By Shannon Larson, The Boston Globe
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A nearly 32-acre waterfront estate nestled on an exclusive slice of Martha’s Vineyard hit the market last week for a staggering $49 million, a price tag that has the potential to shatter the home sale record on the tony island.
Known as “Great Point,” the coastal compound in Edgartown rests within the 200-acre enclave of Herring Creek Farm and features a newly renovated 6,500-square-foot main house, as well as a guesthouse and three cottages, according to the listing agents. The property is situated between a protected sweep of land and the Edgartown Great Pond, and includes more than 2,500 feet of private shoreline.
The listing was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Realtors Maggie Gold Seelig of MGS Group Real Estate and Brian Dougherty of Corcoran Property Advisors are representing the listing together.
The seller is Michael Bronner, Boston entrepreneur and investor. He assembled the compound between 2019 and 2023, spending more than $19.1 million in total, according to property records. However, Bronner has “spent well in excess” of the acquisition price “creating what is seen there today,” Seelig said Monday in a joint interview with Dougherty.
Bronner founded digital marketing agency Digitas in 1980, which sold for $1.3 billion in 2006. He later founded the college savings network Upromise in 1999, which sold for $308 million in 2006. In 2012, he and his teenage son Nicky launched Unreal, an all-natural candy brand.
Bronner was drawn to the privacy and natural beauty of the area, which includes a working farm where sheep, cows, and horses roam, Seelig said. The property boasts an organic garden and a hen house, she added.
“This is the ‘Billionaires’ Row’ of the Vineyard,” she said.
The estate includes a private path to the beach, and private aircraft can land at the nearby Katama Airpark. With the property spanning five contiguous parcels, there are several sites where additional structures can be built, the agents said.
There are only about a dozen homes on Herring Creek Farm, Seelig and Dougherty said. Former late-night host David Letterman is a longtime seasonal resident there. He was among a group in 2001 that kept the massive plot of land next to the Bronner property from being developed in a $64 million deal, the Vineyard Gazette reported.
Bronner teamed up with Belgian designer Koen Van Loo, a “true creative genius,” Seelig said, who has also worked with former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. He focused on making the architecture one with the surrounding environment, she added.
The main house, which has six bedrooms, six full baths, and three half baths, was rebuilt from the ground up. They used large walls of glass to connect the inside with the natural landscapes outside.
The design was inspired by the minimalist work of British architect John Pawson, Dougherty said. The home also features a large kitchen equipped for a professional chef, he added, as well as a spa room and multiple saunas.
Bronner also renovated the roughly 1,500-square-foot guesthouse, which has three bedrooms and three full baths, and added a pair of cottages to the property.
“He chose this site because you have the best of all worlds. You have privacy, you have nature, you have walking trails, you have biking trails, you have the ocean,” and the Edgartown Great Pond, Dougherty said, an 890-acre coastal estuary separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a thin strip of beach.
Martha’s Vineyard is a popular summer destination for the wealthy elite, attracting celebrities and politicians, including former president Barack Obama, whose family owns a 28-acre estate fronting the Edgartown Great Pond. Last July, the sweeping Blue Heron Farm compound in Chilmark, where the Obamas used to vacation, was sold for $37 million, setting a home sale record on the island, said Seelig and Dougherty, who completed the sale together.
That record was surpassed in October with the sale of a mansion on Katama Bay for $37.5 million, the Vineyard Gazette reported.
If Bronner gets his asking price, the sale would beat that record by a whopping $11.5 million. (For context, the median single-family home price on the island hit $1.4 million in 2024, according to a recent report from the UMass Donahue Institute.)
The response from interested buyers has “already been significant,” Dougherty said.
“What we continue to see when advising high net-worth buyers … is that aside from privacy, the thing they value most is time,” he added. “We find that Great Point is a place where it just feels like time stands still, and it’s yours to kind of reclaim.”
