A waterfront home on Southold’s Paradise Point sold for $4.95 million last month, making it the most expensive trade on the North Fork in 2020.
The 1.3-acre property at 240 Briar Lane went into contract at full ask after just 13 days on the market in October, according to Thomas McCloskey, a broker with Douglas Elliman’s office in Cutchogue. The deal closed on December 21.
The Nantucket-style, five-bedroom, six-bath house was designed by North Fork-based architect Tom Samuels of Samuels & Steelman and was built by John Bertani in 2005. “It is the best designed and built home I have had the pleasure of representing,” McCloskey says. Alexander Aquino, also in the Douglas Elliman office, brought the buyer, listed as a limited liability company, Odeon Partners PP. The seller was Pratt Avenue LLC.
The 6,645-square-foot home offers views of the creek and bay and it has its own deepwater dock that provides quick access to the bay. The open floor plan includes a living room with a gas fireplace, a dining room and a kitchen with a large island a high-end appliances.
Among the five bedrooms is a master suite on the upper level. Other features of the home include a mudroom/laundry room on the main floor, two screen-in porches, another laundry room on the upper floor and a walk-out level that holds a theater and a billiards room.
There is a gunite pool surrounded by a stone patio and a pool house above the three-car detached garage.
Taxes will run the new owners $28,483 annually. The property last sold in 2017 for $2.25 million.
The next highest sale on the North Fork in 2020 was 1652 Bridge Lane in Cutchogue, a newly-renovated waterfront home with a deepwater dock that sold in June for $4.5 million. It was on the market for more than a year.
By the end of 2020, the median home sales price on the North Fork was noted at $754,500, a 37.43% increase year over year, according to Town & Country Real Estate’s fourth quarter report. “More home sales are closing and at higher prices,” says Judi Desiderio, the CEO of Town & Country.
“The final three months of 2020 proved to be quite good for the overall markets of the North Fork. The trajectory of home prices is clearly continuing their ascent, as evidenced by the only price category to see a drop in the number of home sales being the Under $500k price category. As we all know, if there was more product under $500K there would be more home sales under $500K,” Desiderio continues.
In fact, she says, Southold, including the hamlets of New Suffolk and Peconic, “is far and wide the crown jewel for the quarter with a staggering +330% increase in the number of home sales and a whopping +567% leap in total home sales volume along with a 73% higher median home sales price.”
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