Mercer Island home on the market for $40 million is no average mansion
WHEN PEOPLE ASK HER about the size of a particular Mercer Island waterfront home she's marketing, veteran real-estate agent Wendy Lister admits she often can't help herself.
"If I'm trying to tease someone, I'll say, 'about half an acre.' "
No, they retort. How big is the house?
"About half an acre," Lister will repeat. "The lot is about two acres."
Half an acre of house, two acres of land and a price tag of $40 million — it's a home the haute, haute magazine Architectural Digest once tried to land for its pages. No dice, said its owners, Chuck and Karen Lytle, a self-made couple who amassed their millions developing luxury retirement communities.
But now that the Lytles have decided to sell their 22,779-square-foot manse, they're allowing limited media coverage, starting here, and telling the story of their longtime home and its remodel from merely luxurious to ultra luxe.
So luxe, in fact, that one visitor compares it (favorably) to Las Vegas' most lavish casino. "It's like the Bellagio without the slot machines," ventures the guest.
The story begins, says the amiable, tanned and impeccably dressed Chuck Lytle, with his old closet.
At 160 square feet, it was too small.
So when the opportunity came to buy a neighboring home on the northwest corner of Mercer Island, the couple did, tearing it down and plunging into a four-year remodel of their 8,100-square-foot house. It was seamlessly combined with a massive new addition that gives them, among other things, more than 1,000 square feet of closet space. And that's just for clothing. The redo was completed in 2001.
"We averaged 60 to 100 workers a day," recalls Lytle. He and his wife happily lived amid the project, a construction crane planted outside, so they could oversee every inch of the massive project, right down to the molding cuts.
"We just had a ball," he says cheerfully. "We really enjoy projects."
This one they also undertook to have more room to entertain; recently they hosted U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn's retirement party for 160. They also wanted more room for family. The parents of six, they have nine grandchildren. But now that the fun of doing the project is over, they feel the need to downsize, although that's a relative term. Sold already is the 140-foot yacht formerly parked at their dock; they're keeping their other homes in Eastern Washington and California.
So what will $40 million buy?
Besides that new closet (and a separate climate-controlled vault for furs), the Mercer Island house has two wine cellars presently holding 11,000 bottles of wine, two fish ponds (one for koi, one for trout) and one mirrored gym with two treadmills. His and hers.
There are two saltwater swimming pools, indoor and outdoor, and two saltwater hot tubs. "It's just much softer on your skin," says Lytle of the decision to add a pinch of salt.
The three-story home has three kitchens, four laundry rooms, four bedrooms, a four-car garage and "refrigerators all over the house," he reports, showing one that's cleverly hidden in a large drawer in the master bath.
Ah, bathrooms ... there are a bunch of them, including one with leather walls. But there's only one official gift-wrapping center. More custom-made drawers there, too.
Extensive as the list of amenities is, what really sets the house apart is the use of marble. It's everywhere — on countertops and custom vanity bases, on shower walls and fluted columns. And most especially on miles of floor where it resembles exquisite marble jigsaw puzzles. Even some of the walls have been treated with five coats of Italian marble dust, then waxed to a soft sheen.
What's missing is any sign of a dust bunny or dog hair shed by puppy-in-residence Rascal, a tiny rare-breed Havanese. Indeed, the eventual buyers will inherit housekeeping perfection. The Lytles have a staff of seven.
As befitting a mansion of this magnitude, there's a state-of-the-art security system. Should the curious decide to scope out the place (they'll have to locate it on their own; the address isn't available publicly), they'll also find a high-security gate that precludes viewing more than a small glimpse of the home from the street. And they shouldn't expect a Sunday open house, either.
"To see the house, you need to be either known to the seller or the seller's advisers or have a letter of ability to purchase," explains Lister, a long-time Coldwell Banker Bain agent whose roster of A-list clients reportedly has included sports and entertainment stars as well as the tech-wealthy.
As expensive as the Lytles' home is, it isn't the priciest to go on the market here. That distinction belongs to a Medina home for sale five years ago for $45 million. Owned by inventor and entrepreneur Peter La Haye, it was taken off the market after La Haye died in a December 1999 plane crash.
Nor is the Lytle abode the most expensive on Mercer Island. That's Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's 7½-acre family compound, which has an assessed value of $120 million.
But if the Lytle mansion sells for anywhere near its asking price, it surely will be the priciest transaction in a market currently offering numerous multimillion-dollar homes. One, the Hunts Point estate of the late hydroplane-racing pioneer Stan Sayres, has had the for-sale sign out for two years, steadily dropping the price from $25.8 million to a mere $19.9 million.
Lister has brought large groups of real-estate agents through the Lytle house, and even those who thought they'd seen it all are left awestruck, she says.
"This home is singular in its combination of the materials used and the sheer size of it," observes Lister. "When I was there Monday with about 100 people, the home just absorbed it, and you never really were aware that there was more than just a small group. It was an emotional experience for the agents."
Lister says any number of low-profile, high-worth locals could afford this residence. A handful, she says, already have Eastside homes just as grand. Several buyer potentials from around here, as well as from Asia and Europe, already have toured the place.
"One person who was looking at it definitely would not have been financing it," she reveals. In other words, it would be a cash transaction. Otherwise, Lister expects the buyer of a house of this magnitude to pony up a 50 percent down payment. That would leave the monthly tab on a $20 million mortgage somewhere around $120,000. Annual property taxes currently are $122,497.
The Lytles are the founders of Leisure Care, a Bellevue-based retirement-community management firm they sold last year. They still operate Lytle Enterprises, which builds and owns the 27 upscale communities in nine states that Leisure Care manages. Within a year they'll start construction on a $30-million senior project in Redmond and another, worth $50 million, in Bellevue. "They'll be top-end, very luxurious retirement communities ... five-star fun," Lytle says.
Very proud of the work they've done on this house, the couple is nonetheless ready to move on. "Two people and a dog don't need this much space," Karen Lytle admits. "We dolove it, but we'll probably buy another and gut it. We really enjoy projects."
Elizabeth Rhodes: erhodes@seattletimes.com