Richard Gere sells, Christie Brinkley lists, Candace Bushnell buys…and our readers, well, read, making this quintet our top celebrity real estate stories from this past year.
Sex and the…Country?
Sometimes great things come in small(er) packages. Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell purchased a lovely home in Sag Harbor in March for $680,000. Bushnell sold her Greenwich Village apartment for $2.6 million in November 2015 after first listing it in 2012. In an interview with The Observer last year, Bushnell said, “Two of my best girlfriends just moved to Sag Harbor. And it’s so much fun to go there and visit them!” Bushnell and her friends frequented Baron’s Cove for dinner and liked to keep things low-key. “The great thing about the Hamptons is that you really can live in the Hamptons and not live in the Hamptons in the Hamptons way,” Bushnell added, not sounding at all like Carrie Bradshaw.
Oh Joy
East End comedian Joy Behar found a buyer for her East Hampton home, which was placed on the market in March for $3.8 million and was lowered to $3.45 million. The two-story house includes 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, marble countertops and stainless steel kitchen fixtures. It’s built around a marvelous great room, crowned by a high, vaulted cathedral ceiling complete with skylights that let in plenty of natural light. Resting on 0.78 acres, the summer pad also has a heated gunite pool, multiple terraces and an outdoor fireplace. It is located amid local farmland, providing plenty of that scenic beauty only the Hamptons has to offer.
Getting in Gere
Talk about determination. Richard Gere finally sold his 12,000-square-foot North Haven retreat, Strongheart Manor, in 2016, after nearly three years on the market—to none other than Matt Lauer, who owns several properties on the East End, including his 40-acre horse farm in Water Mill, Bright Side Farm.
Strongheart Manor sits on 6.3 acres of waterfront property, houses 12 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms in a main house and two guesthouses on Actors Colony Road. The property also has 300 feet of direct bay frontage and a 240-foot deep-water dock. The main house offers a gym, basketball court, screened-in porch extending the length of the house, a 60-foot pool overlooking Peconic Bay and a private pond with a teahouse on a center island.
Gere originally asked $65 million for Strongheart Manor but reduced the price to $47.5 million, and then continued lowering it until it finally sold through the Corcoran Group’s Susan Breitenbach for $36.5 million.
Brinkley’s Bridgehampton Mansion
In October, Christie Brinkley listed her North Haven home for $25 million with Enzo Morabito of Douglas Elliman. Built in 1843, the three-story Colonial offers 5,500 square feet of living space with 5 bedrooms, 5.5 baths and a 327-foot sandy beach on 4.5 acres overlooking the harbor and open bay. The breathtaking water views and sunsets are enjoyed from almost every room in the historic manor house, which includes many period details, such as grand columns covering two façades, wide-plank pine floors and multiple fireplaces.
Brinkley put her Bridgehampton mansion, Tower Hill, up for sale with Morabito for $29.5 million back in June. She has listed Tower Hill once before, in 2010, for $30 million, but she and her family decided not to move at that time. In 2013, Brinkley sold a North Haven property for $10 million, and listed her late mother’s Sag Harbor cottage for $2.8 million the same year.
Farewell to Four Winds
Earlier in December we learned that, after more than two years on and off the market, Susan Lucci sold her palatial Quogue oceanfront home, Four Winds, for just shy of $20 million.
The All My Children legend first listed the 7-bedroom, 7-bath, shingle-style home at 20 Dune Road with Enzo Morabito (who seems to be the celebrity broker of the year) for $19.9 million in the summer of 2014 and, apparently, never budged much from the asking price. At the time, Morabito said Four Winds was on “one of the most desirable stretches of Dune Road in Quogue—between the bridges.”
Morabito told DansPapers.com that one of Lucci’s favorite things to do while staying at her house in the Hamptons was to “walk down to the beach with a cup of morning coffee in her hand.”
