From the New York Times:  Recruiting With Real Estate, by Josh Barbanel:

Columbia University, in a never-ending search for a larger campus, has long had an outpost for faculty housing at 455 Central Park West — 53 apartments in an 26-story tower attached to the French Renaissance chateau at West 106th Street. So it was something of a surprise when a foundation associated with NYU bought a large condominium in the complex. The unit …cost $5.2 million …

Catherine M. Sharkey, a Columbia law professor, lived in a 2,000-square-foot two-bedroom on the second floor of the tower building.

But last June, NYU announced that it had recruited Ms. Sharkey, an expert in product liability law and empirical legal studies, from Columbia. A month later the NYU Foundation signed a contract to buy the nearly 4,000-square-foot apartment in the same complex for use by Ms. Sharkey. The property records show that the foundation spent $4.2 million two weeks ago to buy an 80 percent interest in the turreted apartment.

Ms. Sharkey and her partner, Ina Bort, who practices commercial and maternity law in New York, bought the remaining 20 percent interest in the apartment for $1.05 million, but the foundation provided them with a mortgage to cover $650,000 of their share of the purchase price for up to 30 years (unless Ms. Sharkey leaves the university before then).

(Hat Tip: Above the Law and Brian Leiter.)