'Billionaire Broker' Lives in $18M Apartment With New Husband, New Baby and Her Ex

— -- Carol E. Levy, one of New York City’s top real estate brokers, imagined that her extravagant, $18 million apartment in the iconic Beresford building would be the perfect place to live with her husband, Joel Goron, and their newborn son.

“You know, it has a magical castle feel,” she told ABC News. “It really is a ‘wow’ apartment, as soon as you walk into it. I saw it as the perfect dream home.”

But she didn’t expect that her ex-husband, Chris Lipmann, whom she separated from four years ago and divorced two years ago, would refuse to move out.

“Unfortunately, until he has the funds from the sale of the apartment, he doesn't have the ability to move on," Levy said.

Before she married Goron in August 2014, Levy, who bills herself as the “billionaire broker” because of expertise in ultra-luxury property sales, shared the 5,000-square-foot duplex overlooking Central Park with Lipmann and their two teenage daughters.

Lipmann declined to speak with ABC News, but he told the New York Post earlier this year that he hopes his presence will force Levy to more quickly sell the apartment. A sale, he told the paper, would garner him “45 percent of the profit.”

Today, Levy, Goron, their son, and Levy’s two teen daughters with Lipmann live on the upper floor of the duplex. Lipmann lives on the floor below, sleeping in a guest room he has since protected with a lock, Levy said.

“There are some times when his presence there, I do feel, is intrusive on my life,” Levy said. “If I am in the kitchen and I want to go in there, and he’s there ... I would rather be in the kitchen by myself and not, you know, with my ex-husband there.”

In their divorce agreement, Levy said, it was mapped out who gets which rooms and which ares are shared spaces.

The kitchen, where everyone is allowed to enter, has become an awkward battleground.

“He marks his food, each of it, with an X,” Levy said. “He doesn’t clean up after himself, and I do pay for the housekeeper. So there is a little resentment there.”

But the bizarre arrangement may soon come to an end. Levy listed her Beresford apartment for sale at close to $20 million.

“It’ll happen soon,” Levy said. “I would say, within the next few months, there should be a deal on it.”