Luxury Texas chateau Champ d’Or sells for about US$10 million – a quarter of its build cost
A Dallas buyer has bought the luxury French chateau Champ d'Or in Texas, which went to auction last Friday with a US$10.3 ($9.86 million) million reserve price. Its sale price by a mobile phone mogul vendor has gone undisclosed.
Champ d'Or was modeled after Vaux-le-Vicomte in Paris, the elaborate French chateau built by Nicholas Fouquet, the finance minister of Louis XIV, which inspired the design of Versailles.
It sits in front of a 6,070-square-metre lake on the 16-hectareTexas property surrounded by a fence that reputedly cost $1 million about 45 minutes north of Dallas.
The six-bedroom house cost US$46 million ($44 million) and took five years to build, according to Forbes, and has been sitting on the market for nine years having $72 million hopes along the way. One critic called it "the biggest little teardown in Texas” and noted at about 3,2500 square metres, the Goldfields’ house could contain 20 median US homes. The writer of the Dmagazine article Mark N Vamos reported that about a half-mile from the main gate was the entrance to Hickory Creek Estates, a mobile home community featuring a badly rutted road, dead cars, and severely weather-beaten trailers.
Local real estate experts say the property likely sold close to its reserve price of $10.3 million, based on surrounding property prices.
New York City-based Concierge Auction oversaw the auction of the house, which has its own Wikipedia page.
It says the baroque French chateau located in Hickory Creek takes its name "anglised as Field of Gold," from the surname of Alan and Shirley Goldfield, who built the house in 2002, and reportedly opted instead to live close by rather than in the house. It’s been reported that the Brooklyn, NY-born Goldfield founded his business in 1969 as National Tape and Record Center. In late 1997, as CellStar’s stock rode the tech and telecom boom, his 34% stake in the company was worth $500 million.
The Forbes magazine-featured house also appeared in several books on French architecture and interior design.
Its ballroom has mirrors patterned after Versailles, its indoor swimming pools have Lalique doors and the master bedroom suite has a two-story "hers" closet modelled after the Chanel boutique in Paris. The rooftop pool at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo inspired the couple’s pool facilities.
Joan Eleazer of Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty was the listing agent. The buyer was represented by Clay Stapp of CLAY STAPP+CO.
“It is a remarkable achievement to have sold this estate — and particularly to have done so in a five-week time span,” stated Robbie Briggs, the owner of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s.
Joan Eleazer, who was the first agent to try to sell the house indicated had previously indicated: “There’s a very narrow market for a home like this.”
