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For sale: Gold Coast mansions

BY DANIEL BUBBEO | daniel.bubbeo@newsday.com

May 16, 2008

Charlton Hall in Muttontown is on the market for $3.9 million.

It's not every day you see a Gold Coast mansion go on the market -- though it does seem lately like it's at least every few weeks.

Recently, the Old Westbury estate of the late horse breeder Cynthia Phipps was put up for sale at the hefty price of $13 million. A few days later, the nearby house that once belonged to famed architect Thomas Hastings went on the market for $12.5 million. And then, just three weeks ago, another Old Westbury estate, this one belonging to heiress Cornelia Guest, went on the block for $20 million.

"It's where I grew up, but I just don't spend enough time there," Guest says. "It's an equestrian estate, and it needs a family that loves horses. I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles now, and I want to create my own family home."

Guest's attitude isn't unusual among the modern generation who grew up in old-moneyed families. Many of the current owners of the glorious manses that dot the North Shore in Nassau County are no longer interested in minding their manors, especially when they're also feeling the pinch of Long Island's high taxes, says Arlene Travis, president of Glen Cove-based Mansions & Millionaires, which runs designer show houses at Gold Coast mansions. Annual taxes on the Guest house, for example, are $85,897.

"With the new tax assessment [in Nassau], the estates that have quite a bit of property are being taxed quite heavily," she says. "A lot of these homes that used to belong to old families are so difficult to maintain for the newer generations. Those family members are no longer interested in hanging on to the past."

Not for Mr. and Mrs. America

Instead, the North Shore is looking more like the Glitzy Coast as celebrities with hefty wallets move into the area, Travis says. In recent years, tabloid magnets Jennifer Lopez and hubby Marc Anthony have become Gold Coasters, and in 2005 Grammy winner Alicia Keys bought her own Muttontown crib -- a 15-room center hall Colonial -- for $3.995 million.

"People of that ilk don't really mind using their incomes in this way. It becomes part of their business life," Travis says. "There's also a specific clientele who are totally interested in them for their history. These homes are definitely not being bought by Mr. and Mrs. America."

Patrick Mackay, president of Piping Rock Associates, a Locust Valley real estate broker, says he doesn't see anything unusual about the current number of Gold Coast mansions on the market. "We deal in the high end, so we don't think there's any great increase in mansions for sale now than normal," he says. "The Clarke Oliver Iselin place is going for just under $5 million. I have another for $7 million and another for $13 million. It's not really out of the ordinary for one firm to have that many mansions listed."

Selling requires patience

Just expect them to be listed for quite a while, says Barbara Candee, realty director for Daniel Gale Sotheby's International in East Norwich. "In this marketplace, sellers must be more patient than previously. If you had a home selling for $8 million, previously the average time to sell it was about seven months. Now it is longer, about a year to a year and a half," she says.

Often that means buyers will need to come down in price. The owners of Northwood, the 26-acre French Normandy-style estate in Oyster Bay Cove that went on the market for $43 million in January 2006, recently dropped their asking price to $18 million. It had already been reduced to $20 million last June.

Another contributing factor to the slow sales of these estates, other than their limited market, is that sometimes they need refurbishing. "If you're buying a mansion that was prominent at the turn of the [previous] century, you want to bring it up technologically to the current period without destroying the essence of the house," Travis says. "Wiring has to be considered, electrical services, plumbing. But for those that can afford to spend the megamillion dollars to do that, the cost would be of no concern. Only the person hanging onto it would have the difficulty."

See the photo galleries to the left for a sampling of more Gold Coast estates currently on the market.

Plenty of gold out east, too

All that glitters isn't on the Gold Coast. In fact, you'll need plenty of green, $59 million worth, in Southampton for the two adjoining parcels that belonged to the late Howard Gittis, a lawyer and close adviser to billionaire Ron Perelman, that went on the market last year.

The main 12.4-acre plot on Ox Pasture Road is home to Westerly, Gittis' 25-room Georgian mansion, which was constructed in 1929. An adjacent 2.1 acres on Captains Beck Road includes a carriage house. Westerly, which is listed with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate's East Hampton office, has a slate roof and was built in red antique brick. It also boasts brick terraces, a pool pavilion, a tennis court and fireplaces throughout the house.