Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
A couple of ritzy hoteliers is selling one of the lakeside estates they recently acquired and renovated in Ellsworth for $3.75 million.
Peter Mainguy has been the general manager of The Ritz Carlton-Millennia in Singapore for decades, and his wife Sabine Thiry has worked at glamorous hotels and resorts including Courschevel in the French Alps. Over the past few decades, the couple has bought and renovated a handful of properties around Ellsworth’s Branch Lake, said Joan Osler, the property’s listing agent.
“Some of them they stay in, but they do rent a couple of them,” Osler, an agent with The Masiello Group, said.
Despite their international lifestyle, the couple have a connection to Maine because Mainguy attended Husson University in the 1980s. They bought this property, a home built in 1987 on 3.4 acres, only a couple of years ago after falling in love with its angular architecture, Osler said. For the last year and a half, the couple — chiefly Thiry, who designed everything — have totally renovated it.
“The basic floor plan is the same, but they’ve pretty much gutted it and added extra room over the garage and things like that,” Osler said.
The result is an elegant, contemporary home that offers nearly 4,300 square feet of living space with an open-concept floor plan and lake views from all but one room. The home has five bedrooms, four and a half baths and includes multiple decks and patios, a private swimming area, large dock with a deep mooring, an outdoor sauna and a wood-fired hot tub.
An added bonus — not that buyers at this price point are trying to skimp on utilities — is that the sweeping estate saves on electricity and heat through its use of solar panels, Osler said.
Mainguy and Thiry are selling the property so that they can take on similar projects, the agent said. It’s the most expensive property for sale in Ellsworth right now by $1 million, but Osler said that price point reflects the money the owners put into renovations, and is also in line with prices on other Maine lakes like Sebago or Belgrade.
“I’ve seen a lot more people not really care whether they’re far out,” Osler said. “Certain areas that used to be harder to sell aren’t anymore, because a lot of people work from home and they don’t have to be right close to the cities.”
The Ellsworth lakehouse has seen a great deal of buyer interest in the few weeks it’s been listed, Osler said. It’s conveniently located between Bangor and Ellsworth, 45 minutes from Acadia National Park and is on the kind of less developed lake that attracts many luxury buyers.
Out-of-state buyers and those interested in running the property as a rental have come out, but so have wealthy locals who want to live there. The luxury market has cooled some since the beginning of the pandemic, allowing more people who want to live here full-time to get their foot in the door. But it’s common for luxury buyers to want to get their money’s worth.
“When they’re in this price point, they want it for themselves,” Osler said.
