The Montauk home Bernie Madoff once owned has been listed for sale, again, this time for $22.5 million.
Tim Davis of The Corcoran Group and Cody Vichensky of Bespoke have the co-exclusive on the property at 216 Old Montauk Highway, which they listed earlier this month.
Madoff, who was serving a 150-year federal prison sentence for running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, died a year ago on April 14, 2021, at the age of 82. He had been jailed 11 years.
The federal government seized the bungalow-style Montauk home after Madoff’s $65 billion investment scam was revealed in December of 2008. While Madoff was on house arrest in his Manhattan penthouse for six months he never again went back to his seaside home.
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, $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 Madoff’s long-term scam.
Since then, the Roths updated the 3,000-square-foot home, which Forbes once quoted a realtor as saying was “a 1980s dump set in a fabulous location.”
The home sits on a 1.5-acre property with 180 feet of beach frontage and panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean. The house is situated within 150 feet of the beach, something that is no longer allowed under current zoning laws. The property is located just west of downtown Montauk, not far from Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa.
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 of the home that was still there when Madoff and his wife, Ruth, got the keys in 1982. The Madoff’s bought the property two years earlier for $250,000.
The updated two-story great room features a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a stone fireplace and a curved sitting area, which overlooks the ocean through oversized glass doors.
“It’s right on the sand, and because you’re on the beach and looking forward, you’re not even aware of neighbors,” Daryl Roth told Architectural Digest in a 2013 spread about the renovation.
The gourmet eat-in kitchen also has ocean views and direct access to the covered patio.
There are three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms with two bedrooms on the first floor, both with ocean views. The second floor is dedicated to the master suite, which boasts a private oceanfront deck. The master bathroom was overhauled as well with radiant heated Travertine floors and a spa-like onyx shower, and even has a separate balcony with an outdoor shower just in case you feel like showering outside instead.
A new free-form gunite pool, cabana, and wrap-around decking are located to the east of the covered patio.
The Roths first put the home on the market in 2018 for $21 million. It was taken off the market in May of 2019. In late 2020, the home was listed for $17 million.
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