It’s pretty great to be filthy rich. Just ask former fashion designer Helmut Lang, who has sold the two remaining parcels that comprise his sprawling East Hampton estate to his immensely deep-pocketed neighbors. The best part? Lang has the right to remain in the main house for two more years. Suh-weet!
Here’s the deal. Austrian-born Lang, who sold his fashion line to Prada in 2005 and became a full-time artist, purchased three parcels of land in 1999 on East Hampton’s Tyson Lane. He paid $15.5 million for them, reportedly outbidding Jerry Seinfeld by $1 million. Two of the Lang parcels are oceanfront, although strictly speaking, there are eight acres of dunes in front of the parcels that belong to the Nature Conservancy.
In 2020, Lang sold one of the parcels, an undeveloped, non-oceanfront flag lot of nearly an acre, to next door neighbor John B. Hess, of the eponymous energy company, for $9 million.
Now, the two other parcels have been sold in a pair of contiguous off-market transactions. One was scooped up by Hess, and the other by another neighbor, trophy-property collecting billionaire financier Howard Marks. Combined, the two sales add up to about $70 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, paid about $40 million for 1.6 acres of oceanfront land. Among the three outbuildings on the plum parcel are a guest house and a garage.
Hess ponied up around $30 million for about 1.1 acres, on which Lang’s main house sits, and is apparently OK with Lang continuing to occupy the house for the next two years. Depending on what Hess wants to do with the property, two years is actually not much time when it comes to securing the necessary approvals to build on oceanfront property in East Hampton Village.
Hess’s combined landholdings now add up to 5.1 acres, while Marks presides over an impressive 8.3 acres. And Lang, who once shopped the three properties off-market for a combined $100 million, has turned his $15.5 million investment into almost $80 million. Yep. Nice to be filthy rich.
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