Despite their considerable investment, Murdoch said he was not concerned about the softening real estate market.
Holding out
"We're not in a hurry," Murdoch said.
Murdoch has had experience with the difficulties of selling property. Shortly after his divorce from Anna Murdoch Mann, his second wife and the mother of three of his six children, Murdoch tried to sell his ranch in Carmel and a house in Los Angeles. But when he received no offers for the ranch after six months, he said, he pulled it off the market. As for the Los Angeles home, he said, "I couldn't bring myself to sell the house."
In Manhattan, though, Murdoch is determined to sell. "We don't need two apartments," he said.
Murdoch has had his eye on the Rockefeller apartment for three decades. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, he lived in the same building at 834 Fifth Ave. in a duplex for which he paid US$350,000. At the time, Rockefeller was chairman of the co-op board, and Murdoch attended a few shareholder meetings in the penthouse. "I said, `If I could ever afford this I would love it,"' he said. Deng added, "It was your American dream."
The move back uptown reverses a decision Murdoch made just six years ago to move to SoHo, in part, he said, because both his sons, James and Lachlan, lived in the neighborhood then. (Of course, a young wife with modern tastes probably didn't hurt, either.)
The Rockefeller apartment is smaller than the SoHo loft, and Deng said it would not accommodate either a gym or a screening room.
When asked about news media coverage of the Murdoch family's
recent upheaval or her role in it, Deng demurred. But, she acknowledged, "because I don't give interviews, I don't have a voice."
"What can you do," she added, throwing up her hands. "We have a pretty good life."
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