Decorating magnate Martha Stewart has sold her Turkey Hill estate in Westport, Connecticut for $6,700,000.
The Wall Street Journal reported the news last week of the sale, which was recorded on June 15, according to public records. Stewart, 65, had had the place on the market since May 2006, when she listed the four-acre estate for $8,995,000. Then, as we reported in February 2007, she reduced the asking price to $4.5 million, although that listing price also involved splitting the 4-acre property at 48 Turkey Hill Road South in Westport into two separate, 2-acre properties. The $4.5 million asking price did include the estate's nine-room, 3,168-square-foot main house that was built in 1805, a guest house, a pool and perennial gardens, but did not include the other half of the farm, which contains other buildings including a "party barn."
Now, an entity incorporated as 48/50 Turkey Hill LLC (but erroneously identified in public records as being called 45-50 Turkey Hill LLC) has bought the 2.03-acre main parcel and apparently the adjacent parcel as well. Public records suggest that only the main parcel was sold to the entity, but we find that a bit hard to believe; the sale price squarely suggests that Martha took a price cut on the entire 4-acre estate.
Public records and the Journal both state that the owner of the 48/50 Turkey Hill LLC limited-liability corporation that bought Stewart's estate is Westport resident Charles G. Berg, the former chief executive officer of Oxford Health Plans. He told the Journal that "we're not planning on doing very much to" the property.
Stewart owns plenty of other properties. Her main residence is her 153-acre estate on Girdle Ridge Road in Bedford, N.Y., which she bought in 2000 for $15.2 million. In mid-2004, she sold a penthouse in a Richard Meier-designed building at 173 Perry street in Manhattan's West Village for $6.65 million, and also reportedly sold a dilapidated house in East Hampton, N.Y. for $9 million, according to public records and the New York Post. She continues to own a 62-acre estate in Seal Harbor, Maine, a house at 58 Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton, N.Y., and a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue that she bought in 1988, the Post has reported.