After multiple listings, a new sales strategy and a price reduction, Billy Joel has pulled his longtime Oyster Bay estate off the market.
The 26-acre North Shore compound, known as MiddleSea, has been on and off the market since 2023. Most recently listed at $25 million, the property failed to secure a buyer and has now been removed from the market. It is unclear whether Joel plans to re-list the estate at a later date.
Joel purchased the core property in 2002 for a reported $22.5 million. At the time, it included the main waterfront mansion overlooking Long Island Sound. He gradually expanded the estate’s size by purchasing two adjacent lots suitable for building and later acquired a gatehouse. Those additions eventually formed the 26-acre compound.
The centerpiece of the estate is a roughly 20,000-square-foot mansion with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms. The home features 30-foot ceilings and a water view. The property also includes a spa, ballroom, wine cellar, guesthouse with its own bowling alley, beach house, pool, dock, tennis court, helipad, and a six-car garage located within a maintenance building.
Years later, the estate underwent a major renovation that stretched on for more than five years. During that time, the home remained under construction, and Joel did not return to live in the mansion while work continued. The lengthy renovation would later affect efforts to sell the property.
In 2023, while renovations were still ongoing, the entire 26-acre compound hit the market for just under $50 million. But the unfinished condition made it difficult to attract serious buyers.
“At the time, it was a construction scene,” Emmett Laffey, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Laffey International Realty, which handled the listing, said. He previously told The New York Post, “As an unfinished property, you can never sell this magnitude of a home.”
Joel’s team shifted strategy in 2025. Instead of selling the estate as one large compound, it was divided into three separate pieces — the same way Joel had originally assembled it.
Under the new plan, the 14-acre main mansion was relisted for $29.9 million. Two neighboring three-acre buildable lots were listed at $4.95 million each. The gatehouse portion sold for $7 million to a North Shore couple last year.
Laffey said selling the property in pieces made sense given its history.
“When he bought this 20 years ago, he bought the main house,” Laffey told the Post that selling the estate in pieces mirrored how Joel originally assembled it. “Then as he lived there, he bought the adjacent two lots and the gatehouse. Now we’re selling it as he bought it — in pieces.”
Despite the restructuring, the main residence continued to struggle to attract a buyer. The mansion’s asking price was reduced from $29.9 million to $25 million later in 2025, aiming to spark interest.
Even with the price cut, no deal was ever made.
“The sale was going nowhere,” Laffey said.
There was some interest, particularly from devoted fans of Billy Joel, whose Long Island roots have long made the estate one of the most recognizable celebrity homes on the North Shore.
“You do have some extreme fans,” Laffey said. “It is very special. It’s a very famous home to everyone on the North Shore of Long Island.”
Still, the new pricing and the breakup were not enough to secure a sale.
Now, after nearly three years of market activity, MiddleSea has been pulled from listings. Joel, who has been spending time at his Florida home in Manalapan, has not publicly commented on whether the Oyster Bay estate will return to the market.
For now, one of Long Island’s most well-known waterfront properties is no longer for sale.
