Steve Roth is finally severing his ties to Bernie Madoff’s former Montauk home.
The Vornado Realty Trust CEO and his wife are in contract to sell the house at 216 Old Montauk Highway, the New York Post reported. The buyer and sale price were not disclosed, but the home was asking $16.5 million.
The Roths spent $9.4 million to buy the place in 2009 in a sale forced by the U.S. Marshals Service. Madoff had picked up the property in 1980 for $250,000.
Proceeds from the sale went to victims of Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison and died behind bars in 2021.
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For the Roths, selling the home may have seemed to take longer than Madoff’s sentence. The couple listed the property in 2018 for $21 million and cut the price to $19.9 million a year later. After another try — $17.9 million in 2020 — the home disappeared from the market, only to return asking $22.5 million last spring.
The property is 150 feet from the Atlantic Ocean and has 180 feet of ocean frontage. The soon-to-be former owners added a living room with a stone fireplace, an eat-in kitchen with patio access, a primary bedroom with a terrace, a gym and an outdoor pool with a cabana. The estate is 1.5 acres.
The Roths hired Thierry Despont to update the 3,000-square-foot home, which was spotlighted in this month’s Netflix miniseries, “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street.”
The Corcoran Group’s Tim Davis shares the listing with Bespoke Real Estate.
The Netflix series drew renewed attention to Madoff’s scam and his ill-gotten gains, including his real estate holdings.
But this month, a penthouse co-op that Madoff owned on the Upper East Side was pulled off the market after seven months without an offer. Real estate investor Lawrence Benenson, who purchased the home for $14 million in 2014 and an adjacent apartment for $4 million, was asking $18.5 million for the pre-war unit.
— Holden Walter-Warner