The Townhouses. Two addresses on East 71st Street, and what the recorded transfer taxes say about the real money.
9 East 71st Street was Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. 11 East 71st Street is next door. Both properties moved through Epstein-linked corporate structures. Only one ended up with Epstein. The other ended up with Howard Lutnick, now the US Secretary of Commerce.
Les Wexner bought 9 East 71st in 1989 for $13.2 million. In 1998 he sold it to Nine East 71st Street Corporation, an entity Epstein controlled, for a reported $20 million paid in installments. In February 2026, under oath before the House Oversight Committee, Wexner testified he sold rather than gave Epstein the townhouse, for what he was told was its appraised value. Next door, 11 East 71st Street passed through three Epstein-linked entities between 1988 and 1998, each transfer recorded for a nominal “$10 and other valuable consideration.” The recorded transfer taxes, run through a simple extrapolation, put the real prices at roughly $6.2 million and $7.6 million. The 1998 buyer was Howard Lutnick.
Primary sources include NBC4 Investigates on the Wexner deposition, Crain's New York Business, 2019, and the 2011 Nine East 71st Street Corporation to Maple, Inc. deed.
What this page is about
Two adjacent Manhattan townhouses, two separate chains of title, one shared cast of names. 9 East 71st Street is the Herbert N. Straus House, the mansion where Epstein abused minors. Les Wexner bought it in 1989 and sold it in 1998 for a reported $20 million to Nine East 71st Street Corporation, an entity Epstein controlled. In 2011 the property moved again, from Nine East 71st Street Corporation to Maple, Inc., a US Virgin Islands corporation, for a recorded $10, with Epstein signing as an officer of both companies.
11 East 71st Street, next door, is a different property with a different owner today. SAM Conversion Corp bought it in 1988 at a Wexner corporate address. In December 1992 it moved to a trust with Epstein as trustee, recorded for $10. In April 1996 it moved to Comet Trust, recorded for $10; the transfer tax paid, $86,800, implies a real price of roughly $6.2 million by the method Martha Stark, a former NYC Finance Commissioner, described to Crain's. In January 1998, Comet Trust sold the property to Howard W. Lutnick, again recorded for $10; the transfer tax, $106,400, implies roughly $7.6 million. Lutnick has owned it since.
The 11 East 71st chain, and the transfer-tax-extrapolation method used to price it, comes from Crain's New York Business's 2019 investigation, the origin reporting all later coverage relies on. The 9 East 71st sale terms come from Wexner's own February 2026 House Oversight deposition, corroborated by NBC4 Investigates' reporting on the underlying documents. Where a claim rests on a single secondary source that has not been independently verified, it is graded below FACT and flagged as such.
We are not saying Howard Lutnick knew, at the time of his 1998 purchase, that the sellers were connected to Jeffrey Epstein in the way later reporting has documented. The chain of title is a fact. Lutnick's knowledge of that chain in 1998 is not established on this record.
We are not saying the recorded $10 consideration on the 11 East 71st deeds means the properties changed hands for free. It means the deed did not state the real price. The transfer tax paid on each deed is the basis for the extrapolated prices reported here, and that method has margin of error built in.
We are not resolving, on this page, why no ACRIS deed shows a direct Wexner-to-Epstein conveyance of 9 East 71st in the 1990s matching the reported $20 million sale. That gap is real and stays open. See §6.
Two adjacent townhouses moved through Epstein-linked corporate structures; the deed language hid the real prices, and the transfer tax reveals them.
Press coverage of Epstein's Manhattan real estate has repeatedly conflated two separate properties. 9 East 71st Street is the mansion Epstein lived in and where federal prosecutors say he abused minors. 11 East 71st Street is the townhouse next door, which Epstein-linked entities held for a decade before it landed with Howard Lutnick, now the US Secretary of Commerce. This page keeps the two chains separate and runs them side by side on one timeline, because the conflation is not a small error. It assigns the wrong price, the wrong date, and the wrong mechanism to the wrong address.
The two chains share a technique. Neither deed states a real sale price. Both use boilerplate language: “$10.00 and other good and valuable consideration.” That language is common in intra-family and intra-corporate real estate transfers and is not, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing. What makes the $10 figure useful to a reporter or a researcher is that New York City still collects a real property transfer tax on the transaction, and that tax is calculated as a percentage of the actual price, not the stated one. Reverse the tax rate and the deed's nominal $10 turns into an estimate of the real number.
