By E.B. Solomont
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Growing up in Canada, eBay billionaire Jeff Skoll played youth hockey until he was about 13, when his coach suggested he hang up his skates. "He was so right," said Skoll.
But Skoll, who served as eBay's first president from 1996 to 1998, ended up realizing his pro hockey ambitions two years ago, when he became a part owner of the company that owns the Washington Capitals NHL team.
Now, Skoll is paying $17 million for a compound in McLean, Va., to be closer to the Washington, D.C., stadium where the Capitals play.
"I decided it would be great to have a home in the area so I could be there more often," said Skoll, 59, who lives primarily in Florida.
The purchase is one of several recent large deals in McLean, where a mystery buyer recently paid $25.5 million for a newly built mansion overlooking the Potomac River.
Skoll's purchase includes multiple parcels totaling about 9 acres. One contains a $10.5 million spec mansion, built by Artisan Builders on roughly an acre of land in McLean's West Langley area and listed in August. He is also set to pay $6.5 million for Elmwood, an adjacent 8-acre estate owned by the family of late TV newscaster Roger Mudd, who died in 2021.
High-end home prices in McLean have jumped exponentially since Covid, said Stephen Yeonas Jr., a partner at Artisan. Homes that fetched $4 million a few years ago are now going for around $9 million to $10 million, he said. People want high-end finishes and features like pools, saunas and cold plunges, and they will pay a premium for homes that are turnkey. "This one sold very quickly," he said.
Skoll said he spent several weeks looking for property in the Washington metro area before finding the new-construction home in McLean. The roughly 11,600-square-foot house is clad in blue stone with wood siding and a metal roof. There are five bedrooms and a pool.
Not wanting to live near a construction site, Skoll asked his real-estate agent, Mark McFadden of Compass, if there was any construction that might be happening nearby. As it turned out, Elmwood was about to be listed for $22.5 million with plans for a new house. Skoll decided to buy it and plans to restore the property, including the existing circa-1905 main residence.
"The last thing I wanted to do was tear down all that history and put in some modern thing that wouldn't really fit with the vibe of the place," he said.
He said he plans to live in the newly built house and may use Elmwood as a guesthouse, but he's not sure.
Elmwood is said to have been used as a Civil War encampment and hospital, said McFadden, who had the listing for the Mudd estate. The main residence is about 5,600 square feet with seven bedrooms. Originally built in the early 1900s, it was combined with a separate guesthouse by Mudd in the 1970s, McFadden said. The property has a separate four-room log cabin and stables.
Skoll lives primarily in Manalapan, Fla., where he paid just under $90 million for an estate in 2021.
Skoll worked at eBay until the early 2000s. The company was the brainchild of his friend Pierre Omidyar, and Skoll said the two worked out of Omidyar's basement and later Skoll's living room. "We were on a rocket ride from 1996 when we teamed up until 1998 when we were getting ready to go public," he said.
Since leaving eBay, Skoll has focused on philanthropy and impact investing through the Skoll Foundation, which he started in 1999, and Capricorn Investment Group, founded in 2001. In 2004 he founded Participant Media, a film and TV production company aiming to tell stories with impact. The company, which produced "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Wonder," stopped funding new projects earlier this year. In 2022 Skoll took a minority stake in Monumental Sports Entertainment, which owns the Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics.
McLean has seen a number of sales in the $18 million to $30 million range. "Everyone is very bullish on the market," McFadden said. "And now with the new incoming administration... we think we're going to be very, very busy in the capital region." Jack Shafran and Dean Yeonas of Yeonas & Shafran Real Estate represented Artisan Builders.
Write to E.B. Solomont at eb.solomont@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 19, 2024 17:42 ET (22:42 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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