'Money Pit' home comes on the market for $12.5M
As the star in the 1986 movie, "The Money Pit," this Lattingtown mansion was portrayed as a black hole for cash, but its real persona is far from that. Renovated and on the market for $12.5 million it has, the sales agent says, a French flair. Credit: Shawn Elliott Luxury Homes and Estates
It may not be a money pit, but the Lattingtown mansion used in the 1986 Tom Hanks movie about a fixer-upper may set someone back $12.5 million. The eight-bedroom house, built in 1898 on 5.5 acres, just hit the market and luckily doesn’t need any renovations. The current homeowners did all the work after buying the home in 2002.
Eric Ridder of the Knight-Ridder newspaper family owned the house when the exterior was used for the movie. Interior shots were filmed on a sound stage. The movie follows a young couple (Hanks and Shelley Long) and their home renovation plagued by one disaster after another, including a tub that sinks through the bathroom floor and shatters.
“We call it the ‘money pit no more,’ ” says Shawn Elliott, president of Shawn Elliott Luxury Homes and Estates, which is listing the property. “It’s the furthest thing from ‘The Money Pit.’ ”
The sellers put millions of dollars into renovating and restoring the home, which now has luxurious French flair. In addition to new plumbing, heating and electrical systems, and a new roof, the house now has a large chef’s kitchen with marble countertops and a mahogany center island and plenty of entertaining spaces filled with antique and modern touches, including an imported 500-year-old French fireplace and refrigerated wine wall in the media room.
On the second floor is a sprawling master suite with a sitting room and dressing area, and four bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms. The lower level includes a large recreation room and a gym with a fireplace.
Out back, beyond the herringbone brick veranda, is an in-ground heated saltwater pool and an 800-square-foot pool house with a full kitchen and bathroom, a changing room and a laundry room.
“This home, being shy of six acres, is as palatial as it gets,” Elliott says. “It’s almost like a home you’d find somewhere in Paris. When you’re in the home or in the backyard, you feel like you’re some place in Europe.”
