By DeAnn Rossetti
A 7,500-square-foot home on three acres with 175 feet of waterfront for less than $5.5 million.
That’s what Dr. David Humphrey wrote in 1995, describing his dream home.
When he wants something, he follows through.
But even the methodical Humphrey thought getting this home would be almost impossible.
Still, he looked on the Eastside. But he had no luck. Then, in 1996 he complained to his Realtor of his frustration. She told him the former Reed Estate, Grand Haven Mansion, had just come on the market.
“We drove down the big, circular driveway, saw the house framed by giant cedar trees, saw that the home was 7,500 square feet with three acres of waterfront, and I said, `We’re home!”’ said Humphrey. “It’s a father-of-the-bride-type home that my wife loved instantaneously.”
But now that their two children are grown, the Humphreys have put the 1936 Georgian /Federalist mansion on the market at
$12.95 million.
“The rich are different from you and me,” writer F. Scott Fitzgerald said, to which Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald’s legendary editor at Charles Scribner’s Son, replied, “Yes, they have more money.”
The rich — and other home buyers on Mercer Island — need it. As of last Thursday, 71 percent of the homes listed for sale on the Island were priced at more than $1 million, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. The median price — meaning half cost more and half less — of all homes listed here was $1.4 million.
The highest of the high-end homes for sale on the Island is the Lytle mansion, which will set you back $40 million — what it cost to make the recent movie “Sin City.”
With nearly 23,000 square feet, the home has four bedrooms and nine bathrooms — but that doesn’t even begin to tell the story.
Located on two acres, it features 175 feet of waterfront, landscaping by acclaimed designer R. David Adams, and a boat dock able to accommodate a 140-foot yacht.
The mansion has two stories plus a lower level that houses an indoor saltwater pool, guest suites and one of two wine cellars. The home has custom marble and stone floors throughout, an exercise room with adjoining bath and Jacuzzi, a massage and tanning room, music salon, steam room, sun room, two service bars, two powder rooms, two koi ponds and an outdoor saltwater pool.
It also features a formal dining room with a gold leaf ceiling, and a family room with custom African carpet on inlaid oak flooring and an oversize limestone fireplace from France. The media room has upholstered walls and surround sound.
The master suite is done in French art deco and features a raised platform bed with expansive views of Lake Washington, a marble fireplace, and a chandelier over the bathtub.
“It’s a fairy-tale mansion,” said Wendy Lister, the listing agent for the home. “One of the things that makes it stand out is the craftsmanship and materials used on the home. The beauty of the gardens is something to see, and the marble floors make the home gleam.”
Maybe not the Lytle mansion, but locally some people purchase their multi-million-dollar fairy tales without credit, said Breffni McGeough, a Realtor with Windermere’s Yarrow Bay office.
“Lots of them are paying cash, writing checks just like you would for a new coat,” he said.
Nationally, the luxury market is booming, with prices rising because of higher demand and fewer homes, according to Jonathan Nicholas, a regional director with RE/Max.
“Baby boomers are after a dream lifestyle,” Nicholas said.
The trend for wealthy buyers is to have a home with both formal and informal dining spaces, gourmet kitchens indoors and outdoors, a wine cellar, a workout room or gymnasium, large master suites with huge, fancy bathrooms and dressing rooms attached, and lighting/heating systems that can be controlled from the homeowner’s cell phone, according to Lister, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker Bain in downtown Bellevue, and McGeough. Kitchens and bathrooms are the most common remodeling projects.
A major restoration of the Lytle property was completed in 2001, adding a number of opulent amenities, according a recent issue of Forbes magazine. It listed the mansion as one of the most expensive homes in America’s West for 2005. The home is owned by a couple who develops retirement homes, Forbes reported.
Lister, however, declined to provide details about the owners.
The history of the Humphreys’ home is pretty well-known, though.
Grand Haven was once owned by Dr. John J. Bonica, who invented epidural anesthesia. It features an expansive lawn that runs all the way to Lake Washington.
“There’s enough lawn here to marry all the daughters on Mercer Island at the same time,” said McGeough, Grand Haven’s listing agent.
He drives buyers to view homes in his Bentley Arnage, and offers them his calling cards, small jars of Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard or a chocolate truffle, each nestled in a small gold-colored box with his contact information on the outside.
“The guest house used to be a boat-building shed, and one man told me he’d talked to the owners about buying it and the surrounding waterfront in the 1940s, but they wanted $4,000. His father said not to give them a penny more than $3,000,” said McGeough. “So he didn’t buy it, but Dr. Bonica came along 20 years later and had to pay the princely sum of $120,000 for the mansion and the shed.”
Grand Haven has six bedrooms and 6 1/2 bathrooms, including his and hers loos (his has a shower, hers an ancient bidet) in the master suite. It also features a formal dining room, wine cellar, powder room, and a library with a circa-1930s refrigerator. Under the dining room table is a button from which help can be summoned.
The mansion was barged across Lake Washington to its current location on East Mercer Way from Seattle’s Madison Park in 1943.
Though there isn’t one place on Mercer Island that has all the mansions, Kris Robbs, who has been a real estate agent for 28 years, said that the north end or west side of the Island is riddled with such opulent homes.
“There is a little enclave on S.E. 22nd, heading east of the Roanoke (Tavern) with many mansions,” said Robbs.
McGeough said mansions are all over the Island, with buyers attracted by three main things.
“It’s the waterfront,” he said. “It’s the schools. It’s the security. If you commit a crime on Mercer Island, you have to get to I-90. It’s a very safe place.”
So what do you have to do to see the inside of some of these luxury homes?
Well McGeough said he doesn’t vet people, mainly because he doesn’t get a lot of `Looky Lous.’
“I’ve found, after 12 years (in real estate) that you really never know who has money and who doesn’t,” he said. “I know that those who can’t afford it wouldn’t waste my time, and there’s nothing wrong with having wealthy `Looky Lous’ look at your home because they know other wealthy buyers. You can either interrogate people until they’re exhausted or treat them with respect; the latter is more profitable.”
Apparently.
In 2004, the highest-priced home that sold on the Island — and that was listed in the multiples — was a 7,000-square-foot number featuring five bedrooms and 4 1/4 baths. The high-end digs, located on eight-tenths of an acre, went for $7.7 million, or $1,100 per square foot.
Yet, even at those prices, Humphrey will miss the mansion that stole his heart.
“People that we knew told us to tear the house down,” said Humphrey, who retired as a physician in 1994. “We said that would be like using antique furniture to kindle a fire. There’s value in a home of stately design; it wraps itself around you.”
