Albemarle House Gets Major Price Cut, Again

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Nov 10th 2010 at 9:01PM

Last month when I wrote about the Kluge winery's financial woes I had to wonder about the fate of Albemarle, Patricia Kluge's lavish home in Charlottesville, Virginia. The home first hit the market for $100 million last year but was reduced to $48 million back in February. Now, that number has been sliced neatly in half. Business Insider led me back to the listing and the new magic number of $24 million.

The estate is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and James Monroe's Ash Lawn-Highland. On the grounds there are three ponds, a pool as well as a pool house, log cabin, a greenhouse and several staff cottages. The main house was completed in 1985 and spans over 25,000 square feet with 45 rooms. The home was designed by architect David Easton and his team and includes a theater, library, recreation room with spa and sauna, a card room and an Islamic gallery featuring an antique Syrian fountain. Should you have some leftover cash after buying the home you can turn the front grounds into an 18-hole golf course. Arnold Palmer has already designed it. The home's antiques, art and furniture were sold off at Sotheby's earlier this year in a two-day buying bonanza that brought in $15.2 million. A sale of Patricia Kluge's jewelry brought in around $5 million.

Gallery: Albemarle

Tags: albemarle house, AlbemarleVirginia, Charlottesville Police, kluge winery, patricia kluge, virginia real estate

Filed under: Estates

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Loving Annie Nov 10th 2010 9:57PM

Somebody ought to turn Albermarle House into a small luxury boutique hotel, like the absolutely luscious 18 room Glenmere Mansion on 150 acres with its own lake that just opened this January in the lower Hudson Valley in Chester, New York.

I'm sure after looking at the pictures you could easily charge $1,000 a night per room at Albermale, and this is a delightful small enough place it would probably be full year-round.

Places like Blantyre in Lenox, MA. and San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, CA. are small and quite successful, and gorgeous places to have weddings too.
I think the small very high-end properties (b&b's of the incredibly luxurious type) are so appealing compared to the larger 5 star hotel chains with their 200-300 rooms and cookie cutter approach.

Spectacular Bid Nov 10th 2010 11:44PM

"Loving Annie", while an interesting suggestion the math simply isn't there to make a profit. Glenmere (which had been a wedding site) was purchased for $8.5M by the partners and several million more poured in to make it a boutique hotel. The key to it being the geography as its very close in proximity to Metro NY. With that high of an investment even a 90% occupancy year round (which is totally impossible) would only yield a return many, many years later.

The lovely Blantyre you cited was purchased in the early 1980's for a pittance by the Fitzpatrick family. That small capital cost makes a huge difference in operating an Inn either in the red or black.

With Albermarle and an asking price of 4 times that of Glenmere and then million more to bring it up to code for commercial purposes, no where near an urban (and with it financially accomplished) center to feed it with would-be guests, and quirky architecture by Easton who is no Carrerre & Hastings it all adds up to financial ruin should someone have plans to buy it to be an Inn.

That's why Elm Court (Lenox, MA) fell through when on the market for $16M as a very public example of overpaying for a boutique site. It's also why the spa/inn/wedding site of Mepal Manor / Gedney Farm in the Berkshires has remained unsold for several years.

There are numerous grand old estates throughout the US serving an Inns with weddings - all charging a premium - and struggling to get by despite having been purchased for tremendous fractions of what Albermarle is listed for. The math simply isn't there to buy effectively a multi-million dollar business which generates only thousands of dollar of profit.

adesertking Nov 11th 2010 1:10AM

I was a guest when Kluge was alive, back in the day as they say. Simply one of the finest homes in America. Every square inch is quality, not like some "homes" where the show is all downtairs and upstairs is average. That is a great buy for someone.

JLS Nov 11th 2010 1:35AM

So they dropped the price by 76 million dollars or 76%. Unbelievable! Very difficult these days in this economy to establish what a property is really worth. It's worth what someone will pay for it, period. The home is beautiful but to me it's far too cluttered. The naked male statues are too numerous and awful. The land is what would attract me as a buyer. Positively gorgeous! I think I'd be interested but pull out 80% of the furnishings.

JLS Nov 11th 2010 1:39AM

After a more careful read I see now that the furnishings were sold earlier in the year for 15.2 million. That was a huge amount of furnishings.

Loving Annie Nov 11th 2010 12:48PM

Spectacular Bid: Thank you so much for explaining all of that like you did. I had no knowledge or history like you did, and so you educated me gently and well! Now it makes sense why you can't just turn one of there gorgeous homes (mansions) into a relais & chateaux type high end b&b!

And yes, Carrere & Hastings did a FABULOUS JOB at Glenmere!