Trending
Breyer family’s agents try to sweeten deal for multi-million dollar Hamptons property
Agents Jim Oxnam, Jennifer McGivern and the house at 40 Lee AvenueAgents for the Breyers ice cream family are switching up their marketing scheme for an East Hampton property that has languished on the market for 10 months.
The 40 Lee Avenue listing, which had included a 7,500-square-foot mansion, two guesthouses and two vacant lots, had an original asking price of $35 million. But agent Jim Oxnam of Brown Harris Stevens said he axed one of the lots from the listing, knocking the entire price down by $5 million, before slashing the price further, by $3 million, to bring the asking figure to $27 million.
While the forsaken lot had always been available for separate sale with an asking price of $6.5 million, Oxnam said he and fellow listing Jennifer McGivern, also of BHS, hope that officially removing it from the listing will make its status as a separate property more explicit to buyers. The 1.2-acre lot is currently available for $6 million.
“The feeling was, whoever bought the other property wouldn’t be interested in the lot,” Oxnam said, noting that the other two properties adjoin one another. “It’s just that it’s really separate in a way.”
And marketing a listing that’s $8 million cheaper could help matters, as well.
“There are only so many buyers at $35 million,” Oxnam said. “I think there will be interest at this [price] point.”
This marketing switch-up comes amid continued lethargy in the Hamptons’ luxury market, according to Judi Desiderio, CEO of East End-based Town & Country Real Estate. No more than two listings in the Hamptons have sold for above $20 million so far this year, she said.
“In all fairness, some brokers haven’t [yet understood] the severity of the market,” Desiderio said.
But Desiderio said that the new approach by the Breyer family’s agents could yield results, by making it “more attainable” to sellers.
The Breyer family confirmed the property was theirs but declined to comment further.