Inner Harbor mansion sells for $6.25 million
A 9,000-square-foot mansion on an Inner Harbor pier has sold for $6.25 million to a West Coast executive with ties to the movie industry.
The all-cash sale is likely to rank among the region’s top residential sales for the year.
Agents who worked on the deal declined to identify the buyer. But they said the sale generally speaks to strength in Baltimore’s high-end market.
“The luxury real estate market is thriving,” said Charlie Hatter, co-owner of Monument Sotheby’s International Realty, which took over as the listing agent on the property last year.
Hatter also handles sales at the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton Residences and listed the former Reisterstown estate of Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr.
Of the top properties sold in the Baltimore region last year, just one cracked $5 million, a waterfront manor located on a creek off the South River in Annapolis. That one sold for $6.125 million.
The last major sale in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor was author Tom Clancy‘s 2009 purchase of a 12,000-square-foot penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton Residences — several units combined into one — for $12.6 million.
The home that sold this month, at the foot of Ponte Villas Drive, was purchased by commercial real estate developer Leroy Merritt in 2007 for $6.1 million, according to land records.
Merritt was a self-described “house-a-holic,” who made headlines when he bought Guilford’s landmark Sherwood Mansion in 2005 for $2.5 million. (He never lived there and sold it less than two years later.)
The Inner Harbor property, which rises five stories topped by a panoramic roof deck, is part of the 87-home gated Pier Homes at Harborview development. Two units combined into one, it was custom built for Merritt. The six-bedroom house, with both a spiral staircase and an elevator, contains a sauna, billiards room and home theater, among other highlights.
The property, valued at about $2.8 million for tax purposes, passed into the hands of the family after his death in 2010.
William J. Ganz III, the broker-owner of Ganz Exclusive Real Estate, who represented the buyer on the sale, said he was bound by non-disclosure agreements and couldn’t say much. The buyer looked widely, but the privacy of the spot — and its opulence — set it apart.
“That is the playboy mansion of Baltimore,” said Ganz, who lives in the same development. “There’s nothing else that compares to it.”
This story has been updated to reflect the correct sales price.
nsherman@baltsun.com