Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty Images, Google Maps

If two lifelong best friends turned downtown celebrities can’t make a go of shared homeownership, what hope do the rest of us have? Julia Fox and Richie Shazam have settled up on the 19th-century neo-Grec brownstone in Harlem they bought together in 2023. According to property records that were made public on Wednesday, Fox bought her fellow multihyphenate out of their four-story, seven-bedroom home back in late July, paying $345,000 for Shazam’s share.

Fox, the actress-model-memoirist best known for Uncut Gems, and Shazam, the model-photographer-director, first met at a party as teens and have been bopping around lower Manhattan ever since. According to a joint interview they did with Harper’s Bazaar in 2024, the pair had long discussed the idea of shared homeownership, a practice that’s on more people’s radars as of late as housing prices continue to run away. (Although, as you might expect, one real-estate attorney told my then-colleague Clio Chang earlier this year that “it’s both a great idea and a terrible idea.”)

Despite their being fundamentally downtown creatures, the pair eventually settled on an 1888 brownstone on West 123rd Street in the Mount Morris Park Historic District. While there were plenty of original wooden details, exposed brick, and a good number of wood-burning fireplaces, it had been renovated with modern touches, too: an expansive galley kitchen with a ten-foot-long custom volcanic-soapstone countertop and a royal-blue La Cornue Château range, a copper bathtub, and a steam shower. It also appeared to be well suited for joint ownership, straightforwardly divisible into a pair of duplexes. There was also a backyard where Fox’s then-2-year-old son, Valentino, could run around.

The $2.9 million asking price was “very over” the friends’ budget, Fox told Bazaar, but not enough to deter them completely. “I was just like, ‘No. I want it. I need it. I have to have it,’” she said, which perhaps had something to do with her living in a converted two-bedroom, where, as she explained in a “maximum transparency” TikTok tour in 2023, she was piling up shoeboxes in her kitchen (“very common for New Yorkers,” she said) and had a mouse problem (she claimed to be fine with it). The pair put $900,000 down on the brownstone and moved in with Valentino; Shazam’s boyfriend, the director Ben Draghi; and the ashes of a few late friends. Soon there was a constant stream of people coming in and out. (The house was not, however, the site of Fox’s eBay-branded “stoop sale” earlier this year, despite its perfectly nice stoop.)

Neither Fox nor Shazam responded to my emails about the decision to end their joint ownership so soon, but as that real-estate attorney told us in February, it’s pretty normal given the way lives change: Marriages crack up, jobs move, life in general happens. “Sometimes it doesn’t last nearly as long as you think it’s going to,” the attorney said. The deed transfer lists a two-bedroom Greenpoint rental address in a modest three-story building for Shazam. As for Fox’s decision to buy Shazam out and stay put in the property, she told Bazaar that despite her reputation, she really likes the anonymity that comes with living in northern Manhattan. “No one gives a fuck about me up here,” she told the magazine. “It’s amazing.”

Julia Fox and Richie Shazam’s 19th-century brownstone was likely attractive to its buyers thanks to the modern touches throughout, including a royal-blue range in the kitchen, as seen in this listing photo.
Photo: R New York

The brownstone, as seen in this listing photo, was flush with original details that charmed its buyers, including wood-burning fireplaces.
Photo: R New York

Other original details that likely charmed Fox and Shazam include the many exposed brick walls, as seen in this listing photo.
Photo: R New York

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