Steve Cohen has cut the price of his NYC apartment by 60%

New York

STEVE Cohen is having trouble selling one of his trophy properties.

The billionaire has dropped the price of his midtown Manhattan duplex more than six times in six years and is now asking US$45 million for the apartment -- a US$70 million discount to the US$115 million he originally listed it for in April 2013.

Cohen bought the five-bedroom unit in One Beacon Court between 58th and 59th Streets for US$24 million in 2005. He hired architect Charles Gwathmey, who renovated the Guggenheim Museum, to work on the 9,000-square-foot space. The apartment is the only duplex in the building.

By the end of 2013, he'd dropped the price to US$98 million as he endured a massive scandal involving his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, which agreed to plead guilty to insider trading violations and pay a US$1.2 billion penalty.

In 2014, he went down to US$82 million, then US$79 million the following year. The price was US$72 million in 2016. By the end of 2017, it was US$57.5 million.

"He finally got it right, and the market will show him that," said luxury broker Victoria Shtainer, who lives in the building and has shown Cohen's place to a prospective buyer who ended up buying in another building.

"One Beacon Court used to be the only game in town," she said. "That's why he priced it so crazily."

Point72 spokeswoman Tiffany Galvin-Cohen declined to comment. Douglas Elliman's Richard Steinberg, who has the listing, also declined to comment.

Cohen, one of the world's most successful traders, has a net worth about US$10.2 billion. He ranks 136th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. BLOOMBERG