Upper Brookville home sells for $10 million in second-largest deal of 2024

A newly rebuilt Upper Brookville mansion sold Friday for $10 million in one of the most expensive home sales in Nassau County this year.

The seven-bedroom, 10-bathroom center-hall Colonial, named Tree Tops by its owner, was rebuilt in 2020 and sits on 5.1 acres. The new-construction home stood out from other luxury North Shore properties, even those at half the price, because buyers wouldn’t need to spend millions on renovations, said Kieran Rodgers, of The Agency in Huntington, who listed the house.

“New construction will always sell quicker,” Rodgers said. “A lot of these homes that are on the market are beautiful, but they’re still older homes."

The deal is the second-most expensive in Nassau this year, according to OneKey MLS data. That data includes only properties that were publicly listed. Some luxury properties are sold in off-market sales that do not appear in multiple listing service data. 

The most expensive in Nassau, Fox News host Sean Hannity’s Centre Island home, sold for nearly $12.7 million in June, according to OneKey records. 

The Upper Brookville home includes white oak floors with radiant heating, custom molding and a bevy of entertainment amenities, including a full bar, a 500-bottle wine room and a room suited for a movie theater or golf simulator. It also has a heated saltwater swimming pool and a detached pool house with a summer kitchen, according to the listing.

“This house was built to entertain,” Rodgers said.

The most recent asking price was $10.25 million. The mansion had previously been listed with two other brokerages for $9.99 million in May 2022 and $10.9 million in December 2021, but it didn’t find a buyer.

The seller was Jason Giessel, president of Roslyn-based RC Structures, a construction firm that specializes in concrete superstructure and foundation work. Rodgers declined to disclose the buyer, who was represented by Sharon Tract of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

After a reassessment, the total property taxes are about $78,000 annually, Giessel said.

Giessel bought the home in 2011, and in 2019, he and his wife started plans to rebuild the home from the ground up.

They spent more than $7 million to redevelop the property with the goal of creating a large home, with modern amenities and ceiling heights, that would still feel comfortable for a family to live in.

“It’s nice to have the space, but if it gets too big, it doesn’t become warm again,” Giessel said. “… To have a space in your home that you’re like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with this’ was going to be the biggest insult we would have.”

After previously failing to find a buyer, Giessel said he and his wife debated pulling the home off the market and moving there from Manhasset with their three children, but they ultimately decided to stay put. For the buyers, the home offers a modern layout and energy efficiency as soon as they move in, he said.

“To have the layout you want — the ceiling heights, the modern kitchen, the bar area, the theater, the gym — in an older home, you’re carving out spaces to make them,” Giessel said. "It’s nice to be able to enjoy the end use without going through a process of recreating them.” 

By Jonathan LaMantia

jonathan.lamantia@newsday.com@jonlamantia

Jonathan LaMantia covers residential real estate and other business news on Long Island. He previously covered the business of health care for Crain's New York Business.