Biggest East End sale so far this year reportedly in contract in Sagaponack

According to published reports, billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper is in contract to buy Joanne Corzine’s 6,200-square-foot oceanfront estate in Sagaponack for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million—which, if completed, would make it the highest-priced East End real estate deal to date in 2010.

Details of the transaction, which has not yet closed, 
have not been released, but the sale is progressing without the aid of real estate agents, according to local real estate sources.

Ms. Corzine, a designer who is the ex-wife of Jon Corzine, former New Jersey governor and former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, received the property, located at 239 Gibson Lane, in 2002 as part of a divorce settlement.

The two-story house, which was built in 2000, has six bedrooms, six baths, a guesthouse, a heated Gunite pool and a Har-Tru tennis court. The property covers 6.5 acres, features 500 feet of ocean frontage, and can be subdivided into two lots according to current zoning. It was assessed for $18.2 million in 2009, and the assessment increased by 20 percent this year, to $21.8 million.

The Sagaponack house rented last summer for $900,000 to billionaire businessman Henry Silverman, the chief operating officer of private equity firm Apollo Management. The lease was from Memorial Day to October. The brokers who handled the rental last year—Susan Breitenbach of Corcoran Group, and Beate Moore of Sotheby’s International—were also on the lookout for an interested renter this year for the same time frame and price. The brokers had quietly put the word out earlier this year that the house was on the market for $50 million, but the sale was ultimately negotiated directly by Mr. Tepper and Ms. Corzine.

Mr. Tepper, a New Jersey-based hedge-fund manager who reportedly earned $4 billion in 2009, is the founder of Appaloosa Management. He currently owns a single-family residence in Livingston, New Jersey.