Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama continue to expand their real estate holdings outside Chicago, with the closing Wednesday of their $11.75 million purchase of a seven-bedroom, 6,892-square-foot mansion on 29.3 acres in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard.
Public records in Dukes County, Massachusetts, show that a land trust that bears the name of the estate’s street address paid $11.75 million for the estate and also took out a $7.05 million mortgage from J.P. Morgan for the property. The trustee of that trust is James F. Reynolds, a lawyer in Edgartown.
The Obamas bought the estate from Boston Celtics lead owner Wyc Grousbeck and his former wife, Corinne, who first had listed it for $22.5 million in 2015 and then cut their asking price to $16.25 million in August 2018. In July, they cut their asking price to $14.85 million.
The Grousbecks paid $3.15 million for the property in 1998 and built the mansion several years later, according to public records. The architectural firm that designed the mansion was Brandenburger Taylor Lombardo Architects of San Francisco, according to the Vineyard Gazette.
The Grousbecks’ listing agents, Gerret Conover and Thomas LeClair of LandVest Martha’s Vineyard, declined to comment on any aspects of the sale. They only were willing to say 2019 was a year full of record sales on Martha’s Vineyard, along with generally strong interest from buyers for properties on the island.
The Obamas had rented the estate this past summer and had been longtime summer guests on Martha’s Vineyard, renting homes there for all but one of the years that they occupied the White House. Features in their new mansion include eight baths, vaulted ceilings, a living room with a stone fireplace, a master suite with a fireplace and a private sundeck, an outdoor fireplace, a pool and two guest wings. The L-shaped property also has a private beach and a boathouse on Edgartown Great Pond, which is in the southeast corner of Martha’s Vineyard.
The other two properties that the Obamas own are their six-bedroom, 6,243-square-foot mansion in the South Side Kenwood neighborhood, which they purchased for $1.65 million in 2005, and their nine-bedroom, 6,441-square-foot mansion in Washington, D.C.’s, Kalorama neighborhood, which they purchased from onetime White House press secretary Joe Lockhart and his wife, Giovanna, in 2017 for $8.1 million.
Also, earlier this year, Michelle Obama rented a seven-bedroom, 12,800-square-foot contemporary-style mansion on Swallow Drive in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills, which has an open-air shark aquarium, a humidor room and a movie theater. That mansion remains on the market for $22.9 million.
The Obamas’ Martha’s Vineyard purchase first was reported by the Vineyard Gazette.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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