Tito’s villa in New York sold for 50 million dollars, Slovenia 14 percent of the purchase price

The real estate agent also said that Yugoslav President Josip Broz – Tito had an exceptional taste for real estate, and the villa in New York was undoubtedly the crown jewel in the real estate portfolio of the late Yugoslavia.

The Beaux-Arts mansion, once owned by a member of the Vanderbilt family and until recently occupied by the Permanent Mission of Serbia to the United Nations, has been valued at $50 million. The sellers were a group of five European countries that inherited the property after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The buyer, a businessman from London, remains a mystery and has never been in the building, he confirmed Tristan Harper from the real estate agency Douglas Eliman, adding that the sale was an exercise in international diplomacy, requiring the cooperation of several European countries that were once politically at loggerheads.

The mansion is located on Fifth Avenue and covers about 20,000 square meters. Designed around 1905 by Warren & Wetmore, the architectural firm for Grand Central Terminal, the house was later purchased by Emily Vanderbilt Whitegranddaughter Cornelius Vanderbilt.In 1946, she sold it to the Yugoslav government.

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The villa has views of Central Park, bulletproof windows and a Faraday cage from which diplomats used to make phone calls.

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, the mansion was inherited by five successor states – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia – who agreed to divide Yugoslavia’s assets according to the agreement.

Harper said the Fifth Avenue mansion, which has a copper mansard roof, “crown jewel” portfolio of the former Yugoslavia. The ceilings are as high as 34 meters, it has a skylight with a bronze frame and a grand staircase. The living room faces directly onto Central Park, and the first-floor room is covered in hand-painted gold leaf.

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The room on the first floor is covered with hand-painted gold leaves.

The mansion was on the market for $50 million back in 2017, and Harper said he immediately got two full-price offers. “That Sunday morning I received two calls on my cell phone from two billionaires on the Forbes list,” he said. “Then we’re stuck in bureaucracy. According to the agreement, all countries had to agree on the sale. They also insisted that everyone be in the same room to sign the documents.

The mansion was on and off the market for the next few years. It was pulled from the market after an electrical fire broke out on the third floor in 2018, and the owners had to repair the damage.

In June 2021, the sellers received an all-cash offer to purchase the mansion for $50 million. This time, the states reached a consensus, Harper said. The terms of the agreement, however, give each country a different ownership stake. Slovenia, for example, has a 14% ownership share and is expected to receive slightly more than 7 million dollars from the deal, they also wrote.

The building, which has been largely untouched for decades, has no central ventilation, and the gas was shut off after an electrical fire in 2018. The living room, which overlooks Central Park, has bulletproof windows. There is even a Faraday cage in the building, which was used by diplomats to make private phone calls during the Cold War. “It will take three to five years and at least $20 million to restore the building,” Harper said.