BUY MY WORLD!
Man selling his entire NYC life for $11,000
Bored with your life? One former New Yorker will let you take over his — for $11,000.
Artist David Art Wales, 56, has created BuyMyLife.co, where he is selling the lease to his one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, a dossier of his favorite restaurants and what to order, recommendations for doctors and accountants, and even introductions to his best friends.
“I want someone to enjoy the life I had there — I don’t want to waste it. I don’t want to dismantle it,” said Wales.
After living in New York City for three decades and running the creative consultancy Ministry of Culture, Wales moved back to his native Australia last year with his wife, Dani, to help care for his mother.
Rather than breaking the lease on his West 33rd Street pad, which comes with gym access and views of the Hudson River, he’ll turn it over to a new tenant to cover the $4,000 monthly rent. The buyer will also get his furniture and accessories — from an Eames armchair to Le Creuset cookware — which he values at $20,000, and even some pantry goods and personal items like Wales’ colognes.
“When you’ve lived in a place for a long time, it becomes alive,” said Wales. “I don’t want to kill that.”
Building management has OK’d him choosing the new tenant for the 625square-foot apartment, which is outfitted with lighting installed by an MTV technician. Wales’ one-year lease ends in April and will roll over to the new tenant.
Wales has also arranged for three of his friends to have lunch with the new him. “They may even become your friends,” he writes on his Web site.
“It’s just for the sake of fun that David would do this, which I think is very generous in spirit,” said Cory Bruce, 36, who is one of the pals for sale. He recalled how Wales would invite people he had just met — like a cabdriver or diner waitress — to soirées on the apartment building’s rooftop.
Bruce, a Brooklynite who is an editor at Comedy Central, is willing to meet up at one of Wales’ favorite restaurants, Eisenberg’s.
“[The buyer] will be David Wales-approved ... and that’s something I trust,” said Bruce.
BuyMyLife.co imagines possible takers: someone moving to the city, someone looking for a pied-àterre or “folks who love the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History and long to live in one.”
One interested buyer — Jill, a 56-year-old resident of Melbourne, Australia, who declined to provide her last name for privacy reasons — told The Post she’s “really close” to signing the deal. She and her husband visit New York a few times each year and want a home base here to extend their stays.
“If I was to fly to New York and spend weeks looking at apartments, and furnishing [one], I may not find something in that location . . . with that incredible view,” said Jill, who heard about Wales on an Australian news site. “It would be a lot of work.”
She’s also receptive to the idea of hanging out with Wales’ crew.
“If you’re going to live somewhere for more than three months, you crave some connection with someone other than the local dry cleaner,” Jill said.
The clock is ticking: If Wales doesn’t have a deal in place by March 1, he said he will scrap the plan.
“[That] means coming back in the dead of winter to go through 30 years of my life and decide what goes in the trash, what goes on Craigslist and what I give away,” he said, adding that he doesn’t want to do that. “It’s a beautiful place and someone else should enjoy it.”