The family of entertainer and philanthropist Bette Midler has purchased a Flatiron District co-op from a developer known for downtown office-to-residential conversions.
A trust in the name of Midler’s husband, performance artist Martin von Haselberg, has snapped up a three-bedroom unit on Fifth Avenue at East 18th Street for $6.4 million, according to transfer tax records that appeared in the city register Friday.
The sellers in the deal were Nathan Bruckner, a partner at FiDi-focused conversion firm DTH Capital, and his wife, Catherine Gertner, records show. In 2016 the couple paid $3.8 million for the open-floor-plan-style unit, which has 11-foot ceilings, three baths and a home office. In 2017 they tacked on a separate storage area for $128,000, according to the register. Both the apartment and the storage unit, which sit in a non-doorman, Beaux-Arts-style building, were included in the transaction.
The Flatiron apartment, the sale of which closed Thursday, seems to have been shopped as an off-market listing, so the only available photos and floor plans date to previous marketing efforts there.
But Bruckner and Gertner are being more up front with some of their other moves at the Flatiron address. Since June they have been marketing a two-bedroom home one floor below the just-sold property that cost them $950,000 in mid-2020 as the pandemic raged. It’s now on the market for $2.5 million, down slightly from its $2.7 million asking price in the summer.
In 2021 Haselberg and Midler sold their longtime triplex penthouse at 1125 Park Ave. on the Upper East Side for $45 million. At the time the couple, who also owns a home in upstate Millbrook in Dutchess County, said they planned to downgrade to a smaller unit in the city. It’s not clear if the Flatiron co-op represents that effort. The couple also has a daughter, New York-based actress Sophie von Haselberg.
In addition to her career as a singer and actor, Midler for decades has operated the nonprofit New York Restoration Project, which helps revitalize parks in underserved neighborhoods.
For his part, Bruckner serves as the co-head of DTH with his sister, Davina Bruckner. Their father, late retail entrepreneur Yaron Bruckner, founded the company reportedly with wealth made importing Western goods into former Soviet countries.
DTH, for “downtown holdings,” has often worked in tandem with mega-converter Nathan Berman of Metro Loft Development, including on 20 Exchange Place, a 57-story, 767-unit landmark that DTH/Metro Loft offloaded to The Dermot Co. last year for a hefty $370 million.
After completing around two-dozen projects in FiDi in the past few decades, Berman, meanwhile, has recently expanded his reach to Midtown as conversion fever intensifies among New York’s real estate industry.
An email to DTH’s office was not returned by press time.
