Music was Prince's bread and butter, but he also assembled a sizable real estate portfolio.
The megastar's estate recently started selling several of those properties, including the site of the purple house on Lake Riley where Prince once lived — and they are going quickly.
Buyers made offers on three of his properties just after they hit the market.
"The listings are definitely getting more attention than a typical listing because they were owned by Prince," said Steve Norton of Norton Realty in Mendota Heights.
Those properties, all of them in ÂChanhassen, include three building sites and a modest rambler, which are among more than a dozen properties that Bremer Trust wants to sell to help satisfy a multimillion-dollar tax bill that's due in January. When Prince died in April he left no will, so Bremer Trust has been processing the estate, which is reportedly worth about $200 million, according to the most recent estimate.
In August, Carver County District Judge Kevin Eide gave Bremer approval to sell seven properties, including a Caribbean villa, to "secure funds necessary to meet the estate's ongoing and expected financial obligations," according to the district court filing.
Of the four listings that just hit the market, the most expensive — and most Princely — is at 9401 Kiowa Trail, a 1.5-acre parcel with 246 feet of shoreline along Lake Riley not far from Paisley Park in ÂChanhassen.
Prince owned the heavily treed property for decades and it's where the megastar lived in a relatively modest purple house with a three-car garage. After Prince moved out of the house, his father reportedly moved in and lived there until he died in 2001. The house was demolished in 2003. The only remnants of Prince's presence is a pair of metal driveway gates, one bedecked with a simple metal heart and the other with a metal peace sign.
The property was listed for $1.675 million, including a 5,654 square-foot house to be built by Gonyea Homes. The plan calls for a five-bedroom, five-bathroom two-story house with an indoor sport court, game room and theater. The property received an offer within seven days.
Norton also listed an adjacent property at 9411 Kiowa. That 1.82-acre lot isn't on the lake, but it has a stream running through it. It's being marketed with another Gonyea-built house — a 3,588-square-foot rambler — for $925,000. Plans call for four bedrooms, three bathrooms, an exercise room and a game room.
Though the properties that are pending were marketed as to-be-built homes, it's unclear whether the buyers will build them. Norton expects those deals to close by the end of the year.
A third to-be-built house at 2169 Red Fox Circle in Chanhassen would be nearly 4,000 square feet and is listed at $599,999. It's still available.
The least-expensive property on the block this round is a recently remodeled rambler at 8016 Dakota, which was listed at $299,999 for just 20 days before receiving an offer.
Not on the for-sale list are Paisley Park, Prince's home and recording studio, which opened this year as a museum, and the modest two-story house in south Minneapolis that was featured in the Â"Purple Rain" movie.
One of the most valuable of the Prince holdings is a nearly 160-acre undeveloped parcel near Lake Ann in Chanhassen, which is valued at almost $14 million.
Norton didn't know Prince. An estate attorney who specializes in high-end listings, he landed the portfolio after Bremer asked real estate agents for proposals to Âmarket it.
The properties drew offers faster than the typical listing in Chanhassen, where the average market time this fall was 64 days, according to the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors. And while the listings are definitely drawing more attention than a typical listing, it's unclear whether that translates into a higher sale price.
"Some buyers aren't going to care the property was owned by Prince, but it certainly doesn't hurt," Norton said. "In the end, the property still has to appraise for the purchase price if the buyer is getting a loan to make the purchase."
Jim Buchta • 612-673-7376
