A waterfront estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, with a $190 million asking price, believed to be a record for a single U.S. residence, is likely to attract a wealthy individual buyer or a developer, its selling agent said.
“A lot of people have made a lot of money and there aren’t any others of these,” David Ogilvy, president of David Ogilvy & Associates, said in a telephone interview from his Greenwich office. “It would be a nice place for them.”
The 50.6-acre (20.5-hectare) property, known as Copper Beech Farm, has a 12-bedroom main house built in 1898, almost 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) of shore front, two islands, a 75-foot (23-meter) pool with a spa, a grass tennis court, a greenhouse, a stone carriage house and an 1,800-foot driveway. The last time a waterfront estate of a similar size sold in Greenwich was in 1954, according to Ogilvy.
There are 46 properties in the city listed for more than $10 million, two of which are in escrow, according to Mark Pruner, an agent with Prudential Connecticut Realty in Greenwich. A comparable sale has yet to be completed this year, he said.
“No comps come anywhere close in value,” Pruner said in a telephone interview. “The high-end market is the slowest.”
The priciest previous sale in Greenwich was a 4-acre waterfront estate that sold for $39.5 million last year, Ogilvy said. The highest recorded sale price for a U.S. home was the $117.5 million SoftBank Corp. founder Masayoshi Son paid last year for an estate in Woodside, California.
Copper Beech Farm is owned by John Rudey, who is in the timber business and bought the estate in 1982, Ogilvy said.
“His kids have grown and flown the coop,” Ogilvy said. “It’s only a weekend house for them.”
The property is already divided into two tax lots, one with 20 acres and the other with 30.6 acres. The gated community it’s in, Mead Point, is zoned for two-acre home lots, and the new owner would need the Greenwich town council’s approval to subdivide further, Ogilvy said.
“Much of the value may be in subdividing this 50-acre property in a 2-acre zone,” Pruner said in an e-mail. “But, in this case, the private association rules and the neighbors will provide the greatest protection to over-development.”
The listing was reported previously by the Wall Street Journal.