That extrapolation method, described to Crain's by former NYC Department of Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, is the load-bearing technique behind every reported price on the 11 East 71st chain. It is not a guess. It is arithmetic on a publicly recorded tax payment, and it is a technique any reader can apply to any New York City deed that uses the same boilerplate.
1988 to 2026: both East 71st Street chains, side by side, in order.
- 198811 East 71stSAM Conversion Corp buys 11 East 71st Street, registered at a Columbus, Ohio address associated with Wexner's corporate operations. Epstein serves as an officer of the company. Narativ.
- 19899 East 71stWexner buys the Herbert N. Straus House at 9 East 71st Street for $13.2 million. Herbert N. Straus House.
- December 199211 East 71stSAM Conversion Corp transfers 11 East 71st Street to “Jeffrey E. Epstein, Trustee, 11 East 71st St Trust,” recorded for $10 consideration. Narativ.
- April 199611 East 71stThe 11 East 71st St Trust transfers the property to Comet Trust for “$10 and other valuable consideration.” The recorded transfer tax paid was $86,800. Martha Stark, a former NYC Department of Finance Commissioner, told Crain's that figure implies an actual sale price of roughly $6.2 million. Crain's New York Business, 2019.
- 19989 East 71stWexner sells 9 East 71st Street to Nine East 71st Street Corporation, an entity Epstein controlled, for a reported $20 million paid in installments; NBC4 Investigates cites an initial payment of roughly $5,012,028.24 followed by installments through March 2000. NBC4 Investigates.
- January 199811 East 71stComet Trust, with Guido Goldman as trustee, sells 11 East 71st Street to Howard W. Lutnick, recorded for “$10 and other valuable consideration.” The transfer tax paid, $106,400, implies a real price of roughly $7.6 million by the same extrapolation method. Lutnick finances the purchase with a $4 million mortgage. Crain's New York Business, 2019.
- December 25, 20119 East 71stA deed is recorded transferring 9 East 71st Street from Nine East 71st Street Corporation to Maple, Inc., a US Virgin Islands corporation, for “TEN DOLLARS ($10.00) and other good and valuable consideration.” Epstein signs for both parties, as an officer of each. Deed text mirror.
- 201811 East 71stLutnick pays off the $4 million mortgage he took out to buy 11 East 71st Street in 1998. Newsweek, 2025.
- July 20199 East 71stThe federal indictment against Epstein seeks forfeiture of 9 East 71st Street, then held by Maple, Inc., as trafficking proceeds. Business Insider.
- March 20219 East 71stThe Epstein estate sells 9 East 71st Street for roughly $50 to $51 million, with proceeds directed to the victims' compensation fund. Bloomberg.
- July 202511 East 71stNewsweek recaps the Crain's 2019 findings on the 11 East 71st chain, alongside Commerce Department pushback on scrutiny of Lutnick's Epstein-adjacent ownership history. Newsweek.
- February 20269 East 71stWexner testifies under oath before the House Oversight Committee: “Contrary to rumors, I did not gift Epstein the New York townhouse; he acquired it from me for what I was informed was its appraised value.” NBC4 Investigates.
Who sold, who bought, who signed for both sides of the same deed.
L Brands founder. Bought 9 East 71st in 1989 for $13.2 million. Sold it in 1998 to an Epstein-controlled entity for a reported $20 million. Testified under oath in February 2026 that he sold, and did not gift, the property, for what he was told was its appraised value.
Officer of SAM Conversion Corp (1988), trustee of the 11 East 71st St Trust (1992), and, per the 2011 deed, an officer of both Nine East 71st Street Corporation and Maple, Inc. when he signed for both sides of that transfer.
The Epstein-controlled entity that bought 9 East 71st Street from Wexner in 1998 and transferred it to Maple, Inc. in 2011.
Trustee of Comet Trust when it sold 11 East 71st Street to Howard Lutnick in January 1998, two years after receiving the property from the 11 East 71st St Trust.
Bought 11 East 71st Street from Comet Trust in January 1998, financed with a $4 million mortgage paid off in 2018. Now US Secretary of Commerce. Full ownership and conflict-of-interest thread covered separately in Howard Lutnick: Sons, Stakes & Self-Dealing.
A US Virgin Islands corporation that received 9 East 71st Street from Nine East 71st Street Corporation in 2011 for a recorded $10. Held the property through Epstein's 2019 indictment and death, until the estate sold it in 2021.
Described to Crain's the method for extrapolating real sale prices from the transfer tax paid on deeds recorded for nominal consideration. Her method produced the $6.2 million and $7.6 million estimates on the 11 East 71st chain.
Nine claims, ordered by the date of the underlying transaction, each graded and cited.
SAM Conversion Corp bought 11 East 71st Street in 1988, registered at a Wexner-linked Columbus address, with Epstein as an officer.
FACTDocumented across multiple independent secondary accounts of the ACRIS deed record. The corporate registration address and Epstein's officer role are consistent across Crain's, Narativ, and Forbes reporting.
Wexner bought 9 East 71st Street (the Herbert N. Straus House) in 1989 for $13.2 million.
FACTStandard, uncontested figure appearing consistently across property-history reporting and corroborated in Wikipedia's sourcing to underlying press accounts.
In December 1992, 11 East 71st Street moved from SAM Conversion Corp to a trust with Epstein as trustee, recorded for $10 consideration.
FACTReported consistently across Crain's origin reporting and subsequent secondary accounts drawing on the same ACRIS deed record.
In April 1996, the 11 East 71st St Trust sold the property to Comet Trust for a recorded $10, with a transfer tax of $86,800 implying a real price of roughly $6.2 million.
FACTThis is the origin claim of Crain's 2019 investigation, resting on the recorded transfer tax figure and Martha Stark's on-record extrapolation method. The tax figure is a recorded government fact; the $6.2 million is Stark's calculation from it, not an independently confirmed sale price, but the method is transparent and repeatable.
In 1998, Wexner sold 9 East 71st Street to Nine East 71st Street Corporation for a reported $20 million, paid in installments through March 2000.
FACTConfirmed in NBC4 Investigates' reporting on the underlying transaction documents, which cite an initial payment of roughly $5,012,028.24, and in Wexner's own February 2026 sworn deposition testimony that he sold rather than gave Epstein the property.
“Contrary to rumors, I did not gift Epstein the New York townhouse; he acquired it from me for what I was informed was its appraised value.”
In January 1998, Comet Trust sold 11 East 71st Street to Howard W. Lutnick for a recorded $10, with a transfer tax of $106,400 implying a real price of roughly $7.6 million. Lutnick financed the purchase with a $4 million mortgage.
FACTConfirmed in Crain's 2019 reporting and consistently repeated across later secondary coverage, including Newsweek's 2025 recap. The mortgage figure and its 2018 payoff are documented in the same reporting chain.
On December 25, 2011, a deed recorded the transfer of 9 East 71st Street from Nine East 71st Street Corporation to Maple, Inc., a US Virgin Islands corporation, for $10, with Epstein signing as an officer of both parties.
FACTThis is the documented $10-consideration deed on the 9 East 71st chain. It is a corporate restructuring within Epstein's own holding structure, fourteen years after the underlying 1998 purchase, not the mechanism by which Epstein originally acquired the property from Wexner.
The federal indictment against Epstein sought forfeiture of 9 East 71st Street, then held by Maple, Inc., as trafficking proceeds; the estate later sold it for roughly $50 to $51 million for the victims' compensation fund.
FACTDocumented in the 2019 indictment's forfeiture allegations and in 2021 reporting on the estate sale and fund distribution.
Howard Lutnick's ownership of 11 East 71st Street, and the broader question of his sons' equity stakes during his tenure as Commerce Secretary, is a separate, larger thread covered elsewhere on this site.
PROBABLY TRUEThe property chain terminating with Lutnick is FACT-tier per the claims above. Whether that ownership history bears on his current ethics posture as Commerce Secretary is a live, separately graded question. See howard-lutnick-sons-stakes rather than this page for that analysis.
No ACRIS deed shows Wexner transferring 9 East 71st directly to Epstein in the 1990s.
The 11 East 71st Street chain is unusually clean for this kind of research. Every transfer in that chain, from SAM Conversion Corp in 1988 through Lutnick in 1998, is a recorded deed, and Crain's 2019 reporting walks the chain deed by deed. The 9 East 71st Street chain is not as clean, and that gap deserves to be stated plainly rather than smoothed over.
The only recorded deed transfer this research located for 9 East 71st Street is the December 2011 transfer from Nine East 71st Street Corporation to Maple, Inc., recorded for $10, with Epstein signing for both sides. That deed moves the property between two entities Epstein already controlled. It is not the transaction that put the property into Epstein's orbit in the first place. That earlier step, the 1998 sale from Wexner to Nine East 71st Street Corporation for a reported $20 million, is documented in press reporting and in Wexner's own 2026 deposition testimony, but this research did not locate a recorded ACRIS deed matching that specific 1998 transaction.
