High flyers crash to the ground. Their homes follow.
[Two weeks ago] Frank A. Cassou listed his 18-foot-wide town house on East 78th Street between Madison and Park Avenues for $15 million, with Louise Beit of Sotheby’s International Realty.
The town house has five freshly renovated stories, five fireplaces and 4,600 square feet of space.
Mr. Cassou is the executive vice president, chief legal counsel and secretary of NextWave Wireless, a company with interests in advanced technology. It warned last summer that it might soon run out of money.
The stock in NextWave has collapsed, from more than $7 a share in May to as little as 17 cents last week, leading to several shareholder lawsuits that named Mr. Cassou as a defendant along with other top executives. In December, Mr. Cassou sold 250,000 shares of his company stock for 8 cents a share, or a total of $20,000. In 2007 they were worth more than $2.5 million. Mr. Cassou did not respond to several telephone messages.
But there is some cheer:
Despite declines in the luxury market, the value of Manhattan real estate has so far held up better than many other investments. Mr. Cassou and his wife, Gabrielle could still end up with a considerable gain. They paid $5.45 million for the house in 2003.
In October 2007, the couple bought a two-bedroom apartment at the Plaza Hotel for about $4.75 million. But last spring, as the NextWave situation deteriorated, they put it back on the market. It sold last August for just about what they had paid for it.
