Ice Cream Truck Parked Outside Not Included

What may be the last great mansion on Fifth Avenue is up for sale for $50 million, which would make it New York’s most expensive private home sale ever. And the ice cream guy parked outside claims he knows who is serious about buying it:

Lenny Kravitz, the rock star and budding designer, has visited the house twice, said Mamdouh Nasr, the owner of an ice cream truck that has parked for 28 years on the corner of 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue, just steps from the mansion’s front door.

To Mr. Nasr, it’s clear evidence that the musician, who enjoys buying and fixing up real estate, is buying the home. “To this guy time is money,” Mr. Nasr said. “So why he comes inside two times?”

Where did Lenny Kravitz get all that money? Just asking.

Anyhoo, the Times notes that even at this price, the property is a “fixer-upper”:

As a reporter noted this week on a tour of five of its eight floors, it has grand, well-lighted rooms, 11 marble fireplaces, three elevators and a sweeping brass-and-wrought-iron staircase. A prospective buyer might also note wood paneling buckling in the receiving room, a small kitchen in the former butler’s pantry and a tiny toilet in an otherwise striking marble bathroom.

. . .

Real estate brokers who have seen the property say a buyer would likely have to invest $10 million to renovate it. Because the property is now divided into three apartments – one on the first five floors, a small one-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor and a penthouse on the sixth and seventh floors – and includes a doctor’s office in the basement, anyone who wants to turn it back into a single-family residence will have to do substantial work.