The living room of Joan Didion’s apartment, as shown in listing photos. The writer said the landmarked church, whose roof is visible from these windows, helped sell her on her apartment.
Photo: Douglas Elliman
The sale of Joan Didion’s apartment, a sprawling 11-room co-op at 30 East 71st Street, has closed, revealing that the late writer’s home sold for $5.4 million, a considerable price cut from the $7.5 million it was first listed for in the winter of 2023. The apartment was properly big, as brokers pointed out after the first price cut, and had good bones, but it didn’t have much of a view and needed work. It was, after all, an estate sale, even if the estate was Didion’s.
A bedroom in the apartment, as shown in listing photos. While the apartment doesn’t have any views to speak of, we’ve been told that the light is quite nice.
Photo: Douglas Elliman
The buyer, according to city records, is the Betts Family 2014 Trust with Tom A. Bernstein listed as trustee. A Chelsea Piers address is given for the trust — Roland W. Betts and Tom A. Bernstein are the founders of Chelsea Piers and serve as chairman and president, respectively. Betts is a developer, film producer, and investor and was very involved in the city’s rebuilding efforts after 9/11. (He is friends, as well, with George W. Bush, a Yale classmate, with whom he once owned the Texas Rangers baseball team. Betts, a Democrat, was also responsible for bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to Manhattan.)
The kitchen, as shown in listing photos, which will likely get some new finishes, although the owners would like to keep Didion’s appliances.
Photo: Douglas Elliman
So who is moving in at 30 E. 71st? Last year, Betts and his wife, Lois, listed their townhouse at 313 West 102nd Street (former public-school teachers, they were tenants in one of its six units when it went up for sale and bought it for $150,000 in 1972 ). They told the New York Times that the house was too big for them and had too many stairs. But a source says that the apartment is for one of Betts’s daughters, who also works at Chelsea Piers, and her expanding family.
When the apartment went into contract early this year, listing broker Jennifer Stillman, of Douglas Elliman, said that while the apartment did need work — something many brokers have pointed out makes for a hard sell in this market — “it also needed less work than “some people thought.” The source says that the new owners would like to keep the apartment largely as it is, renovating with a light touch and preserving the herringbone floors, the layout, and most of the many bookshelves, including all the ones in the living room, while updating the HVAC and the kitchen finishes. They’d even like to keep the appliances, particularly the eight-burner stove and double ovens that were used by Didion, a famously good cook.
