President of Columbus Realtors explains buying and selling homes
Scott Hrabcak, president of Columbus Realtors, explains how new real estate rules affect home buyers and sellers.
A 20,000-square-foot yacht-style home in Ohio has hit the market for $20 million, making it the most expensive home ever offered for sale in the state.
Completed in 2018 in Hunting Valley, east of Cleveland, the home offers plenty of amenities, including an interior designed by Ari Loar, a Florida-based home and yacht interior designer. The huge porthole windows in the sunroom, curved wood ceilings and sweeping wood paneling are reminiscent of Loar’s yacht designs.
Home amenities include a “car barn” that can accommodate up to 20 vehicles; 13 bathrooms; a heated driveway; an elevator; heated main and basement floors; a movie theater; an entertainment stage; a golf simulator; a custom “swim spa”; a greenhouse; a wine cellar; a bocce ball court; and his-and-her bathrooms in the master bedroom.
“It’s a big house, as much as you imagine it to be, but it doesn’t feel like a museum,” said Jen Waters, who is listing the house for $19.995 million with Keller Williams Greater Metropolitan in Beachwood, Ohio. “It feels like a home, a really big, well-laid-out home. You feel a real warmth there.”
Waters said the house was “the most expensive house we could find on the market in the state.”
In 2011, industrialist Donald Brown and his wife Shirley listed their home between Vermillion and Huron on the shores of Lake Erie for $19.5 million, but the unconventional concrete house ultimately sold for less than $4 million.
The Hunting Valley property was designed by northeast Ohio architect Charles Fazio in the “shingle” style for Joseph and Kimberly Wesley. Joseph Wesley, a commercial electrician who founded the construction staffing firm Tradesmen International, died in 2021.
“Joe and Kim wanted a place for the family to gather and entertain guests that embraced the traditional elements of using wood and marble, but also applied those elements in a more transitional way,” Loar said via email.
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“They wanted their house to be different from all the others,” Loar added. “Joe wanted us to create drama to accentuate each room and gave us carte blanche to do that.”
Loar said she and Kimberly Wesley traveled to Milan “to select furniture and lighting for the house that we couldn’t find in the United States at the time.”
In Milan, Loar introduced Wesley Sicis, an Italian mosaic tile company that designed the tile work inside the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The partnership resulted in custom murals using tens of thousands of small tiles in the dining room and basement bar.
“We chose a ‘peacock mosaic mural’ for the dining room in bright colors like green, gold, red, turquoise and copper,” said Loar.
In addition to the dining room, the main floor includes a great room, kitchen, fully equipped pantry, living room and master suite with his and hers bathrooms and closets and a private patio with fireplace. A spiral staircase and elevator lead to a gym in the basement.
Upstairs there are five bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and a movie room.
The lower level features a bar, dining room, lounge and entertainment room with stage.
A passageway connects the main floor of the house to the garage. Above the garage is a “man cave” with a full-size golf simulator, a bar, a bathroom with a barber chair and rooms now used as an office and music room, Waters said.
The property sits on 61 acres off Chagrin River Road, borders the Chagrin River and offers trails through several acres of woods that include an eagle’s nest, Waters said. There is a small pond next to the house.
“There’s a horse farm behind the house,” she said. “It’s just breathtaking, really peaceful.”
The offer dwarfs what is believed to be the most expensive offer in central Ohio, made by entrepreneur Tami Longaberger, who listed her Muskingum County estate for $15 million in 2011. Longaberger sold the home two years later for $6 million, another reminder that asking prices can differ greatly from sales prices.
The most expensive home currently for sale in Central Ohio is a Delaware estate asking $6.95 million, up from an original asking price of $7.9 million a year ago.
@JimWeiker
