credits: AP Former LSU gymnast and social media darling Livvy Dunne thought she was on the doorstep of her first major real estate purchase.
But a New York City co-op board denied her cash bid.
The 22-year-old Sports Illustrated cover model had an offer prepared to buy the $1.6 million New York City apartment that once belonged to MLB legend Babe Ruth when he played for the Yankees.
Dunne, the biggest “name, image and likeness” athlete, took to social media to rant about her apartment closing at 345 West 88th Street falling through.
“Guys, I’m so upset,” she told her 8 million TikTok followers. “So a few months ago, I decided I was going to make my first real estate purchase, which is so exciting. And I was going to get an apartment in New York City. But the gag was, it was Babe Ruth’s apartment.”
“Then the week that I’m supposed to get my keys to my brand-new apartment, I get a call: The co-op board denied me,” she said. “So pretty much the people in the building voted to not have me live there, which is fine.”
Dunne jokingly theorized that perhaps the building was managed by spiteful Alabama fans, knowing that she was a graduate of LSU. She explained that she had already hired interior designers, as it felt “criminal” to furnish Ruth’s apartment with her old college furniture.
But real estate agent Miryam Tesfaegzi refused to feed into the theory that a cast of angry Alabama fans denied Dunne’s bid, declining to comment on the board’s decision to block the purchase.
“When a co-op does a rejection, they don’t have to share any information with us,” she said. “We never know why a co-op would reject any buyer.”
“Obviously, they wanted to sell it, so that’s the only thing that’s going to make them happy,” Tesfaegzi said of her clients, who are now still trying to sell the legendary apartment.
The New York Post reported that Dunne’s social media activity could have been what ticked off the co-op board. She posted a seemingly harmless TikTok video from the beach a few days ago, celebrating her first semester of graduate school and what she believed was her first NYC apartment.
“Life is sweet like cinnamon,” Dunne said in that post, before the apartment purchase was vetoed.
A building resident reported that they spotted Dunne and her boyfriend, Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes, visiting the apartment in the lead-up to the botched sale.
“She messed it up,” a neighbor told The Post. “The board got pissed because she put it on her Instagram.”
According to online reports, Ruth lived in the apartment from 1920 to 1940 before moving to a different apartment on the Upper West Side.
The home is already back on the market, and Deadspin is told that Dunne’s deposit has been liquidated.
