Property highlights:
Location: Rochester, Michigan
Listing price: $11,500,000
Features: The 22-acre property is home to a gorgeous European-style mansion that will guarantee privacy and comfort. Designed by architect Dominick Tringali, the home mixes classical styling with modern luxuries.
Added appeal: The house features architectural flourishes such as wooden archways, ceiling frescoes and gold-leafed accents. In-house entertainment includes a home theater, indoor pool, dry sauna and a full bar and kitchen. Also on the property are two guest homes, and included in the sale are decorative pieces of fine art.
Do you want a European-style home without leaving the United States? Then 1558 Dutton Road in Rochester, Michigan, is the property for you. The estate is located within the Detroit metro area, but its isolated, high-elevated location means you can enjoy some solitude that city life can’t provide.
This home is truly one of a kind, having been custom-built by local brokerage Vito Anthony Homes & Building from 2000 to 2005. RISMedia spoke with Brokerage Owner Vito Pampalona about his recent efforts to sell the property.
Devin Meenan: What’s your take on the current state of the Michigan luxury market?
Vito Pampalona: We may not get the huge numbers often seen in Naples or Palm Beach or somewhere in California, but there are people who buy up in these ranges. We’re going to be a bit slower than a traditional high-end market, but most of the people who buy up in this range, they’ve got the wherewithal to buy and maintain a property like this, regardless of economic conditions.
DM: What was your price-setting process for the property?
VP: It’s an unusual property being that there’s been over $20 million invested in it, and when you go to remarket something like that, certainly it is a limited market. But the value, in my opinion, rising construction costs. We had such talented trades that worked on the house—carpenters, plaster people; we had painters…we actually had artists doing some of the painting in the house. So, it’s an extremely talented group of people who worked on the project. You couldn’t reproduce it today and not even in five years. I don’t even know if we’d take on a project like that today. There’s a certain amount of cost to owning something like , but people who buy, they expect that.
DM: What makes the property a unique opportunity for buyers?
VP: This is 20-plus acres in one of the nicest suburban areas in Michigan. It’s a cool, beautiful setting that offers a lot of privacy and security. The time to put a project like this together—the planning stages, the architectural, the design, the decorators—it’s a massive, massive undertaking. So to price something like this, it’s really for sale for 40 cents on the dollar, so to speak.
DM: What’s been your marketing strategy?
VP: We do all the traditional things, all the different REALTOR® websites, national pages, a lot of the local high-end magazines. We’ve had a lot of people with their own networks when we had a select broker open house, so they’re using social media to get this product out to their network of high-end buyers. Social media is a new frontier, and it’s been very effective. We’ve got a phenomenal video and group of photos on this property—people can figuratively walk through this house and see it , then when they get here, it’s even more. We’re introducing the new social media avenues, and we’ve had good success so far and good turnout.
DM: What makes this a Great Space?
VP: Again, it’s located in one of the best suburban areas of Detroit. It’s fairly close to airports; if you fly private, there’s a private airport that’s 20 minutes away. It’s a beautiful setting—to have this kind of land with that house and all these structures on it, very rare. There’s two additional houses on the property—you could have caretakers live there, or you could have a maid’s quarters in the house. It’s very unique,with a very European/French-country home quality—you could sit there and think, “I’m in the south of France.” It’s very unusual, and for the right buyer, it’s a tremendous opportunity.
For more information, visit www.vitoanthony.com.
