The nearly 100-acre Easton Estate in Muttontown has sold for...

The nearly 100-acre Easton Estate in Muttontown has sold for $20 million to an anonymous Chinese buyer, according to Laffey Fine Homes. Credit: Laffey Fine Homes

The nearly 100-acre Easton Estate in Muttontown has sold for $20 million to an anonymous Chinese buyer, according to Laffey Fine Homes.

On the 98.8-acre property is a 15,000-square-foot mansion, built in 1931 for Evelyn Field Suarez, a former wife of department store heir Marshall Field III. It was  designed by Chicago country house architect David Adler. It borders the 550-acre Muttontown Preserve and was sold by the Hall family, which bought the property in 1952.   

Rudi Friedman and Jason Friedman, a mother-and-son team from Laffey Fine Homes, represented the buyer in the deal, which closed on Jan. 7. The house was never on the market, says Jason Friedman.

“They were looking to sell, and I introduced the parties and they came to an agreement,” he says.

Jason Friedman says the buyer plans to live in the house, but no further development has been planned yet. The property is zoned for single-family homes on 3-acre lots, and the estate can be subdivided to yield about 20 homes. New custom-built homes on similarly sized lots sell for around $7 million each.

This is not the first Gold Coast property to be snapped up by an international buyer. The Friedmans brokered the sale of Inisfada, a 33-acre former St. Ignatius retreat in North Hills, to a Hong Kong investor for $36.5 million in 2013. Also in 2013, the Friedmans sold the 19.44-acre Allen Estate in Sands Point, formerly owned by Charles Robert Allen, of Manhattan-based investment bank Allen & Co., for $13.28 million. The estate featured more than 600 feet of waterfront bulkhead and a 400-foot-deep water dock.

“I have a lot of large investors that I work with from overseas,” Jason Friedman said. “Those have been the buyers for most of the big estates. The buyers that I work with are buying all cash, and the local guys can’t really compete.”

Maria Babaev and Raphael De Niro of Douglas Elliman Real Estate represented the seller. Babaev says the sale was notable for the price, but mostly for the huge size of the property.

“Very few estates of this magnitude remain,” Babaev says. “For sure, it’s a record-breaking price.”

CORRECTION:  An earlier version of this story said Maria Babaev and Raphael De Niro represented the buyer and that the Muttontown Preserve is 500 acres.

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