Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff’s former home on the ocean in Montauk, most recently on the market for $16.5 million, is under contract.
Bespoke Real Estate, which had a co-exclusive with Tim Davis of The Corcoran Group announced that 216 Old Montauk Highway had found a buyer in a newsletter mailing on Tuesday. No further information was released. A Corcoran representative declined to comment and Bespoke did not immediately return a request for comment.
Bespoke and Davis listed the property for $22.5 million in April of 2022, approximately one year after Madoff died while serving a 150-year federal prison sentence for running the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
Of course, he no longer owned the property. The federal government seized the bungalow-style Montauk home after Madoff’s arrest in December 2008.
As recounted in a recently-released Netflix docuseries, MADOFF: The Monster of Wall Street, Madoff never visited the Montauk house again after the $65 billion investment scam came to light. He spent six months on house arrest in his Manhattan penthouse before pleading guilty.
Madoff’s Montauk Home Last Sold in 2009
Steven Roth, a real estate investor and the founder of Vornado Realty Trust, the largest commercial landlord in New York City, and his wife, theater producer Daryl Roth, bought the property for $9.41 million in 2009 — $660,000 more than the asking price. The proceeds from the sale went into a victim compensation fund to bring some relief to the 24,000 people who lost money in the long-term scam.
The Roths updated the 3,000-square-foot home, which Forbes once quoted a realtor at the time as saying was “a 1980s dump set in a fabulous location.”
The home, just west of downtown Montauk and near Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa, sits on a 1.5-acre property with 180 feet of beach frontage and panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean. The residence is just 150 feet from the beach, which cannot be replicated because it is no longer allowed under current zoning laws.
The Roths hired Thierry Despont, the renowned architect who has worked for Bill Gates and Oscar de la Renta, to oversee the extensive renovation. He eliminated the 1980s feel when Madoff and his wife, Ruth, got the keys in 1982. The Madoff’s bought the property two years earlier for $250,000.
Some features of the house include a two-story great room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a stone fireplace and a curved sitting area, which overlooks the ocean through oversized glass doors. A new free-form gunite pool, cabana and wrap-around decking are located to the east of a covered patio.
The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath house includes a primary bedroom suite on the second floor with a private oceanfront deck., radiant heated Travertine bathroom floors, a spa-like onyx shower, and a separate balcony with an outdoor shower.
The Roths first put the house on the market in 2018 for $21 million. In late 2020, the home was listed, again, for $17 million, but then taken off the market before Bespoke and Davis teamed up to sell it last year. The price was reduced from $22.5 million to $16.5 million in August of 2022.
Madoff also had a lakefront home in Palm Beach, which was also seized and sold at auction for a steep discount of $5.65 million.
After 11 years in prison, Madoff died on April 14, 2021, at the age of 82.
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