Billy Joel was a teenager when he first spotted the mansion, as he dredged oysters on a barge that drifted past the imposing estate in Long Island, New York. From the water, he cursed its owner – “rich b*****ds”, he thought to himself. Decades later, after the Grammys and the sold-out stadiums, he owned it.
And still, he could not keep it. The annual tax bill alone had climbed past $567,000 (€492,774) – nearly 1.5 times as much as the median price of a single-family home in the United States. “As successful as I’ve been financially – yeah, that’s you know, that’s a lot,” he said on the day of the open house in 2024.
The estate languished for years as buyers balked at the taxes, brokers said. “Bottom line, yes, the tax was a big number, because the value was a big number,” explained Emmett Laffey, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Laffey International Realty, who represented Joel in the sale.
Ultimately, to save the sale, the dream had to be dismantled: “He bought the main house, then the house, and then the additional land,” Laffey said. “We realised the best way to accomplish the sales was to sell it the way he bought it – and breaking it up.”
Joel, now 76, first listed the property located on Centre Island in 2023, then took it off the market for extensive renovations, before relisting it in 2024 for $49.9 million. It stalled until he began slicing pieces off. The gatehouse – a seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom estate of its own – sold first for $7 million last year.
Finally, nearly three years after he had first listed the property, the imposing brick manor spanning 20,000 square feet with panoramic views of the bay, sold for more than $23.2 million. Two adjoining lots fetched an additional $2.75 million each. Combined with the gatehouse, he netted more than $35.7 million.
In the insular world of Long Island real estate, it’s a record – the most expensive sale outside the Hamptons, Laffey said. But in the ledger of Joel, it represents a $14 million discount, down from the $49.9 million he had hoped to fetch.
The deal was hammered out in secrecy. Even agents who had worked on marketing the home said they did not know the buyer’s identity.
William Martin “Billy” Joel was born on May 9, 1949th, in the Bronx, but it was Long Island that would forge his working-class identity. In 1950, his family moved to Hicksville, New York, into a modest, postwar house – less than 15 miles from the estate he would one day own. The family didn’t own a TV. When president John F Kennedy was assassinated, Joel’s mother sent him to the corner store to rent a television for the day, which he rolled back to the house on a cart, according to Fred Schruers, his authorised biographer.
He grew up keenly aware of the haves and have-nots. In an anecdote he has told more than once, he described both the sense of awe and the longing he felt, as his oyster barge criss-crossed the Long Island Sound and he spotted what would be his future home.
He later described the “absurdity” of someone like him living on a property like the one he had assembled, replete with a helipad for the chopper that ferried him to the sold-out crowds at Madison Square Garden as well as 2,000 feet of private beach.
Joel moved to Florida and in mid-2025 he revealed that he had been diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid on the brain. The condition forced him to cancel his tours, as his real estate team worked to sell the Long Island estate. Named MiddleSea, it’s both a reference to its location in the middle of the sea with Oyster Bay on one side and Cold Spring Harbor on the other, and also to middle C, the first note he learned to play, and the key of his song, Piano Man.
Through a spokesperson, Joel declined to comment on the sale.
The boy who had once looked up at the castle from the water had finally entered it. But even he couldn’t afford the cost of the kingdom. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times
The marble staircase inside the manor was designed to give the home a Gilded Age flair in New York. Photograph: Eric Striffler/New York Times 
The subterranean wine cellar inside Billy Joel’s estate. Photograph: Eric Striffler/New York Times 
The main kitchen in Billy Joel’s mansion. Photograph: Eric Striffler/New York Times 
Billy Joel’s mansion MiddleSea, on Centre Island in New York. Photograph: Eric Striffler/New York Times 
This area of the property sold by Billy Joel comes with a helipad. Photograph: Eric Striffler/New York Times 
Billy Joel’s mansion MiddleSea, on Centre Island in New York. Photograph: Eric Striffler/New York Times 
The sloping hill behind the manor includes a waterfall sculpted into a stone passageway. Photograph: Eric Striffler/New York Times