Investment banker Peter Huang has placed his apartment at 740 Park on the market for $38 million, Michael Gross reveals today. The duplex (4-5D) features a private elevator landing, wood burning fireplaces, grand staircase, and separate set of stairs for the staff, just so you don't have to worry about tripping over Guadalupe in the middle of the night when you head downstairs on your ritual Oreo run. More photos below.

• After living out of the Bowery Hotel for months, Ann Dexter-Jones has finally found her new home. The socialite mom of Sam, Mark, and Charlotte Ronson paid $1.795 million for a four-bedroom West Village duplex at 42 West 9th Street. The 2,200-square-foot apartment features four fireplaces and stained glass doors. [Cityfile]

Al Gore's eldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, and her venture capitalist husband Andrew closed on the sale of their 4,000-square-foot Upper East Side duplex at 137 East 66th Street yesterday. The apartment had been home to the couple since 2003; the new occupant will be Fabrizio Freda, the newly-installed president of Estée Lauder who is expected to take over as CEO when William Lauder steps down later this year. After the jump, a peak at how the former VP's daughter lived, and just what Freda is getting for his $6.35 million.

• Donald Trump has listed a penthouse at Trump Park Avenue with a Russian broker in hopes of selling the pad to "a different type of buyer," namely, a newly-rich Russian who pays in cash. (One of these perhaps?) The apartment (pictured) is currently on the market for $45 million. [NYT, Prudential Douglas Elliman]

• Brooke Astor's Park Avenue apartment (left) has been taken off the market—temporarily. Corcoran broker Leighton Candler has pulled the $46 million listing down for the summer until "small renovations" are complete. [NYO]

• The Stanford White-designed townhouse at 127 East 73rd Street has sold for $32.5 million; it had been listed for $38 million with broker Carrie Chiang. Back in February, former Goldman Sachs exec Thomas Montag had been rumored to be the buyer. The home features an elevator, indoor basketball court, steam bath, and climate-controlled wine cellar. [CF]

• More news on the sale of the Wildenstein mansion at 11 East 64th Street. Although there's still no word on who the mystery buyer is—earlier rumors had suggested it was Len Blavatnik—the address listed on the deed belongs to Christopher Ely, Brooke Astor's former butler. [NYO, photos]

• Art star Elizabeth Peyton has put her longtime home in Orient, N.Y. on the market for $900,000. The two-bedroom cottage has a custom kitchen with teak countertops and a heated pool. Peyton hasn't lived in the home full-time for two years now, since she and boyfriend Tony Just purchased a townhouse in the West Village. [Real Estalker, Brown Harris Stevens]

• The East 64th Street townhouse that Jocelyne Wildenstein and her ex-husband, Alec, lived in for years, has been sold for $42.5 million. The buyer of the 29-foot-wide manse, which features a ballroom and a pool in the basement, remains a mystery, although the prime suspect is Leonard Blavatnik. [NYO]

• Web entrepreneur (and blog cover boy) Pete Rojas is moving to 7 Essex Street. The founding editor of Gizmodo, former editor of Engadget, and founder of RCRD LBL is paying $1.584 million for a two-bedroom unit with "treetop views of Seward Park." The seller was Nancy Yao, a managing director at the Council on Foreign Relations.

• A penthouse duplex at 15 Central Park West has gone on the market for $80 million. The 5,276-square-foot space has four bedrooms and a library. It was originally purchased two months ago for $58.9 million. [TRD]

• Longtime Vogue creative director Grace Coddington is leaving her West Village apartment for a more fashionable loft in Chelsea. The two-bedroom duplex at 313 West 22nd Street—for which Coddington paid $1.925 million—features 20-foot ceilings and French doors opening onto a landscaped terrace.

• Betsey Johnson's Tribeca apartment has gone into contract for $2.495 million, nearly a year after the 1,660-square-foot, two-bedroom pad was first put on the market for $3.6 million. Betsey has already settled into a new home: In May, she closed on an apartment on the Upper East Side, in the same building as her daughter and granddaughter. [NYM]

• Justin Long, the former Mac Guy and current beau of Drew Barrymore, is paying $2.43 million for a two-bedroom apartment at Blue, the Bernard Tschumi-designed building on the Lower East Side. [NY Sun]

Things haven't been going all that well for Jets quarterback Chad Pennington as of late. There was the ankle injury last year, which sidelined him for a while, his team's less-than-stellar performance during the 2007 season, and news that he may be replaced by a younger QB if he doesn't shape up. Now he's selling off his 7,000-square-foot house in Muttontown, which he purchased for $3.595 in 2005 and remodeled to include an enormous personal gym and media room. It's on the market for $4.095 million; you can take a look around the uninspired house after the jump.

Hedge fund manager Chase Coleman and his wife Stephanie have gone into contract on the sixth-floor, full-floor spread at 4 East 66th Street, the apartment that socialite Veronica Hearst was forced to put on the market to pay off her mounting debts. It's unclear how much the Julian Robertson protégé paid for the lavish spread since it was never formally put on the market, but rumors back in April suggested that Hearst was prepared to part with it for around $30 million. (The apartment, which Veronica inherited from her late husband, billionaire publishing heir Randolph Hearst, was also home to her daughter Fabiola Beracasa until recently.) Of course, a big bucket of cash wasn't all Coleman needed to get past the notoriously finicky co-op board, which once denied admission to billionaire financier Ron Perelman. Prospective buyers in the building that Sid and Mercedes Bass, Alan Greenberg, and Lew Sanders live in are expected to have at least $100 million in liquid assets to pass muster. We're guessing that wasn't a problem for Coleman, considering he's estimated to have taken home between $350 and $400 million in 2007. Although Chase and Stephanie will no doubt renovate the place to their tastes, you can see what it looked like when Veronica was ruling the roost after the jump.

• Folk singer Natalie Merchant has picked up an apartment near Sutton Place for $705,000. The one-bedroom condop at 211 East 53rd Street is on the small side, but that won't be a big issue for Natalie since she spends most of her time at her homes in Hawaii and upstate New York.

• While buyers are continue to snap up condos at 15 Central Park West, two co-ops have gone on the market at the Dakota, the famed building that 15 CPW was built to echo. Buyers with $20 million+ can share the elevator with neighbors like Connie Chung, Lauren Bacall, and Yoko Ono. [NYT, Brown Harris Stevens]
  

• Hotelier Ian Schrager is paying $14.9 million for the triplex penthouse at 40 Bond Street. Once it's complete, Schrager will kick back in a 8,500-square-foot space, with 4,000-square-feet of outdoor space and 11-foot ceilings. [TRD]

• Hedge funder Jim Chanos, who may be best known these days for having hired Ashley Dupre as a "housesitter" last summer, has gone into contract a triplex penthouse at 3 East 75th Street. The five-bedroom pad, listed with Paula Del Nunzio for $24.85 million, features Central Park views, six separate outdoor spaces, and a master suite with two fireplaces. One losing bidder? Robert De Niro. [Observer]