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This Southampton rental at 376 Gin Lane is still available for the rest of August through Labor Day weekend — asking a cool $1.1 million.
It’s also in bankruptcy, which was filed earlier this month. Its sister property, at 366 Gin Lane, filed for Chapter 11 last year — days before a scheduled foreclosure auction.
Both oceanfront homes are part of a chi-chi compound known collectively as Le Dune, though currently being marketed under the name “The Spirit of Southampton.”
It was previously on the market asking $1.8 million for August through Labor Day — the most expensive rental listing on the East End — but there were no takers.
Le Dune is also on the sales market for an eye-popping $150 million, which makes it the most expensive listing in the Hamptons. The homes can also be sold separately.
The seller is Louise Blouin, a French-Canadian art collector and former art magazine publisher who is known as the Red Queen for her penchant to wear red, and an “off with their heads”-style regarding staff firings, a la “Alice in Wonderland,” and repeatedly stiffing writers, executives and vendors.
She bought the homes for $13.5 million in the 1990s, and first listed them for $145 million in 2016. By 2019, the compound had dropped to $110 million — and then to $94 million.
“Bankruptcy is a good way to get organized and take a breath while taking the stress off and protecting assets,” said broker Shawn Elliott, of Nest Seekers International, who is listing the property with fellow Nest Seekers broker Geoff Gifkins. Nest Seekers’ Elizabeth B. Bowden and Gifkins are also listing it for rent.
Blouin did not return calls.
The 4-acre compound features a traditional shingled home built in the late 1800s and another designed by French architect François Catroux in 2002. Together, they have 23 bedrooms, two pools, a tennis court, a theater, a sauna, a spa and two gyms. The property was also filmed in Woody Allen’s 1978 film, “Interiors.”
This isn’t the first time Blouin, who once dated Swiss auctioneer/art dealer/collector Simon de Pury, has sought to sell real estate at sky-high numbers. She once listed a West Village property at 165 Charles St. for $60 million before selling it for $23.7 million in 2017.
Blouin reportedly took out a $26 million mortgage on Le Dune in 2018. When she missed some payments, foreclosure proceedings kicked in. Last year, the loan balance had ballooned to $40 million, according to reports. She was also unmasked in the Panama Papers for stashing cash in offshore accounts. (Having offshore accounts is not illegal, but they have come under scrutiny in recent years because they are often used by an international coterie of kleptocrats, drug dealers, mobsters and other nefarious characters to hide ill-gotten gains and to dodge taxes.) In interviews, Blouin denied wrongdoing, saying she used offshore accounts to fund real estate deals.
In July, Page Six reported that Blouin’s properties guzzled an astonishing 12.1 million gallons of water from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023, according to the Suffolk County Water Authority. The average home uses 130,000 gallons of water a year.
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