North Fork mansion sells for record-breaking $12.35 million on Peconic Bay

A Southold mansion and former vineyard sold for $12.35 million on Wednesday, setting a record for the most expensive single-family home sold on a single lot on the North Fork.

The Main Road property was formerly the Old Field Vineyard, run by Rosamond Phelps Baiz and her late husband and children, said Bridget Elkin, an agent with Compass who listed the property.

The lot, which comes with two homes and a group of barns, stretches across roughly 22 acres and is zoned for both agricultural and residential use, according to the listing and property records.

Its size, and its 470 feet of beachfront on Peconic Bay, helped it fetch the record-breaking price, Elkin said.

"There's not another 22-acre intact lot like this along Peconic Bay, with this sandy beach and vines," said Elkin, who listed the property with her husband, Eric Elkin.

The property includes a 3,500-square-foot home on the bay side of the parcel. On the northern end sits a 2,200-square-foot home, near three barns and a brick ice house, Elkin said.

The land had been owned by the Baiz family, who ran the Old Field Vineyard at the property, since the end of World War I, Newsday previously reported. The late Chris Baiz’s great-grandmother, Mathilda Lang, bought the farm and converted it into a vineyard, where patrons could enjoy a tasting room and Chris Baiz offered tours, Newsday reported.

After Chris Baiz died early last year, the family decided to close the vineyard, Northforker reported. Elkin listed the property for sale in August, she said.

Its sale blows past the previous record for a single-lot North Fork home, set in October when a Cutchogue mansion sold for $11.2 million, which the Elkins also sold, Newsday reported. The North Fork has seen a handful of high-priced sales in the past year — including another Cutchogue house the Elkins sold for $8 million in June — but home prices in the area are still far shy of oceanfront Hamptons estates.

The sale has not yet been recorded in property records, which show it selling in 1996 for $425,000.

Baiz could not immediately be reached for comment.

This deal “establishes a new price tier” for the high end of the North Fork market, Elkin said. But typical homes in the area sell for far less.

The median sales price for the area dropped slightly at the end of last year to $987,000, down 1.3% from the same period in 2024, according to data from real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel. But in the fourth quarter of last year, the North Fork saw 33 sales of $2 million or above, the highest number of such sales since Miller began tracking the North Fork in 2012. 

Record prices are a sign that some buyers may be turning to properties in the North Fork instead of buying in the ritzier Hamptons, said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel.

"The trend has already begun, and this housing market is going to see more of these transactions," Miller said.