La Dune — once the most expensive estate in the Hamptons, asking $150 million before entering bankruptcy — sold for $79 millionat an hours-long auction on Wednesday evening at Sotheby’s in New York.
This likely marks the end of the saga for the 4-acre estate, which consists of two homes on elite Gin Lane in Southampton, owned by Louise Blouin, a French-Canadian former art publisher.
A single buyer swept in to buy the parcel at 376 Gin Lane for $40.5 million and 366 Gin Lane for $38.5 million. There were seven bidders from North America, including New York and Connecticut, and the Caribbean.
The sale is ultimately $88.48 million “all in” — a 12% buyer’s premium goes to the auctioneers and the real estate brokers who marketed it.
“This should be a series on Netflix,” said one bidder at the sale, who ultimately wasn’t exaggerating.
Even before the sale began at 4 p.m., there were seven verified bids with a minimum asking price of $66 million, said Chad Roffers, CEO of Concierge Auctions, which is owned by Sotheby’s.
Louise Blouin. Getty Images
There’s plenty of sitting room inside the sprawling estate. Rich Taverna
The Upper East Side sell-off broke for negotiations around 5:20 p.m. By around 7:20 p.m., the crowd of around 75 people had thinned. That’s when the auctioneer returned to announce a $79 million bid on the compound. The crowd waited to hear bids on the separate homes.
Even at 8:45 p.m., they were still negotiating. The issue was that the lender, a privately owned company named Bay Point, has to approve the auction sale, which will likely end up being less than an earlier $90 million offer for the compound that the seller refused, thinking she could get far more for the property, sources said. Wednesday’s sale still has to be approved by a bankruptcy judge in mid-February. The lenders are still owed between $7 million to $15 million.
Jenny Fleiss, co-founder of Rent the Runway, and financier Chris Brown also made in-person bids before dropping out. Both left the auction house well before the auction ended.
Concierge Auctions partnered with co-brokers Harald Grant of Sotheby’s International Realty, Corcoran’s Tim Davis and Bespoke’s Cody Vichinsky in the sale.
An eat-in chef’s kitchen shall be enjoyed by the highest bidder. Rich Taverna
A tub with a view. Rich Taverna
One of the Southampton mansion’s many bedrooms. Rich Taverna
“It took some time but we got it done,” Roffers said after the sale.
“I was surprised. I was hoping for more bidders,” said Grant. “But there was so much press and it was on and off the market for so long, it hurt the process. If this was a fresh property, it would be ‘Boom, Boom, Bam.”
Grant added that if the compound was listed for the first time today, with no bankruptcy, he could sell it for $90 million, or $45 million for each of the two properties, “just on the comps.”
The 4-acre estate, which consists of two homes, is owned by Louise Blouin, a former art publisher. Gavin Zeigler
One of the estate’s pair of pools. Gavin Zeigler
In the Hamptons, Grant said, “people would rather be on Gin Lane than anywhere else. There are certain trophy spots and this is it.”
Blouin bought the property with her former husband for $13.5 million in the 1990s. La Dune was the crown jewel in Blouin’s real estate portfolio, and in 2016 — when the Panama Papers outed her for storing cash in offshore accounts — it asked $140 million.
Earlier, the property was featured in Woody Allen’s 1978 film, “Interiors.” The two homes are a traditional shingle-styled home built in 1892 and another one designed by French architect François Catroux, built in 2001.
The compound comes with two pools and a sunken tennis court. The two homes were able to be bought at auction together or separately, Roffers said.
The buyers have to put up $500,000 in cash. It’s an all-cash auction, bringing “speed, certainty and reach” to the sales process, Roffers said leading up to the sale. “The property is going to sell no matter what.”
