The city’s most expensive rental has just hit the market.
It’s a $250,000-a-month condo inside troubled 432 Park Ave., Gimme Shelter can reveal.
The 8,100-square-foot skypad spans the tower’s entire 88th floor. It comes with five bedrooms, seven baths, two powder rooms, oak floors, 12½-foot ceilings and a library with a wood-burning fireplace. Panoramic views stretch across three states, from the city skyline to the rivers and the Atlantic Ocean.
A private elevator landing opens to an entry gallery that leads to a corner living room. There’s also a corner dining room and a windowed eat-in chef’s kitchen with marble floors, a wine cellar and a pantry.
The main bedroom suite boasts a sitting room, dressing rooms and two windowed baths clad in marble, with radiant heated floors.
“It’s one of the most beautiful apartments in New York,” said a source familiar with the residence, which is also for sale at $88.5 million. “Spectacular, understated and elegant.”
The sellers are Lewis “Lew” Sanders, the former chairman of AllianceBernstein and the founder and CEO of Sanders Capital, and his wife, Alice. The couple bought the unit for $60.8 million in 2016, property records show.
“It was a raw box when they bought it, and they put around $10 million into it,” the source said. The interiors are by Andrew Sheinman of Pembrooke & Ives.
Despite it being the most expensive rental currently on the market, according to StreetEasy records, it is not the most expensive listing ever.
Back in 2015, a full-floor Presidential Suite on the 39th floor of The Pierre Hotel was briefly listed for rent for a whopping $500,000 per month, before returning to the rental market for the same price in 2017.
The Sanderses also own a Palm Beach mansion beside Howard and Beth Stern, a home in East Hampton and a $19.4 million West Palm Beach condo they bought earlier this year.
Listing broker Richard J. Steinberg of Compass declined to comment.
So how did they land on the astronomical rent?
“Lew decided to list the apartment at a premium. He doesn’t need the money. He isn’t an anxious seller or renter. He doesn’t care. That’s the truth,” a source said, adding that rental income is an enticing way to offset the city’s pricey new pied-à-terre tax.
“It is appealing to someone moving to the city from the West Coast or internationally, not a New Yorker,” the source said.
But there’s a catch. The Billionaires’ Row building, once the tallest residential tower in the world, has a notoriously rocky history.
Completed in 2015, the 1,396-foot tower was designed by the late architect Rafael Viñoly and developed by Harry Macklowe and CIM Group. The supertall, superskinny design was inspired by the city’s grid and by a trash can that Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann designed in 1905.
The building drew buyers like Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez, who sold after about a year. But structural flaws have since led to major problems.
The tower is so skinny that it sways and makes noise in the wind, and residents have long complained that the garbage chute sounds like a bomb when trash goes down.
There are also leaks and elevator problems. And the experimental white concrete exterior is cracking, which could endanger pedestrians if chunks fall.
Work to fix the building has already begun, sources tell Gimme Shelter. Repairs are estimated at around $160 million.
The owners have also filed two lawsuits. The first, in 2021, demands that the developers pay for about 1,500 alleged construction and design defects. The second, in 2025, seeks at least $165 million in damages for alleged fraud, charging that the developers hid the cracks in the exterior concrete. The developers have denied wrongdoing.
“All of the complaints are true,” a broker with listings in the building tells Gimme Shelter. “The elevators make noise. There’s rattling, and on windy days you can hear the clanging. It all goes back to Harry [Macklowe] and Viñoly. It was the perfect storm. They chose form over function. They were fanatical about design and didn’t care about how people lived.”
Viñoly once told Gimme Shelter that the building “has a couple of screw-ups,” including oversized window frames and a layout that gave bathrooms the best views instead of living spaces.
Even a garage promised 10 years ago has yet to be built. “There’s nothing there! Just empty space,” a source said.
Even so, brokers in the building say buying there beats renting right now because prices are so low, even if the cost of repairs isn’t factored into the purchase price.
Amenities include an 8,000-square-foot private restaurant with a 5,000-square-foot dining terrace, helmed by Michelin-starred Australian chef Shaun Hergatt.
There’s also a 14-seat boardroom with a marble table, office suites, staff suites, storage units, climate-controlled wine cellars, a residents’ lounge, a library, a gym, a 75-foot pool, a billiards room, a screening room, a children’s playroom, a concierge desk, in-suite dining and room service.
But all of that is moot if the problems aren’t fixed. The building could become “uninhabitable,” structural engineer Steve Bongiorno told the New York Timesin October 2025.
He also urged the Department of Buildings to investigate. The DOB said the building has passed inspections.
Still, “People who live in the building love it,” says one of the building’s brokers.
“They love the restaurant and the lounge, the daily breakfast, and the great location,” the broker said. “For those who can afford it, I encourage them to buy. The prices are depressed, the problems will rectify and the prices will go up. Every building has problems. This one just has more than most. But it’s still the best location on Billionaires’ Row.”
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