Hedge funder Scott Bommer, of SAB Capital, is in contract to sell three Lily Pond Lane properties in the Hamptons for $110 million in an off-market deal, The Post has learned.
It is the second-most expensive purchase in the Hamptons — the first was activist investor Barry Rosenstein’s $147 million purchase of an 18-acre East Hampton property, as The Post reported exclusively.
If the Lily Pond Lane sale closes, it will be the fifth-most expensive residential purchase in the country. The deal was brokered by Ed Petrie, of Compass.
Bommer bought the properties at 93 Lily Pond Lane, 101 Lily Pond Lane and 97 Lily Pond Lane for $93.9 million in 2014. The properties include a 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, one-story home, built in 1914 in the traditional Hamptons shingled style.
The news comes on the heels of Bommer’s decision to give back most of his investors’ money this month after a 17-year run so he can focus on investing his own wealth. Bommer had $1.1 billion in assets at the end of 2014. Three other funds — Fortress Investment Group, BlackRock Inc. and LionEye Capital — have announced similar intentions.
The three properties, including 284 feet of oceanfront, are on 6.4 acres. David Tepper, a billionaire hedge funder who keeps a sculpture of giant brass testicles in his office, was rumored to be the buyer, but he denied the purchase. New East End laws that hinder buyers’ abilities to tear down existing homes to build mega-monster complexes stopped some potential buyers, like Tepper, who loved the land but hated the “mob-style” main house, sources told The Post.
Tepper made news in 2011 for buying a $43.5 million beach house that belonged to his ex-Goldman Sachs boss, Jon Corzine, and then blowing it up to build something bigger. After leaving Goldman Sachs, Tepper founded Appaloosa Management and made $7.5 billion for his company — almost $4 billion for himself — when he bet that the government wouldn’t let the big banks fail at the height of the 2009 eco crisis. (“It was like that scene in ‘Trading Places’ with the orange juice futures,” he once said, according to New York magazine.) Tepper then became the world’s highest-paid fund manager for two years.
The country’s second-most expensive sale was a Palm Beach manse that sold for $129.6 million in 2012, followed by a Greenwich, Conn., estate that sold for $120 million in 2014. Next up is a Woodside, Calif., mansion that sold for $117.5 million in 2013. There’s also a $103 million Further Lane land parcel in the Hamptons that sold for $103 million in 2005, a $100.4 million apartment that sold at 157 W. 57th St. in Manhattan in 2014 and a $100 million chateau in Palo Alto that sold in 2011. Nothing else has sold for more than $100 million in the country. Real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller compiled the stats at The Post’s request.