If you’re looking for waterfront property in Brooklyn, there’s a stunning 10-bedroom mansion complex on the market now in Mill Basin that’s an absolute bargain — if you don’t mind its connections to the mob and the Russian oligarchy.
The lavish property on National Drive has seen its price cut almost in half since it first came on the market nearly four years ago, from $30 million in 2013 — making it the most expensive home in Brooklyn at the time — to just $18 million when it was relisted earlier this month.
The three-story house designed by famed interior designer Noel Jeffrey has eight bedrooms and eight “spa baths” — not counting two “elegant powder rooms” — and a “circular Zen meditation room.”
It even comes with a guesthouse about half the size of the main mansion, plus a gigantic swimming pool and spa.
Considering that Brooklyn’s housing market is on fire — with the average apartment price jumping 22.1 percent, to near a record $1 million, according Douglas Elliman market reports — for the price per square foot make this mansion a pretty good deal.
But it does come with some baggage.
The house was built by John Rosetti, one of the founders of the BurgerFi restaurant chain. The controversy starts when Rosetti, a multi-millionaire with connections to the Colombo crime family, according to the Village Voice and Smoking Gun website, was sued by the state for violating the Tidal Wetlands Act by excavating and placing landfill in some protected wetlands in Mill Basin to extend the property and make room for the pool and patio.
Before settling the suit, Rosetti sold the house in the late 1990s for a mere $3 million to Galina Anisimova, wife of Russian oligarch Vassily Anisimov. Anisimov made his fortune in aluminum and is now worth $1.42 billion and is pals with Russian President and noted Donald Trump fan Vladimir Putin, according to Forbes. Anisimova is also the mother of Anna Anisimov, sometimes called the “Russian Paris Hilton.”
Anisimova tried to sell the Mill Basin property for $30 million starting in 2013, but cut the price to $17 million in 2015, according to StreetEasy.com, but still found no buyers.
Earlier this year, the mansion was put back on the market at a further discount at $12.5 million, according to the site, before it was finally relisted in early July at $18 miilion, but with the guest house thrown in to sweeten the deal.
The Douglas Elliman listing calls the storied compound a “one-of-a-kind gated waterfront oasis” which is certainly not an overstatement. As of now, there is no open house scheduled.