The New York Times April 2, 2006 It’s More Than $20 Million, and the Kitchen Needs Updating

WAVES gently lapping in Long Island Sound are visible from nearly every room of the 20,000-square-foot house on an estate known as Land’s End that crowns more than 13 acres at the tip of Sands Point. The 25 rooms in the 1902 clapboard manor house are nearly all supersized. The property, which includes a tennis court, sits on a peninsula with two private sandy beaches and is next door to a 25-acre bird sanctuary.

The roof of the rounded cabana by the 75-foot-by-36-foot waterfront pool doubles as a dance floor. In addition to a three-room master suite with his and her baths, there are six family-sized bedrooms and 10 fireplaces. The home has two elevators, wide plank flooring, a kitchen big enough to serve a catering hall, and plenty of room for live-in staff on the third floor.

Bert Brodsky, chairman and chief executive of Sandata Technologies Inc., bought the Gatsbyesque house a year and a half ago for a bargain-basement $17.5 million through a real estate company his family owns; it had wallowed on the market for two years at $50 million before the asking price was lowered to $29 million. Mr. Brodsky, of Sands Point, hoped to move in and have his four grown children live on the property.

“He quickly was vetoed by all of us,” said David Brodsky, a son and one of the principals in 4B’s Realty, which owns Land’s End. Instead, the Brodskys drew up plans for a subdivision that would include, if anyone wanted it, leaving the ultimate trophy home standing on four acres. Four new megahouses on two-acre lots would surround it. The whole estate, with the subdivision plans at the ready, went back on the market at $28 million.