Saudi Prince Bandar
Sells Again in Aspen
By Christina S.N. Lewis
From The Wall Street Journal Online
Saudi
Arabia's Prince Bandar bin Sultan sold
an Aspen, Colo.,
house Wednesday for $36.5 million, his third sale there this year.
The former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. has now sold half of six
contiguous Aspen properties he owned. They
formed a massive compound where the prince entertained guests including recent U.S.
presidents. Last month he took the 56,000-square-foot main house -- listed for
a onetime record $135 million -- off the market. As for the property just sold,
the prince, 58 years old, built the 15,000-square-foot mountain home four years
ago on 67 acres. Called Star Mountain Ranch, the home has six bedrooms, 11 1/2
baths, an indoor pool and views of the Roaring Fork
River valley. It's in
Starwood, a gated community about 10 miles from
downtown.
The buyer -- Jeffrey Soffer, chairman and chief executive of Florida real-estate firm
Turnberry Ltd. -- made an unsolicited offer. He couldn't be reached for
comment. Marian Lansburgh, with local Christie's Great Estates affiliate Joshua
& Co., represented him. The firm's principal, Joshua Saslove, also handled
the deal and the prince's two earlier sales.
Prince Bandar has no plans for further deals in the area, says
attorney William Jordan, who oversees the prince's local realty interests. Mr. Jordan adds,
"I was surprised he was willing to sell this one."
DeGeneres's Sale
Tops Purchase Price by 27%
Profiting from a relatively strong high-end market, comedian Ellen
DeGeneres has sold her Santa
Barbara County
estate for 27% more than she paid a year ago.
Still, the talk-show host, 49, accepted $20 million for the
four-acre property, a full $4 million below her March asking price. She'd paid
$15.75 million for the property. In Montecito, the 1926 four-bedroom
Mediterranean home -- which this column earlier reported was in contract --
includes a 5,000-bottle wine cellar and comes with two guest houses, a pool and
a tennis court. Ms. DeGeneres made some changes to the interior and grounds.
It's near Oprah Winfrey's 40-acre estate. Ms. Degeneres did a segment touring
the house on her daytime talk show and solicited buyers on her show's Web site.
California sales
activity plummeted over 40% this past October from a year earlier, and median
prices fell 9.2% in the same period, according to research firm DataQuick. But
prices in the city of Santa Barbara,
near Montecito, rose close to 25% to $1.28 million from a year earlier,
DataQuick says, although a company spokesman notes that the figure is based on
a small number of sales.
Ms. DeGeneres recently bought a furnished house in Beverly Hills from Max
Mutchnick, a creator of "Will & Grace."
Credit Suisse Official Lists for $20 Million
Investment banker Vikram Gandhi is asking $20 million for his Upper East Side town house, where Eleanor Roosevelt lived
in her final years and hosted many key figures of the time.
The head of the financial-institutions group for Credit Suisse and
his wife, Meera, paid $4.3 million for the 18-foot-wide house in 2000 and
renovated. The limestone town house has five bedrooms, a back garden and a roof
garden.
FDR's widow moved into the 74th Street property just a few years
before her death in 1962 at age 78. (The home cost $21,304.22.) In the last
decade of her life, Ms. Roosevelt worked actively for the Democratic Party and
for various humanitarian causes. At the house, she hosted President Kennedy,
Nikita Khrushchev, Leonard Bernstein and others, according to listing agent
Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens.
Downtown in the West
Village, Edward B. Beam
Jr., an eighth-generation scion of the family that founded Kentucky bourbon maker Jim Beam, has listed
a town house for $7.75 million. Mr. Beam, a 51-year-old retired publishing
executive, paid $430,000 for the house in 1984. Anne Collins and Allen
Whitehead, of Brown Harris Stevens, have the listing. Whoever buys the home may
find a familiar face in the town house next door. Billy Joel bought it in 2005.
