Record-breaking Fox Chapel home back on the market
The $6.3 million house that made headlines last year for fetching the highest sales price ever in Fox Chapel is back on the market.
West Penn Multi-List records show the four-bedroom Fairview Road house, which sold in April 2023, was re-listed for sale by its owner on Feb. 29 with a price tag of $7 million.
“Sadly, there just aren’t that many buyers in the $7 million range in Pittsburgh,” said Kim Marie Angiulli, a luxury real estate agent at Coldwell Banker. “Some homes in that price range will take years to sell.”
Allegheny County real estate records show the property was purchased 11 months ago by Lava Trust for $6,350,175. Tax records show Lava Trust is controlled by Luis von Ahn, a Guatemalan computer scientist and CEO of the online language learning platform Duolingo. With no comparable home sales even close — the average list price for a home in Fox Chapel was $1.9 million at the time of the sale — the record-breaking price was so far off the charts that local Realtors predicted it could throw Pittsburgh’s luxury home prices out of whack.
“And that’s exactly what happened,” said Roz Neiman, a Howard Hanna Real Estate agent who specializes in the luxury home market.
To illustrate the point:
• After the Fairview Road sale, the owners of a Fox Chapel home on SouthDrive listed their luxury home for $8.2 million in July 2023, only to reduce the price by a whopping $1 million to $7,250,000 in December whenno buyers stepped forward.
• A Beechwood Boulevard home that listed for $4.6 million in June 2023 was reduced by $600,000 to $3.95 million in September 2023, accordingto West Penn Multi-List data.
• And the owners of a house on Kipling Road in Shadyside dropped their price by $300,000 to $2.9 million in January after it sat on the market for four months.
In other words: One sale might have have blown up the pricing mechanism for Pittsburgh’s luxury home market. While some houses are selling for much higher than they should, agents say, others are seeing some of the biggest price drops in Allegheny County history.
‘Everybody thinks their house is worth triple now’
Mr. von Ahn declined to comment for this story through his real estate representative. Agents familiar with the Fairview Road property say he never even moved into it.
Ms. Neiman said she recently showed the Fairview Road house to a client who made a $4.5 million offer, but it was rejected by the seller.
“He’s offering what the price should be if we look at what has sold other than [the record price last year],” Ms. Neiman said, adding that she also knows of other buyers who have so far offered less than $7 million for the Fairview Road house.
The asking price is actually what Mr. von Ahn paid for the home last year, agents said. Although Allegheny County property records show a $6.3 million purchase price for the Fairview Road home, sources familiar with the sale said he paid $7 million when including personal and moveable property included in the sale. The lower amount, recorded for tax purposes, is a legal strategy often used by buyers, they said.
Ms. Neiman is convinced that the Fairview Road sale has boosted luxury home prices in Fox Chapel, Pittsburgh and Sewickley.
“Houses are going for a lot of money,” she said. “Not that crazy amount of money. But it has affected the high-end market in a positive way. It has raised the prices of other houses.
“Everybody thinks their house is worth triple now after the Fairview sale.”
Ms. Angiulli, who covers the luxury home market in the northern suburbs, said high-end homes keep getting more expensive.
One reason why, she said: Neighbors trying to outdo each other.
“Sellers think if their neighbor got that, they can get this,” she said. “And it’s drivingthe high-end luxury market up.”
She has seen sellers increase their asking price by as much as $200,000 just because of a neighbor listing their home for more. Higher prices, she said, are feeding a frenzyfor even higher prices.
“It has spread throughout and it’s spreading into North Allegheny where there are more luxury listings, homes and builds,“Ms. Angiulli said.
$1 million is the new ordinary
The Fox Chapel house isn’t Mr. von Ahn’s only recentluxury home purchase.
He was also behind a trust that paid a record-breaking $22.5 million for a townhouse in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, according to a December 2022 report in TheRealDeal Real Estate News. In 2011, he bought a $1.25 million house on West Lyndhurst Drive in Shady side, not far from Duo lin go’ s headquarters in East Liberty.
Duolingo is a mobile learning platform that offers courses in more than 40 languages through its app. The company trades under the Nasdaq sticker (DUOL) at about $230 a share. It has 720employees and a market capitalization of about $10 billion. Mr. von Ahn carries the titles of co-founder, chairman of the board, president and CEO.
Luxury home sales — like other homes — slowed down in this region last year because fewer people put homes on the market. And prices kept rising.
Indeed, the $1 million home has become so ordinary in this region that the new standard for a luxury home starts at around $1.5 million now, agents say.
There were 58 homes in northern Allegheny County and Butler County that sold for more than $1.5 million last year, according to West Penn Multi-List records. Eighteen homes sold in northern Allegheny County and Butler for $2 million or more, and five sold for $3 million or more.
Only one house — FairviewLane in Fox Chapel — sold for more than $4 million in the area, which includes northern Allegheny County, Fox Chapel, Hampton and Highland Park. The areas included in the 2023 WestPenn-Multi-List data do not include Mt. Lebanon, communities in the south suburbsor the East End.
Georgie Smigel, a Cranberry-based Coldwell Banker real estate agent in the luxury home market, said a $7 million sale is way above her average sales price.
“That’s a heck of a lot of money in Pittsburgh,” Ms. Smigel said, adding that Allegheny County tax records show the owner pays $68,360 a year in taxes. “Just imagine what the house payment is. The taxes are $5,000 a month.”