Louise Blouin again resorts to bankruptcy to save Southampton estate

The road to selling Louise Blouin’s Southampton estate has been marked by close calls.

Last spring, the Canadian art magazine publisher narrowly avoided foreclosure by sticking 366 Gin Lane, one of the compound’s two waterfront homes, into bankruptcy court just two days ahead of a scheduled auction.

Now the second mansion is also bankruptcy-bound, as Blouin continues her attempts to refinance and find a buyer for the four-acre property. For the whole estate, known as La Dune, she is asking $150 million. 

“It is a big number,” said Nest Seekers’ Geoff Gifkins, one of the listing brokers.

He noted that Blouin “put a lot of money into the house to get it restored and bring it up to the market.”

The renovations to 366 Gin Lane are what led to the estate’s financial woes. Blouin took out a $26 million mortgage to upgrade the residence in 2018, but didn’t keep up with the payments, triggering foreclosure proceedings from the lender, JGB Management. By May 2022, the loan balance had grown to $40 million.

Blouin will likely need an eye-popping sale to erase the mortgage debt, but $150 million is a hefty ask. Only five compounds in the Hamptons have ever sold for more than $100 million, appraiser Jonathan Miller told CNBC.

“I think it’s going to trade at market value,” said Nest Seekers’ Shawn Elliott, who is co-listing the property with Gifkins. “I think market value is somewhere between $125 million and $150 million.”

The agents said the two homes can be purchased separately.

Blouin sought $140 million for the estate in 2016, but later listed it as a rental for $1 million a month. In March 2019, she pulled it from the market, then relisted it in September for $110 million. Blouin yanked the property from the market again in January 2020, with a last asking price of $140 million.

She returned La Dune to the market last August, three months after stopping the foreclosure auction of the smaller home with the bankruptcy filing.

Blouin purchased the property in the 1990s for $13.5 million. One of the homes was built in the late 1800s by architect Stanford White, and the other, designed by French architect François Catroux, in 2002.

“I see the home as a masterpiece,” Blouin told the Wall Street Journal last summer. “It’s much like looking at my favorite painting in the world from Vermeer, ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring.’”

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The two homes together span 23,000 square feet and have 23 bedrooms. La Dune, which was featured in Woody Allen’s 1978 film “Interiors,” also features two swimming pools, a tennis court, a theater, a sauna, a spa and two gyms.

Blouin, who now resides primarily in Europe, is the founder and owner of art media companies including BlouinArtinfo, Art + Auction and Modern Painters. In 2016, she was named in the Panama Papers, which identified a trove of wealthy people concealing funds in offshore accounts.