Most Expensive Ever!

Beating out the last most expensive apartment ever, here’s the newest most expensive apartment ever:

A brash hedge-fund manager is putting his money where his mouth is — agreeing to pay a record $45 million for a Manhattan residence.

Daniel Loeb, the outspoken founder of New York-based Third Point LLC, has signed a contract to buy a more than 10,000-square-foot penthouse condominium under construction at 15 Central Park West at the site of the old Mayflower Hotel.

The hard-charging investment mogul, who manages a $3.6 billion fund, is known for his publicly circulated poison-pen letters to executives he claims are pretentious or lazy. The New Yorker magazine described him as an investor’s version of the late political columnist H. L. Mencken, but added that his manner could be “self-interest disguised as moralistic bombast.”

Loeb had no comment about his purchase.

Plans for the 10,700-square-foot, full-floor pad include eight bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms, two powder rooms, a large screening room, his-and-hers offices, a library and terraces measuring nearly 800 square feet. The 39th-floor apartment features 14-foot ceilings. It is to be completed by spring 2007.

The towering sales figure beats the previous record held by News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, who paid $44 million earlier this year for the late Laurance Rockefeller’s triplex co-op penthouse on Fifth Avenue. News Corp. owns The Post.

It also bests the previous record condo price of $42.25 million that Mexican financier David Martinez paid at the nearby Time Warner Center. Martinez combined a full-floor apartment on the 76th floor with a half-floor residence above. He then recently purchased the other half of the 77th floor for about $12 million, giving him almost 17,000 square feet total after spending nearly $53 million.

Loeb’s purchase comes seven months after he bought a sprawling eight-bedroom West Village town house for $11.2 million.