Land, Whoa!

A century ago, the wind-swept bluffs to the west of Edgartown Harbor barely fed a few grazing sheep. So worthless was much of the land nearby, untold acres were won and lost in drunken poker games as late as the 1930s.

These days, the bluffs are commanding a bit more. Seventeen years after they bought their property in Edgartown for what was then a rather pricey $2.4 million, David and Michelle Hedley, a retired couple from Morristown, New Jersey, sold their 4.7-acre estate for $25.17 million in February, eclipsing the record for a single-family residence set just a month before on the 100-square-mile island. The sale shows that, as turnover rates for mid-priced homes on the Vineyard have slowed, high-end waterfront estates are playing an expensive game of leapfrog. And, in these cases, the old real estate mantra "location, location, location" applies more than ever.

The identity of the buyers of the Hedleys' home remained a secret, carefully protected by those involved in the sale, and coffee-shop guesses ranged from the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger to Marc Rich, the fugitive financier Bill Clinton pardoned in 2001. Thomas E. LeClair, the real estate agent at Edgartown's LandVest who brokered both sides of the sale, would only say, "The buyers are a successful couple from Europe, familiar with the Vineyard, who've been looking around the island for a while." The title to the property is held by a nominee trust, a common legal tool that shields the identities of owners. Public records show that the purchase was financed with a $37 million mortgage from the Anglo Irish Bank Corp. PLC in Dublin. The extra money likely means that major renovations are on the way. (Strings and stakes on the lawn seem to indicate that a swimming pool is in the plans.)

But secrets don't last long in a small town on a small island during a long winter - especially on such fertile ground for celebrity gossip, where Carly Simon, Spike Lee, Michael J. Fox, Alan Dershowitz, and David Letterman have all summered, and the word is out on the buyers, a couple who know something about scouting prime real estate. John McColgan and Moya Doherty, the director and producer of the wildly successful Irish music and dance show Riverdance, have reportedly owned over the years a two-floor Manhattan penthouse on Madison Avenue, another home in Edgartown, and a rural cut-stone house with a private pebble beach in Ireland, the country where they live most of the year.

Their spokeswoman, Merle Frimark, said that the couple will not be moving to the Vineyard permanently and, when asked to comment on the sale, added in an e-mail that "Mr. and Mrs. McColgan are unavailable at this time."

So what, exactly, does $25 million fetch on Edgartown's Gold Coast, where most of the estates hide at the end of long, barely marked dirt driveways? Prestige, privacy, and panoramic views, for starters. "This is about the only high spot from which you can see the Edgartown Lighthouse, across to the downtown harbor front to Katama Bay, and all the way to the Atlantic," LeClair says. The estate has more than 300 feet of private shore front and a deep-water dock, a rare commodity now that environmental regulations make it difficult and costly to have new docks installed. The 3,900-square-foot shingled two-story house has four fireplaces and five bedrooms, each with a private bath. Open to a sunroom, the kitchen and dining areas have ocean views in three directions. From the living room, the view sweeps from South Beach across the Chappaquiddick shoreline to the historic harbor front.A large recreation suite with a billiard table and a media room take up most of the basement. The sunroom leads to brick terraces with pergolas and an outdoor fireplace.

A two-bedroom, two-bath guest apartment sits atop a three-car garage. A deck off the main house overlooks the bluff, and a boathouse is tucked near the deep-water pier and sandy shoreline. The feature the Hedleys say they will miss the most, however, is the three-story lighthouse-inspired observatory with fine mahogany woodwork and inlaid floors.

The Hedley transaction topped the previous Vineyard residential high-price mark set in January, when Adele Harman Waggaman sold her harbor-front property on Tower Hill - next to the estate of the late automotive czar Ernie Boch - for $22.5 million. On the north side of Edgartown Harbor, in the Starbuck Neck district, an eight-bedroom manse on 3 acres sold in 2001 for $21.9 million. LeClair and his LandVest partners, Gerret C. Conover and David Thompson, brokered all three sales. And the Hedley record may not stand for long. LeClair is negotiating at least two other transactions, each expected to exceed $25 million.

Most of these deals are struck without the properties ever hitting the market. The Hedleys' initially did not intend to sell their home. It took many months for the buyer to persuade them, according to LeClair, who describes his part in the negotiations as akin to an orchestra conductor. "My role becomes less of a broker and more of a facilitator, financial adviser, and overall counselor to both sides," he says, "trying to make things a win-win for everyone."

The sale is also a win for the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, which assesses a 2 percent tax on property sales and gleaned nearly $1.4 million from the Hedley, Harman Waggaman, and Starbuck Neck sales. The land bank earmarks the money to buy properties for public use. "These big sales, in the bigger picture, can benefit many people," LeClair points out.

Another win: Brokers' fees, which typically run about 6 percent on the Vineyard, would have brought in about $1.5 million for the LandVest partners.

Properties like these tend to stay in families for generations, says LeClair, so opportunities to buy are rare. "You count them on one hand."

And count them as good investments. Savvy investing is second nature to David Hedley, who in 1999 at age 53 retired as managing director of the Wall Street financial firm Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, shortly before Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. purchased the company for $13.6 billion. He and his wife bought the property in 1989 for $2.4 million, which, at the time, stunned islanders. The couple razed a single-story Caribbean-inspired summer home on the parcel and put up three new buildings for $2.5 million.

Now that the property is sold, Michelle Hedley says, "Whenever you've had a house built for you, whenever your children's wonderful memories were there, when you leave, no matter where you're going, you always have feelings that are not so clear."

They are designing a new home with Boston and Vineyard architect Patrick Ahearn at Herring Creek Farm, the secluded Edgartown oceanfront development whose residents include David Letterman. According to the Dukes County Registry of Deeds, they paid $6.85 million for the property. At current Vineyard construction rates for high-end residential buildings, their new 7,500-square-foot home will cost about $6 million to complete.

In their 25th season as summer residents in Edgartown, they look forward to another quarter-century but in a new home. "We look at it as if we traded some old memories on the harbor," David Hedley says, "to make some new ones on the ocean."

John Budris is a freelance writer on Martha's Vineyard. E-mail him at johnbudris@hotmail.com.