Big Deal
Forget moderation. This is the year of living extravagantly. In a red-hot real estate market, what’s an extra million dollars anyway? Asking prices range from the expensive to the arrogant to the absurd—and even final trading prices are staggering.
An infusion of instant wealth and impassioned first-time buyers galvanized spec builders to snap up virtually every available building lot. The result: a deranged landscape of enormous and assertive multi-million dollar starter mansions. Some are pretty dreadful, but you can’t say there isn’t a logic to all this.
Classic older estates with massive copper beech or elms, properties on the important lanes, or on the water, all command tycoon-like prices. By way of public service for the moneyed classes seeking shelter, as well as for the real estate wonks among us, we present a quick overview of some top sales in our over-the-top market.
The sale that launched a thousand press articles: Billy Joel to Jerry Seinfeld. $32,000,000 bought celebrity seclusion on a lavish ten and a half-acre Further Lane oceanfront compound. Brokers were irked that it was a commission-free direct deal. Lawyers, as always, got their fees. Billy Joel apparently commented that he should have asked more because Seinfeld said yes so quickly.
The ambitious sharp-edge geometry of renowned architect Rafael Viñoly provoked a lawsuit between neighbor Lee Radziwill and the famously willful but nonetheless visionary real estate heiress, Alice Lawrence. But peace and decorum have returned to this very swank and discreet corner of Highway Behind the Pond. An amiable—and well-heeled—windsurfer paid Lawrence $11,500,000 for her spectacular oceanfront estate.
With what trinket did you pamper yourself this August? Nations Banc Montgomery Securities’ Jerry Markowitz spent $9,000,000 for a midsummer pick-me-up of dizzying excess: 10 bedrooms, 12 baths, 9 fireplaces, 10,000 square feet of unrestrained indulgence, 8 car garage, and a 34 acre back yard ready for a predictably large number of horses. The sale, on Parsonage Lane in Sagaponack, set a new record for this just south-of-the-highway street.
In a preposterous scrap of reverse elitism aimed at that upper echelon of buyers with bounteous cash and uncertain tastes, brokers coyly dubbed this new, very posh, oceanside mansion a traditional 1920s style farmhouse. Pu-leeze! It was hardly fair to a house that is large, interestingly styled, and Epicurean in its luxuries. It was purchased in July for a cool $9,000,000 by a gentleman with a Park Avenue address and no known agricultural interests.
Joe Dimenna loves his horses. The accomplished rider purchased two parcels of farmland in Sagaponack a few years ago, planning to construct a 67 acre oceanfront horse farm. At the time, his $11,000,000 acquisition seemed extravagant. This year Joe changed his mind, and sold the still vacant land for $21,400,000. Don’t worry about the horses being homeless. They’re pampered on a farm he owns in Water Mill. Clearly, we don’t have to worry about Joe either.
