A couple days ago, a waterfront mansion in Great Neck, New York hit the market for $55 million. A $55 million mansion being listed for sale might not normally be worthy of a Celebrity Net Worth article. Unless it was being sold by a celebrity, a home with a $55 million price tag isn't all that notable anymore. The house you're about to see is an exception. It might simultaneously be the weirdest and most impressive mansion ever.
Situated on 8 waterfront acres in the extremely upscale Long Island neighborhood of Great Neck, the exterior of the mansion is nothing short of jaw dropping:
Via OneKey MLS/Daniel Gale Great Neck LLC
The compound actually features THREE separate mansions! Thanks to those three mansions, the property has 60,000 combined square feet of living space, 18 bedrooms and THIRTY TWO bathrooms.
The property also boasts a 100+ foot waterfront pool, a boat dock, a ballroom, an indoor racquetball court, two-story doll house, casino room, shooting range, bowling alley, tennis court, multiple indoor pools, a lazy river, several spas, a movie theater and luscious gardens. The boat dock can accommodate a 200-foot yacht.
I shudder to imagine this property's monthly water and gardening bill.
Here's what the property looks like from the front:
Via OneKey MLS/Daniel Gale Great Neck LLC
Pretty amazing, right? Well, once you go inside, the decor takes an unusual turn.
To ease you into the weirdness, check out the all-marble dining room:
Via OneKey MLS/Daniel Gale Great Neck LLC
Ok so now that you've had a primer, I don't even know what to say about these rooms:
Via OneKey MLS/Daniel Gale Great Neck LLC
Via OneKey MLS/Daniel Gale Great Neck LLC
Via OneKey MLS/Daniel Gale Great Neck LLC
Via OneKey MLS/Daniel Gale Great Neck LLC
Here's a video property tour which, perhaps not surprisingly, does not show any interiors:
If this property is tickling your fancy, I have a tiny bit of good news. At $55 million, that's almost a full 50% discount from the $100 million the owner was reportedly seeking back in 2015.
The current owner's identity is not known. What is known is that the current owner bought the house after a previous owner named Tamir Sapir died in 2014. Tamir Sapir was born in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in the mid 1940s. In the 1970s he moved to America, eventually landing in New York City. He worked as a janitor and a bus driver then spent several years driving a taxicab. In the 1980s Tamir used his taxi savings to open an electronics store on Fifth Avenue that catered primarily to Russian clientele. Through his store Tamir parlayed into a lucrative niche selling Soviet oil and fertilizer to companies around the world at a time when it was very difficult for the Soviet government to sell anything.
That's how he first became a millionaire. In the 1990s, when Manhattan real estate was in a major slump, Tamir bought property. By 2002 he was a billionaire. The press liked to call Tamir "America's billionaire cabbie."
After Tamir's death in 2014, the above mansion was sold to a mystery buyer. Reportedly the mystery buyer never moved into the property.
What do you think this mansion will ultimately sell for? If you were worth $500 million – so money wasn't an object – what would you offer for this house?
