The actress has owned the rustic-chic house in Sagaponack, New York, since 2019
2 min
Drew Barrymore is making an almost $8.5 million adjustment to her real estate portfolio with the listing of her home in the Hamptons.
The renovated barn, built in 1920, is asking $8.45 million and sits on 1.7 acres in the heart of Sagaponack, less than a mile from the ocean. It hit the market last week.
The actress and talk show host has owned the seven-bedroom home—which has appeared across her social media platforms—since 2019, when she paid $5.5 million for it using a limited liability company for the purchase, records in PropertyShark show.
Despite its transformation into a residence, the former barn still has plenty of period charm, from soaring ceilings and exposed beams to hardwood floors.
The hub of the 6,850-square-foot, light-filled home is the great room and adjacent breakfast nook and kitchen, the latter of which is separated from the rest of the space by a wall made from window frames. Glass doors open up from the great room onto a deck.
There’s also a living room with a brick fireplace, a pink-painted dining room with a sloping ceiling and a skylight, and a den. Plus a separate one-bedroom guest house with a living room and office area, according to the listing with Kathy Konzet of Sotheby’s International Realty – East Hampton Brokerage. Konzet wasn’t immediately available to comment.
The park-like grounds, complete with flowering gardens and rolling lawns, are home to a pool, pool house, a bocce court and plenty of areas for outside entertaining.
Barrymore, 49, began her career at just 11 months old when she appeared in a dog food commercial, and at 7, she starred in 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” As an adult she’s best known for roles in “Charlie’s Angels,” “Grey Gardens,” “The Wedding Singer,”and “50 First Dates.”
Her talk show, “The Drew Barrymore Show,” debuted in 2020. A representative for the star couldn’t be reached for comment.
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New amenities, from a gym to a movie theatre, and a good commuter location filled this suburban office tower
3 min
Manhattan’s office-vacancy rate climbed to more than 15% this year, a record high. About 80 miles away in Philadelphia, occupancy also is at historically low levels. But a 24-storey office tower located between the two cities has more than doubled its occupancy over the past five years.
Developer American Equity Partners bought the New Jersey office tower, known as 1 Tower Center, for $38 million in 2019. At the time, the 40-year-old building felt dated. It had no gym, tenant lounge or car-charging stations. The low price enabled the firm to spend more than $20 million overhauling and luring tenants to the 435,000-square-foot property.
Now, the suburban building is nearly fully leased at competitive rents, mopping up tenants from other buildings after the owner added a new lobby, movie theatre, golf simulator, fitness centre and a tenant lounge featuring arcade games and ping-pong tables.
“Our tenants told us what they needed in order to fill up their offices,” said David Elkouby , a co-founder of American Equity, which owns about 4 million square feet of New Jersey office space.
The new owner also liked the location at the 14-acre hotel and conference-centre complex, off the New Jersey Turnpike’s Exit 9 in East Brunswick. The site is a relatively short commute for millions of workers in central New Jersey and is passed by 160,000 vehicles daily.
The property’s turnaround shows how office buildings can thrive even during dismal times for most of the U.S. office market, where vacancies remain much higher than pre pandemic.
Success often requires an ideal location—one that shortens the commute time of employees used to working at home—and the sort of upgrades and amenities companies say are necessary to lure employees back to the workspace.
One Vanderbilt, a deluxe office tower with a Michelin-star chef’s restaurant and plenty of outdoor space in Midtown Manhattan, is fully leased while charging some of the highest rents in the country.
The 11-story Entrada office building, in Culver City, Calif., is making the same formula work on the other coast. It opened two years ago with a sky deck, concierge services and recessed balconies. A restaurant is in the works. The owner said this month that it has signed three of the largest leases in the Los Angeles area this year.
1 Tower Center shows how the strategy can be effective even in less glamorous suburban locations. The tower is prospering while neighbouring buildings that are harder to reach with outdated facilities and poor food options struggle to fill desks even at reduced rents.
The recent interest-rate cut and reports that some big companies such as Amazon .com are re-instituting a five-day office workweek have raised hopes that the office market might be getting closer to turning.
But with more than 900 million square feet of vacant space nationwide and remote work still weighing on office demand, more creditors are seizing properties that are in default on debt payments.
Rates are still much higher than they were when tens of billions of dollars of office loans were made, and much of that debt is now maturing. The recent interest-rate cut doesn’t mean “office-sector woes are now over,” said Ermengarde Jabir, director of economic research for Moody’s commercial real-estate division.
Lenders are dumping distressed properties at steep discounts to what the buildings were worth before the pandemic. Some buyers are trying to compete simply by cutting their rents.
“Most owners don’t have the wherewithal to do what is required,” said Jamie Drummond, the Newmark senior managing director who is 1 Tower Center’s leasing agent. “Owners positioned to highly amenitise their buildings are the ones who are successful.”
HCLTech, a global technology company, illustrates the appeal. It greatly expanded its presence in New Jersey by moving this year to a 40,000-square-foot space designed for its East Coast headquarters at 1 Tower Center.
The India-based company said it was drawn to the building’s amenities and design. That made possible a variety of workspaces for employees, from quiet nooks to an artificial-intelligence lab. “You can’t just open an office and expect [employees] to be there,” said Meenakshi Benjwal , HCLTech’s head of Americas marketing.
HCLTech also liked the location near the homes of its employees and clients in the pharmaceutical, financial-services and other businesses.
Finally, it didn’t hurt that the building is a short drive from nearby MetLife Stadium. The company has a 75-person suite on the 50 yard line where it entertains clients at concerts and National Football League games.
“All of our clients love to fly from distant locations to experience the suite and stadium,” Benjwal said.
