A 30-year-old home on a prime double-lot on Lake Maitland sounds like a candidate for a tear-down, but that’s not the case with a recent sale.
The 2.1-acre lot on Bett Marr Lane has three structures on it, a main home, a gate house, and a lake house. It recently sold for $8.9 million.
Both the six-bedroom main house and the one-bedroom gate house were built in 1995. The one-bedroom lake house was added in 2004.
“It was concerned it would be a little time-stamped based on the year built. This home had a really nice flow to it. It all made sense,” said listing agent Brian Teach with Coldwell Banker Realty. “The buyers are definitely going to do some work to it. I don’t want to, by any means, say it was a fixer-upper, but it needed to be modernized.”
The main house currently has a mix of a Spanish and Mediterranean feel with orange Tuscan tile and some ornate finishes. Teach says the buyers will neutralize and modernize it a bit.
“They’re going to have a fresh take on that property. They definitely want to do a handful of things to make it their own.”
The buyers already lived nearby and knew of the house.
“This house was on his biking and walking route. He always admired the house and knew it was special and different and offered a larger lot,” Teach said.
The buyers are an LLC and Teach told GrowthSpotter they are a couple with a young family, something that resonated with the sellers, who was the estate of Gregory Steven Cockman.
Mick Night with Premier Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyers.
Originally, the property was the dividing line between Winter Park and Maitland.
“In 2004 the [seller] purchased the neighboring lot, which was Maitland and built the lake house. When he did that, the whole lot became Winter Park,” Teach explained, adding that the property cannot be divided.
“So many times, builders or owners try to maximize the square footage so you have a really big house on a small lot, this was quite the opposite,” he said about the large lot with 217 feet of lake frontage. “You could literally just walk around the grounds and you forget about the house.”
The outdoor space has an outdoor kitchen with a large eating area and a “massive” pool. There are also landscaped grounds with benches, including a rose garden, which appealed to the buyers whose family has experience with roses.
“As I walked around, I was kind of surprised, it really is park-like. You feel like you’re buying a piece of a park,” Teach said, adding that the sellers recalled many pool parties and family gatherings while growing up in the home.
When the home was first listed, Teach admitted he and the sellers had some concerns it would take a long time to sell, and that the buyer would want to tear it down and build something new.
“We liked the fact that they kind of knew and respected the neighborhood. That was important to the sellers, the kids who grew up in the house,” Teach explained. “They liked the idea that the buyer was a young family, appreciated the house, [and] wasn’t going to do anything to take down the house or change the house. They kind of liked that aspect.”
Teach had four offers on the home, three from neighbors who knew of the home’s good location and large expanse of waterfront.
“I think because it is so unique and it offered something a little bit different than you would find from other properties on the lake or within Winter Park, it made it really special.”
Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at Newsroom@GrowthSpotter.com or (407) 420-6261. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.
