Amid an avalanche of sexual harassment allegations, former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes has put two of the handful of homes that comprise his 20-plus-acre hilltop compound in bucolic Garrison, N.Y, up for sale, with asking prices considerably below what he paid.
The publicly pilloried septuagenarian media tycoon, who resigned his powerful post in July with a severance package reported to be $40 million, only to become an advisor to Donald Trump, purchased the larger of the two residences, according to property records, in 2007 for $1.2 million. The not-quite-2,900-square-foot mid-century modern, on almost 2.5 acres, has three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms along with open-plan living spaces that feature bleached-wood floors and a three-sided stone fireplace.
There’s also a chef’s kitchen and a wraparound deck that overlooks a kidney-shaped swimming pool and a waterfall. The property first popped up for sale in May 2014 with an asking price of $1.47 million that’s tumbled steadily to reach its current price of $885,000.
Ailes picked up the smaller residence — a glassy, cedar-sided, two-bedroom, three-bathroom contemporary alongside a babbling brook on almost 3.5 thickly wooded acres — in late 2008 for $1.65 million. It first came up for sale almost two and a half years ago with a decidedly pie-in-the-sky asking price of $1.27 million that has been repeatedly chopped down to its current $925,000. Though he can, no doubt, comfortably weather the financial setback, a few quick clicks and clacks of the well-worn beads on our bejeweled abacus calculate that even with full-price sales on both houses, Ailes is looking down the barrel of a teeth-chattering million-plus dollar loss, not counting carrying costs, improvement expenses, and fees.
Ailes and his wife, Elizabeth, maintain an unassuming 3,500-square-foot ranch-style home in Cresskill, N.J., that they bought in the fall of 2000 for $1.85 million, and they continue to own the jewel in the crown of their Garrison compound: a nearly 9,000-square-foot mansion with sweeping valley and river views, along with a neighboring home they scooped up in the fall of 2014 for $4 million.
listing photos: Houlihan Lawrence and Agnes Donohoe Preusser Inc.
