Copper Beech Farm, the 50-acre Greenwich estate that roared onto the market last May with a record-setting $190M price tag, has been mercilessly slashed, first down to $140M and now again down to $130M. At 68 percent of its original ask, the property is no longer home to the priciest mega-mansion in the country, having ceded the throne to Dallas’ Crespi-Hicks estate, which is still holding strong at $135M. (Jackson Land and Cattle, a 1,750-acre estate in Jackson Hole, Wyo., has been asking $175M for a while, but there several homes on that ranch and most people would consider it a working farm with investment potential instead of, say, a single-family home.)
But, please, back to the blockbuster home at hand. Owned by timber mogul John Rudey, the property is stocked with a 12-bedroom mansion, a whopping 4,000—yes, four thousand—feet of water frontage, and not one, but two offshore islands. Rudey originally told the Journal that he was selling the spread, which he bought 31 years ago, because his kids had grown, but that may have been only half of the truth. According to a followup piece in the Times, Rudey’s timber holdings have been decimated by transportation issues, endangered species conservation, water limitations, and the spruce budworm, a tree-burrowing insect. These setbacks might not have impacted the Copper Beech Farm property at all had Rudey not used the sprawling waterfront estate as collateral on a series of huge loans. At one time, according to the Times, the debt attached to the property totaled a whopping $203M. (After the 2006 collapse of one of Rudey’s timber holding companies, the banks came calling. In 2011, Bank of America began foreclosure proceedings on a portion of Copper Beech Farm. The bank later backed off, but Rudey may have been forced to sell off much of his remaining timber holdings, and his $16.5M Fifth Avenue apartment, to keep creditors at bay.)
http://curbed.com/archives/2014/01/22/at-130m-nations-priciest-manse-is-no-longer-the-priciest.php