Tech, nightlife, and restaurant mogul Michael Walrath is ready to bid adieu to his gorgeous estate on Long Island’s Gold Coast. Located in the exceedingly tony village of Matinecock, the seven-acre spread boasts a gracious 1925 house, two separate guest cottages, a greenhouse and a vegetable garden. Repped by Lindsey Barnett ofh Compass, the asking price is just under $12 million.
Walrath made his money originally as the CEO of Right Media, a digital advertising start-up. In 2007, Yahoo bought it for $850 million. Since then, Walrath has invested in other digital enterprises, including Yext, a 1,200-employee company aiming to use AI for online brand management, as well as in the hospitality industry where his holdings include the Surf Lodge, a hip hotel and nightclub in Montauk, and Organic Krush, a small but growing Long-Island-based chain with a menu dedicated to food with no pesticides, GMOs, chemicals or hormones. Walrath also owns the fine-dining establishment La Fin Kitchen & Lounge in Montauk, where he and wife Michelle maintain a large house on the shore of Lake Montauk.
About 30 miles outside Manhattan, the couple’s Matinecock house is spacious and elegant. Heavily renovated in 2008, the Walraths purchased the property in 2017 for $9.5 million. The center-hall colonial displays all the comfortable features that the style is known for, including formal living and dining rooms, as well as more casual spots, such as the spacious family room off the roomy kitchen. There are five bedrooms, seven full baths and three half-baths in the main house where the finished lower level sports a media room, a playroom or billiards room, wine cellar, and storage.
Outside are mature specimen trees and a gunite pool. Two recently renovated outbuildings have also been newly renovated, each with a two-car garage on the ground floor and a guest cottage upstairs. The smaller cottage has one bedroom and one bath, along with a large living room and kitchen, and the larger cottage, which also has a gym on the ground floor, features two bedrooms, one bathroom and a full kitchen.
For living the kind of healthful, organic lifestyle epitomized by the family’s Organic Krush brand, the exterior also contains a greenhouse for winter vegetables and a kitchen garden for summer. All in all: delicious.