Historic Hamptons home with $25M asking price goes into contract

An historic East Hampton home with deeded beach access at 89 Lily Pond Lane, which was asking $24.95 million, has gone into contract for under the asking price, according to listing broker Ami Schulman of William B. May, who declined  to specify the contract price.

The eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom home, which was built in 1912 as a vacation residence for well-known Hamptons figure John F. Erdmann, was purchased by “a well-known person in certain interests,” Schulman said, only adding that the buyer was not in the finance industry.

The 9,000-square-foot estate, which comes with two guest cottages and a heated pool, has landscaped gardens that were once featured in Oprah’s O Magazine.

Had the sale, which Schulman said went into contract in Jan. 23 and is slated to close later this month, been completed slightly earlier, it may have made it into the top 10 Hamptons residential sales of 2011, a source confirmed.

The most expensive Hamptons transaction of last year was real estate entrepreneur and Florida politician Jeffrey Greene’s purchase of Tyndal Point for $36 million, The Real Deal previously reported, but the ninth and 10th largest sales were only for slightly over $20 million.

The home on Lily Pond Lane, which is owned by Schulman’s father, is an original mansion of the famed Summer Colony of the early 1900s, according to the listing. It is one of the few homes in the area with deeded beach access to the secluded section between Main Beach and Georgica Beach.

“The beach access is rare,” Schulman said, “unless you live right at the ocean. Not even all the houses on Lily Pond Lane have access.”

Schulman’s family is selling the property, she said, because they’ve purchased another home in the Wainscott area of the town of East Hampton.

As a New York City broker, marketing the property was challenging, she added, because she did not have access to the Hamptons listings sharing service commonly used by brokers in the area.

“I invited everyone here to cobroke with me,” she said. “It’s an important sale. People are watching it and will want to know [what it closed for.]”