Nate Berkus and his husband Jeremiah Brent have sold the same Greenwich Village penthouse twice in about a decade. They owned the Fifth Avenue triplex from 2013 to 2016, sold it to move to Los Angeles, decided they had made a mistake, tracked down the buyer in 2021, and asked to buy it back. They then bought the apartment below to expand it, renovated the whole thing, and sold it again in November 2024 for $19 million.
In between, they also bought and sold a Los Angeles house and an 1899 West Village townhouse, each within a couple of years. For two people whose profession is making homes, their own housing has been unusually mobile.
This guide follows all of it.
The transactions
| Property | Location | Key figures | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Triplex penthouse | Fifth Avenue, Greenwich Village, New York | Owned 2013 to 2016; bought back 2021, with the apartment below added; sold November 2024 for $19 million | Sold twice |
| House of about 9,000 sq ft | Los Angeles | Sold March 2019 for $11.4 million | Sold |
| Townhouse built in 1899 | West Village, New York | Bought April 2019 for $9.75 million; sold about two years later for $13.5 million | Sold at a gain |
| House | Montauk, Long Island | Figures not documented | Owned |
Who is Nate Berkus?
Nate Berkus is an American interior designer and television presenter, born in 1971, who became widely known through regular appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and then hosted The Nate Berkus Show. He runs his own design practice and has produced extensive product ranges.
He married the designer Jeremiah Brent in 2014, and the two present Nate & Jeremiah by Design together. They have two children.
Their profession is the reason this property record exists in such detail. Every house they have lived in has also been a project, photographed and published, which means the design press has documented their homes far more thoroughly than property reporters normally would.
The penthouse, first time
The couple bought a triplex penthouse on Fifth Avenue, in Greenwich Village, and lived in it from 2013 to 2016. They sold it to move to Los Angeles, largely to be closer to family.
That is a straightforward and common decision. What happened afterwards is not.
Los Angeles, and the West Village townhouse
In Los Angeles, they took on a house of about 9,000 square feet, and sold it in March 2019 for $11.4 million.
The following month, April 2019, they bought a townhouse in the West Village, built in 1899, for $9.75 million. They kept it about two years and sold it for $13.5 million, a gross gain of $3.75 million.
That is a strong result on a short hold, and it is worth being clear about why it happened. They are professional designers who renovated the house themselves, and the cost of that work has not been published. The gain is real but smaller than the headline gap, and it depended on skills most owners do not have.
The pattern of buying, reworking and moving on inside a couple of years also appears in the account of Ryan Tedder’s Los Angeles houses, though Tedder does it alongside a music career rather than as his trade.
The penthouse, second time
The most unusual episode came next. Brent heard from a broker that their old Fifth Avenue apartment was coming back onto the market. By his own account, he wept at the news.
They had concluded that they felt more at home in New York than in Los Angeles, and rather than look for something comparable, they approached the person who had bought their apartment and asked whether they would sell it back. In 2021 they did.
The family had grown in the meantime, so the couple also bought the apartment immediately below and combined the two, then renovated the enlarged home. The result was published widely across the design press.
And then, in November 2024, they sold it. The price was $19 million, and Crain’s New York Business noted the oddity plainly: the same designers selling the same Village penthouse for the second time in a decade.
A note on the coverage
If you search for their home, you will find articles published well into 2025 describing the renovated Fifth Avenue apartment as where they live.
Those pieces are about the renovation, which was genuinely their home when it was photographed, and they continued to circulate after the sale closed in November 2024. Design coverage has a long tail, and it rarely gets updated when a property changes hands. The apartment shown in those features is no longer theirs.
Where does Nate Berkus live now?
The public record does not establish it.
What is documented: they sold the Fifth Avenue penthouse in November 2024, and no subsequent purchase by either of them has been reported. They own a house in Montauk, at the eastern end of Long Island, which has been referred to in coverage but for which no purchase details have been published.
Their stated preference, given clearly when they bought the penthouse back, is for New York over Los Angeles, and their work and children are established there. A New York base is the likeliest position, but no property supports it, and this article will not guess.
Given their history, the most reliable prediction is simply that whatever they have bought is currently being renovated and will appear in a magazine before it appears in a property record. Designers who live in their own work generate that sequence consistently, as the coverage of Joanna Gaines’s lakehouse also shows.
Sources
- Crain’s New York Business on the November 2024 sale of the Fifth Avenue penthouse at $19 million and their earlier ownership of it.
- CORE Real Estate on the April 2019 purchase of the 1899 West Village townhouse at $9.75 million and its sale at $13.5 million.
- Domino on the March 2019 sale of their Los Angeles house at $11.4 million.
- Domino on buying the apartment back in 2021, adding the unit below, and the renovation that followed.
