Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin has been on something of a real estate shopping spree lately, and unlike most home sales, he's making a ton of headlines for it. That's because his taste in domiciles tends to run to the expensive side, and in the case of his recent New York City penthouse purchase, the $238 million home qualifies as the most expensive in the country.
Technically, Griffin bought the 220 Central Park South penthouse back in 2015, but it's taken this long for the deal to be finalized and for him to take possession of the house. And since he purchased it totally unfurnished, experts cited by CNBC point out that he will likely need to spend millions more to furnish the place and complete its actual, finished design.
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That becomes easier to swallow once you get an idea of the sheer size of this penthouse. It covers 24,000 square feet stacked four stories high, with (naturally) stunning views of nearby Central Park. In addition to those views, amenities at the property include staples like private dining rooms, a juice bar, and an athletic club, as well as more outlandish touches like a squash court and a high tech golf simulator. All in all, Griffin is reported to have paid about $10,000 per square foot of the penthouse, a figure which does not include all those aforementioned furnishing expenses that are still to come.
One interesting thing about Griffin's record-breaking buy is the fact that it blew away the previous US record by almost $100 million. That would be the East Hampton estate purchased for $147 million by Barry Rosenstein in May of 2014. Other records include the $132.5 million spent on the Broken O Ranch in Montana in 2012, the $120 million Copper Beech estate in Connecticut, and the nine-acre, $117.5 million Silicon Valley estate purchased in 2012 by an anonymous billionaire.
