• Rupert Murdoch finally sold his three-floor New York City apartment for $23.8 million.
• The media mogul spent years trying to sell the property, which was listed for $62 million in 2022.
• Photos show inside the penthouse, which offers 360-degree views of Manhattan.

After a yearslong search, Rupert Murdoch, the 93-year-old billionaire media mogul, appears to have finally found a buyer for his nearly 7,000-square-foot penthouse in New York City, close to the Flatiron building and Madison Square Park.

Back in the summer, Murdoch slashed the price to $28.5 million, about half its original listing price, in his latest bid to sell the property.

The nonagenarian finally parted ways with the penthouse for $23.8 million, according to the Robb Report.

Compass, the real estate agency carrying the listing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The former chair of the Fox Corporation and News Corp., who married his fifth wife, Elena Zhukova, in June at his private vineyard in Bel-Air, California, briefly listed the three-floor apartment for $72 million in 2015. In 2022, Murdoch apparently listed it in earnest, asking for $62 million.

In the years since the listing price steadily dropped. After briefly being taken off the market in December 2023, the property was re-listed in April for $38.5 million, nearly half its original price tag. Two months later, it was slashed by a further $10 million.

The apartment may have very well been a thorn in Murdoch's newlywed bliss — although not a huge thorn perhaps, given Murdoch is worth $12 billion per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Take a look inside the $23.8 million penthouse apartment.

Rupert Murdoch bought the five-bedroom, six-bathroom penthouse before it was finished.

After calling it quits with his third wife, Wendi Deng, in 2013, Murdoch was on the lookout for a new bachelor pad.

In their divorce settlement, Deng, who was married to Murdoch for 14 years, kept the Fifth Avenue triplex the couple bought for $44 million in 2005, New York Magazine reported.

Murdoch purchased two apartments at One Madison Square, a luxury condominium at the start of Madison Avenue, built in 2011. He purchased the building's three-floor penthouse for $43 million, along with a slightly smaller unit on 57th floor in 2014.

Curbed reported that Murdoch initially lived in the smaller apartment — if you can call 3,300 square feet small — until the penthouse was completed.

The penthouse sprawls across three floors, connected by a winding staircase.

The apartment was constructed by architect Jose Ramirez, who specializes in luxury interior design, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Per the listing, the first level has an open-plan layout, comprised of a double-height "Great Room" connected to a 586-square-foot terrace overlooking Manhattan, a dining room, kitchen, library, and bathroom.

A spiral staircase and elevator connect the first floor to the second, which houses two bedrooms with en suites and staff quarters.

Another staircase and elevator go up to the third floor, with two more bedrooms with en suites and an expansive primary suite.

Shortly after the purchase, Murdoch briefly listed the penthouse for $72 million.

Less than a year after buying the penthouse pre-completion, Murdoch briefly put it back on the market for a whopping $72 million, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015.

Around the same time, Murdoch bought a $25 million townhouse in the West Village.

Murdoch changed his mind again five months later, taking the penthouse off the market and, instead, putting the townhouse back on, Curbed reported.

Murdoch may have called it quits with his penthouse, but he isn't over NYC yet.

Murdoch relisted the penthouse in 2022, leading some to question if the Australian was done with the Big Apple, where he's had a base since the 1970s after buying The New York Post.

If Murdoch had been looking to move out of NYC, he would've had plenty of other homes to live in.

As Architectural Digest reported, the Murdoch family has a "staggering" real-estate portfolio, which includes an Australian ranch, a $28.8 million California vineyard, and an apartment in London's ritzy Mayfair neighborhood.

The New York Times last year reported that Murdoch bought a seven-bedroom apartment on the 27th floor of a historic building overlooking Central Park for $35.2 million.

He's far from the only ultra-rich homeowner who struggled to sell their pricey digs.

Selling a lavish pad is no easy feat in 2024.

As BI's real estate reporter Alcynna Lloyd previously reported, a number of celebrities and ultrawealthy homeowners — particularly those with property in NYC — found themselves in similar positions to Murdoch.

Kenny Lee, a senior economist at StreetEasy, told Lloyd that a slowdown in demand is at the crux of a real-estate slump.

It's even led some wealthy homeowners to auction or rent their pricey digs, an option Murdoch may no longer consider after washing his hands with his former bachelor pad.

• Yup, it was right out of "Succession": Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, fighting three other Murdoch children in court.
• Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch have lost that case — for now.
• That means Lachlan Murdoch will need to share control of his father's empire with three siblings when Rupert dies. But we don't know what that will actually mean.

Rupert Murdoch lost a legal case about the future of his media empire. What does that mean?

Real talk: It's too early to tell. At least one appeal is coming, so this could all shake out differently down the line.

But for now: It means that Murdoch's attempt to anoint his son Lachlan as the leader of his businesses once the elder Murdoch dies has been foiled.

And if that holds up, it means the future of Murdoch's empire — which includes Fox News and other Fox TV networks; The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post; and TV and print assets in the UK and Australia — will be that much messier when Murdoch, 93, is gone.

That's because — if the ruling holds up — Lachlan Murdoch will have to share control of the family business after his father's death with three of his siblings: James, Elisabeth, and Prudence. That was the heart of the dispute fought in a closed-door Nevada courtroom this fall. The New York Times got its hands on the sealed ruling, filed by a probate commissioner this weekend.

But beyond that, it's very hard to say what the news means. Rupert Murdoch has argued that it was important to make sure Lachlan Murdoch ran the family business the way Rupert Murdoch ran it. But that doesn't mean that Lachlan Murdoch would keep things untouched once his father died.

Maybe Lachlan would sell some assets that his father didn't want to sell for whatever reason. Maybe he wouldn't run Fox News — a core asset for the family business, in terms of both financial and political power — exactly the way his father did.

Similarly, the winners in the case — Lachlan's siblings James, Elisabeth, and Prudence — now have the ability to out-vote Lachlan. Which means, in theory, that they could force sales of things neither Lachlan nor Rupert wanted to part with. They could also, in theory, change the way Fox News operates.

But just because three members of the Murdoch clan fought their father's plans to make Lachlan more powerful than them doesn't mean they would always work together. The ruling just means they have a chance to weigh in.

Through a rep, James, Prudence, and Elisabeth applauded the decision and offered "hope that we can move beyond this litigation to focus on strengthening and rebuilding relationships among all family members." I also contacted Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's rep for comment.

I realize that this is shrug-emoji of an explainer may be disappointing to some of you who would like a more definitive answer. Particularly those of you whose interest in the Murdoch family, and its twists and turns, relates primarily to the way it was partially fictionalized in "Succession."

But here's a little bit of a reward for dedicated watchers of HBO prestige dramas: It turns out that the court case, referred to by almost everyone as "straight out of Succession" was literally straight out of "Succession."

The Times reports that the Murdoch family fight kicked off in April 2023 as the HBO series was headed toward its conclusion.

Setting off these discussions was the episode of the HBO drama 'Succession,' the commissioner wrote, "where the patriarch of the family dies, leaving his family and business in chaos." The episode prompted Elisabeth's representative to the trust, Mark Devereux, to write a "'Succession' memo" intended to help avoid a real-life repeat.

Instead, that discussion eventually prompted Rupert Murdoch to amend the family trust later that year to give Lachlan full control.

Which led to this fall's court fight — but not the end of the story. Stay tuned.