One of America’s most storied waterfront estates — originally built for saxophonist Kenny G and later owned by telecom mogul Bruce McCaw — has finally sold after more than three years on the market, closing at $38 million, a staggering $47 million below its original asking price of $85 million.
The sale of the sprawling Hunts Point mansion, reported by the Seattle Times and the Puget Sound Business Journal, represents one of the most dramatic price collapses in American luxury real estate in recent memory. The property, which had held the record as the most expensive listing in the history of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, also sold $16 million below its assessed value — a remarkable outcome for an estate that was once marketed internationally as a trophy property without peer in the Pacific Northwest.
Set on 4.3 acres on the eastern shore of Lake Washington, the estate boasts more than 300 feet of no-bank shoreline, space for a seaplane and a yacht of up to 150 feet, a swimming pool, tennis court, beach house, staff house and cabana. McCaw, a pilot, told the Puget Sound Business Journal that he designed the private dock himself, describing it as the best on Lake Washington. The sandstone home was designed by Los Angeles architect Richard Landry — who has also created homes for celebrities including Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady — and built in 1995 originally for saxophonist Kenny G.
The property changed hands within the McCaw family before Bruce took ownership. In 1999, Kenny G sold the home to Craig McCaw, with the purchase price undisclosed, though it had been listed at $26.5 million. Craig later sold it to his brother Bruce and wife Jolene. The McCaw family fortune was built on the foundations of McCaw Cellular Communications, which the four sons of John Elroy McCaw grew from a small family business into a telecoms giant before selling it to AT&T for $12.6 billion in 1994.
First listed at $85 million in spring 2022 — a record for Western Washington — the property failed to attract a buyer and was relisted the following year at $70 million. It remained unsold until last week, when it finally closed at $38 million. Despite the dramatic markdown, it still ranks among the most expensive sales ever recorded in the Puget Sound region.
The steep discount is not an isolated case. Weeks earlier, former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Sidney Rice sold his Lake Sammamish home for just over $6 million — $2.2 million short of its assessed value, according to the Seattle Times. The back-to-back high-profile sales below valuation are fuelling debate about the state of Seattle’s luxury property market.
Wider concerns about the city’s liveability are adding pressure on the top end of the market. According to crime statistics tracker Neighbourhood Scout, Seattle residents face a one in 129 chance of being a victim of violent crime. The city’s robbery rate is more than triple the national average, and it has developed a national reputation as a homelessness hotspot, with its unhoused population rising by 88 per cent over the past decade.
Newly-elected mayor Katie Wilson has acknowledged the challenges. “Right now, police response times are unacceptable, and I do think that in the short term, we need to hire more officers,” she told PubliCola in March. “I also think we need to greatly expand our unarmed response systems.”
Bruce McCaw, who also co-founded Horizon Airlines and Bellevue-based aviation insurance company Forbes Westar, and who served as president of the PacWest Racing Group, was presented alongside his family with Seattle’s First Citizens award and the Woodrow Wilson award for Corporate Citizenship in 2009.
