm Beach.
He’s also offloaded a few properties.
In late 2024, Griffin sold the top two floors of a Chicago condo building for $19 million — taking a 44% loss after buying them for a combined $34 million in 2017.
Julia Koch is also investing in NYC real-estate
The seller of the Manhattan condo, Julia Koch, is worth $74.2 billion, according to Forbes, and has been on her own real-estate-transaction spree in the last few years.
According to Mansion Global, she bought two Manhattan co-ops for $101 million in 2022.
The next year, she sold a townhouse in Manhattan for $41 million in an off-market deal after buying it for $40.25 million in 2018.
