Saturday, 20 April 2013
LOCATION: East Hampton, NY
PRICE: $75,000,000
SIZE: 7,500 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In late January and early February all us property gossips went cray-cray over the reported real estate rumor that wealthy widow and education oriented philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross* had quietly floated her pond-front East Hampton (NY) compound as a pocket listing with an ear pricking and publicity ensuring asking price of $75,000,000.
A brief and unexpected missive from our ever-vigilant aide de camp Hot Chocolate informed us that the property, dubbed Cody House, has hit the open market today with the expected $75 million price tag.
Listing details for the 5.42 acre spread comprises four separate parcels with 460 prime feet of Georgica Pond frontage and a small private dock for tying up dinghies, rubber rafts, kayaks, canoes, sail boats, row boats and/or other non-motorized water craft.*
Two of the parcels are essentially undeveloped but for the high hedges and broad sweep of well-watered and meticulously mowed grass that runs up the the pond's edge. A gated, tree-lined driveway cuts through the front lawn to the approximately 7,500 square foot main house that sits right up on the pond's edge on the largest of the four parcels and offers up seven bedrooms and six full bathrooms, according to listing information. The back of the house wraps around a jigsaw puzzle-like stone terrace and dark bottom kidney shaped swimming pool with long views over Georgica Pond. The final parcel includes a separate three bedroom guest house, barn and itty-bitty and undeniably charming waterside cottage.
In addition to a whole lotta insanely rich financiers, captains of industry and one or two scions of vast family fortunes, some of the nearby estates are owned by swanky, well-connected sorts such as Hollywood royal Steven Spielberg, the heirs of acclaimed screenwriter and filmmaker Nora Ephron and serious journalists Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee who own the famed Grey Gardens and had it up for lease for $125,000 for a short summer season from Memorial day through July.
Avid watchers of the high end East Coast property markets may recall that last year The Widda Ross dumped her sprawling, 20-plus room duplex at the hideously expensive and famous exclusive 740 Park Avenue for $52,500,000 to Left Coast based money manager and notoriously hardcore real estate baller Howard Marks.
In 2010 Miz Ross—not to be confused with the Miss Ross—spent $7,300,000 to acquire a far more modest by comparison condo crib New York's TriBeCa nabe from Fuze drinks founder Lance Collins. Listing details Your Mama dug up show the 2,758 square foot corner apartment has—or had when she bought it—2-3 bedrooms, three (windowless) bathrooms, a small but expensively equipped galley style kitchen, a 29-foot long living/dining room with humongous factory-style floor to ceiling windows and a 500-plus square foot private terrace.
*Miz Ross hails from a reasonably well to do Texas family but by far the vast bulk of her current fortune passed down to her in 1992 when Steve Ross, the well-compensated CEO of Time Warner and her husband of 10 years, died of complications due to prostate cancer. At the time he died, Mister Ross was estimated to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion.
**As far as Your Mama knows—and we really know so little—except for crab boats, the Georgica Pond home owners association bylaws (or whatever) forbids the use of motorized boats on the pond.
listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty
