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When it comes to real estate, in some ways, the lords of corporate America are as mortal as the rest of us. Buying may be easier, but no matter how deep your pockets, selling can be a challenge. With the help of Zillow.com and Trulia.com, we tracked 10 business moguls with homes they’re trying to sell and others they’ve recently bought. Some are dropping their stellar asking prices; many have moved on before selling. Others, on the brink of losing membership in the exclusive one percent club, had no choice but to sell. All are worth a king’s ransom.
Arthur Blank, Home Depot Co-Founder
Mogul: Arthur M. Blank, co-founder Home Depot and owner, Atlanta Falcon
Location: Buckhead, Ga.
Sales Price: $3.9 million
In September, after three years on the market, Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank sold his vacant 7,352-square-foot, three-level, 1952 colonial revival house for about $3.9 million, a fraction of its initial $10.9 million asking price. The seven-bedroom, 10-bath house sports a two-story foyer, new kitchen, new master bath, a library-office, media room, wine cellar, gym, and recreation room. It all adds up to about $84,000 a year in property taxes. The 4.2-acre gated estate has lush gardens, a private pond with waterfalls, koi ponds filled with specimen plants and a swimming pool, according to Betsy Akers, the Atlanta Fine Homes listing agent. Three years ago, Mr. Blank and his family moved to an older home they had restored in the same suburban Atlanta neighborhood.
Bernard Marcus, Home Depot Co-Founder
Mogul: Bernard Marcus, co-founder Home Depot
Location: Atlanta, Ga.
Price: $3.9 million
Because he travels frequently and also has a beach and a mountain home, Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot recently downsized to a condominium in Atlanta. In October, he put his custom 10,314-square-foot contemporary Wildercliff subdivision mansion on the market for $3.9 million. Betsy Akers, the listing agent with Atlanta Fine Homes said the “Architectural Digest-quality” home boasts 20-foot ceilings, an indoor pool and exercise room off the first floor master suite, two large guest suites upstairs, two offices, a media room, expansive wine cellar and a playroom on the terrace level.
Even as the gulf between the ‘haves and have nots’ grows, and Occupy Wall Street protesters chant and march, the titans of industry continue to buy and sell ever fancier digs. That leaves the 99% of us—mere mortals with smaller paychecks—to gawk at the sumptuous homes owned by finance tycoons and corporate chiefs.
With the help of Zillow.com and Trulia.com, we tracked 10 business moguls with homes they’re trying to sell and others they’ve recently bought. Some are dropping their stellar asking prices; many have moved on before selling. Others, on the brink of losing membership in the exclusive one percent club, had no choice but to sell.
In January 2010, shortly after Kenneth D. Lewis retired as Bank of America CEO, the financier listed his four-bedroom, five-bath French provincial-style mansion in Charlotte, N.C., for $4.5 million. Nearly two years later, the 7,000-square-foot home on 1.27 acres of a gated community is still languishing on the market, currently priced at $3.895 million.
Former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, the Wall Street darling turned poster boy for Occupy Wall Street’s cries against financial malfeasance, resigned in October as chairman and chief executive of MF Global Holdings. This, after his $6.3 billion gamble on European debt flopped, $633 million in customer money went missing and the New York-based futures brokerage fell into bankruptcy. Now the price on Corzine’s undeveloped 2,379-acre ranch 14 miles west of the ski resort town of Telluride, Colo., has dropped from $37.5 million to $29 million. When the former chief of Goldman Sachs bought the spread in 1996, he intended someday to build a home and develop the property, said T.D. Smith, the listing broker. Instead, he put it on the market for $40 million in 2007.
“It’s a beautiful mountain ranch,” Smith said of the expansive property with a sweeping view of the 14,000-foot peaks and protected on two sides by dramatically steep cliffs that fall into two river canyons. Interest is stirring. “The price hasn’t been adjusted until recently. It was always priced a bit above the market,” said Smith.
Not long after Ursula Burns moved up the ladder to become chairman and chief executive of Xerox, she sold her three-bedroom Manhattan apartment at the Beekman Regent on East 51st Street. In its place she bought a nine-room, 3,326 square foot penthouse–double the size–for $8.15 million in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed Brompton Condominium on East 85th Street.
“She wanted something a little more grand,” said Michael Spodek, the selling agent and a senior vice president and associate broker with the Corcoran Group. Spodek described the new condominium as “absolutely in turnkey condition” and the layout, “glamorous” with superb sunlight. Burns also owns a home in Connecticut, but her other seven-bedroom home on 1.6 acres in Brighton, New York, remains empty and on the market for $879,000.
According to the Nothnagle Realtors listing, the seven-bedroom, seven-bath home on 1.6 acres has a dining room large enough for black tie galas and is “suitable for captains of industry, who are accustomed to fine living.”