Late financier Lionel Pincus' onetime Pierre duplex returns for $70M

The massive duplex has been asking the same price for the last three years

A Pierre Hotel duplex, once at the center of a controversy involving a late financier, his sons, and a Jordanian princess, is back on the market for $70 million. That's the same price it was asking in 2014, and in 2015.

So what's changed? The brokerage firm. Sotheby's International Realty took over from Brown Harris Stevens earlier this year, but the price has remained unchanged in three years.

Now the backstory: late financier Lionel Pincus purchased two apartments at The Pierre around 2002/2003 for $22.6 million. He combined the two to create a 7,000 square foot duplex, where he intended to live with his partner at the time, Princess Firyal of Jordan (as per the Princess' account).

However, following cancer surgery in 2006, Pincus was left physically and mentally incapacitated, and his two sons took control of his estate. For the next two years, the sons and Princess Firyal duked it out in court, with the sons trying to sell the apartment, and Firyal trying to block the sale, claiming the property rightfully belonged to her.

Following Pincus' death in 2009, Princess Firyal eventually prevailed in the court case, and then decided to sell the apartment in 2014.

Now on to some details of the apartment; it spans the 30th and 31st floors of The Pierre, comes with five bedrooms, five bathrooms, and sweeping 360 degree views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline. Now this listing is one of the most expensive homes for sale in NYC. Will it sell this time around?

• Listing: 795 Fifth Avenue #30/31 [Sotheby's]
• Lionel Pincus' Controversial Pierre Duplex Resurfaces for $70M [Curbed]
• Lionel Pincus's Former Pierre Duplex Returns for $70 Million [Curbed]