State in elite company after $108M sale
take include contacting banks or other financial institutions directly rather than through phone numbers in emails that are seeking money or action of some kind.
“Criminals continue to develop new tricks to defraud people, so think twice before clicking on a link and report suspicious activity to law enforcement,” FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge Mark Michalek said in a statement.
Only a handful of states can claim a single-family home sale topping $100 million. Colorado has joined that rarified group with the record $108 million closing on Monday of 419 Willoughby Way on Aspen’s Red Mountain.
“It is great for the market. It is a testament to how special a community Aspen is on a global scale,” said listing agent Riley Warwick, who is with the Saslove & Warwick Team at Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
The founder of the Bellagio and Wynn resort casinos, Steve Wynn, teamed up with Thomas Peterffy, a pioneer in computerized and discount stock trading, to purchase the home for close to the $110 million the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
Patrick Dovigi, founder and CEO of Green for Life Environmental and a former professional hockey player in Canada, was the seller. Dovigi, who has invested in several Aspen properties, purchased the home in 2021 for $72.5 million from Lewis Sanders, former chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein.
“Only a few markets have reached that kind of sale,” said Julie Morrah, president of Aspen Title & Escrow, which handled the title and escrow work on the purchase.
The U.S. saw its first $100 million home sale two decades ago. Since then, about two dozen sales, not counting Monday’s purchase, have crossed that mark, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Most $100 million-plus home sales have happened in Manhattan; Miami and Palm Beach, Fla.; Los Angeles and Malibu, Calif.; and Hawaii. Aspen now joins that list.
Monday’s sale busted a short-lived record for Colorado set last Thursday of $77 million paid for Owl Creek Ranch, also in Aspen.
So how did Dovigi reap a 50% return in just three years? He and his wife, an interior designer, remodeled the property, originally built in 2009.
The house sits in a prime location at the base of Red Mountain overlooking Aspen. At 22,405 square feet, the house has 11 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms, a guest house, a large garage, and a heated outdoor pool.
Pitkin County has capped future home construction at a maximum of 9,250 square feet, Warwick said. Unless the rules change, Aspen won’t ever see a new home built at that size, so scarcity also helped push the price higher.
Unlike a traditional closing where sellers, buyers and their agents sit across from each other at a table and hand over keys once the wire clears, the deal was done remotely and through attorneys, which is typical for the highestend homes.
“You have a lot of attorneys involved doing a lot of the heavy lifting,” Morrah said, noting that a deal of that size had extra tight security.
The progression of Colorado’s highest-priced home, which was privately listed, was as follows, according to Zillow:
Land was acquired for $7 million in September 2003. The home first sold for $43 million in July 2009. It sold again for $72.5 million in June 2021. On Monday it sold a third time for $108 million.
Zillow had pegged the house’s value at $90.2 million., A separate sale included furnishings and private artwork which was not disclosed.