The idea came up one morning at the kitchen table in Washington, D.C. Greg Fazakerley suggested to his wife, Candy, that they look for a place in the country. Candy grew up in rural Virginia and loves horses, so she was thrilled. But nothing on the market won them over. So the couple decided to build their own.
The land came first. Around 1995 they spent close to $800,000 on more than 100 acres in Virginia Hunt Country. Both had careers in real-estate development, and they gave the project the next decade. The result is Wayside, about 35 miles west of Fairfax. It's an English Baroque-style manor built of Indiana limestone and Brazilian granite. The classical architect Michael M. Franck gave it a symmetrical front.
Picking the spot took Candy, now 80, four years. While she looked, they lived in a cabin on the land and put up stables. Greg remembers the day she found it. She let out a shriek on a walk. “I found where the house is going,” he recalls her saying. They searched the world for fixtures and finishes. In Italy they visited a quarry to choose Carrara marble for several of the fireplaces.
Leaving on their own terms
The asking price is $13.75 million, the Journal's Katherine Clarke reports. That buys 14,034 square feet, six bedrooms, nine bathrooms and 107 acres. Greg, 78, says they want more time with family in California. He says they'll miss living close to nature. Plowing the road with the tractor after a big snow, not so much. Listing agent Daniel Heider of Sotheby's International Realty says Virginia horse country has seen a run of big sales this past year. In February, Sandy Lerner, a tech co-founder, sold her historic estate, Ayrshire Farm, for $19.8 million.
Our read
This is Retirement · M10, with an Estate note. Thirty years on one piece of land is a life's work. Leaving it at 80 and 78 is a choice they're making while it's still theirs to make. The tell is the tractor. Somebody has to clear that road after every big snow, and it doesn't get easier with age. They're moving toward family, on their own schedule. We can't tell you what they'd net on a sale. The land cost close to $800,000, the paper doesn't print the building cost, and $13.75 million is an asking price. So nobody should compute a return from this story.
Here's where it touches your plan. If a big house is the largest thing you own, the sale price isn't what you keep. Your taxable gain is the price minus what you paid and what you spent improving the place. That's your cost basis. This week, find the closing papers and the big improvement receipts and put them in one folder. Federal rules let many owners of a main home keep part of the gain tax-free, and the receipts shrink what's left. Under current law, heirs usually get a fresh basis at the home's value when the owner dies. So the folder matters most if you sell in your lifetime, as the Fazakerleys plan to. Fix the roof while the sky is still blue, and bring the folder to your next review.