The likely explanation is structural, not sinister by itself: the 1998 transfer appears to have happened at the corporate-control level, meaning Epstein or his associates took over Nine East 71st Street Corporation as officers and shareholders, rather than through a fresh deed recording a new owner of the underlying real property. If the corporate shell that already held title simply changed hands, ACRIS would show no new deed, because the real property never changed record owners. This is a plausible mechanism, and it is consistent with the pattern already documented on the 11 East 71st side, where entities and trusts, not individuals, are the named parties throughout. But “plausible” is not the same as “confirmed,” and this page does not treat it as confirmed.
A non-mainstream Substack analysis raised this same gap independently. The underlying observation, that no direct ACRIS deed exists, is worth taking seriously and checking against primary sources. The explanation that source offers is not independently verified here, and we are not adopting it as fact. The honest state of the record is: the $20 million sale is well-attested in press reporting and sworn testimony; the mechanism by which it was executed at the level of recorded real property title is not fully documented in the public record this research reviewed. A formal document request to the New York City Department of Finance, or a subpoena within the House Oversight Committee's ongoing inquiry, is the appropriate next step to close this gap, not another layer of secondary reporting.
The sitting US Secretary of Commerce lives in a house that priced through the same Epstein-linked corporate structure as the mansion next door.
This page is not primarily about Howard Lutnick. It is about a technique and a pattern. The technique is the transfer-tax-extrapolation method Martha Stark described to Crain's: a deed that hides the real price behind a nominal $10 still generates a real, publicly recorded tax payment, and that tax payment can be reverse-calculated into an honest estimate of the actual sale. Any reader with access to ACRIS and a New York State transfer-tax schedule can apply this method to any deed using the same boilerplate language. It is a repeatable research tool, not a one-time finding.
The pattern is that both 9 East 71st Street and 11 East 71st Street moved through Epstein-controlled or Epstein-adjacent corporate and trust structures before landing with their current owners: the Epstein estate's eventual sale of 9 East 71st for the victims' compensation fund, and Howard Lutnick's continuous ownership of 11 East 71st since 1998. Lutnick is now the sitting US Secretary of Commerce. Whether his current ownership of a property he originally bought through a chain of Epstein-linked trusts creates any enforceable conflict of interest in his current role is a separate, ongoing question this page does not resolve. That question, along with his sons' equity stakes in Cantor-adjacent ventures during his tenure, is covered in Howard Lutnick: Sons, Stakes & Self-Dealing. This page's job is narrower: get the chain of title right, keep the two addresses from being conflated, and hand off a clean, source-grounded record to that piece.
Questions worth taking seriously
Did Wexner give Epstein the 9 East 71st Street mansion for free?
Did Howard Lutnick buy his house from Jeffrey Epstein for $10?
How does the transfer-tax-extrapolation method actually work?
Why is there no deed showing Wexner transferring 9 East 71st directly to Epstein?
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The Townhouses research brief and the primary sources it cites.
Every claim on this page grades to one of FACT · PROBABLY TRUE · SOME SMOKE · PURE SPECULATION · FALSE / MISLEADING. The grade badge hedges. The prose does not. Nothing false is asserted here as accepted claim.
The load-bearing primary sources are Crain's New York Business's 2019 investigation for the 11 East 71st Street chain and transfer-tax method (paywalled at the original URL; cited here via the archive.is mirror), NBC4 Investigates and Wexner's own February 2026 House Oversight deposition testimony for the 9 East 71st Street sale terms, and the recorded 2011 deed for the Nine East 71st Street Corporation to Maple, Inc. restructuring. The full research brief, with all sourcing and notes on editorial judgment, is at web/docs/research/epstein-hub-audit/the-townhouses.md.
A secondary ACRIS-sourced dossier on the 2010 transfer of 11 East 71st Street into the HWL Personal Asset Trust, and a non-mainstream Substack analysis raising the 9 East 71st direct-deed gap, are treated on this page as leads, not primary sources, pending independent verification.
Full method: Methodology. Related hub: Epstein Class. Cross-cut hub: Self-Dealing.
Last updated July 20, 2026. If a link 404s or a date is wrong, tell us and we will fix it publicly.