Upstate New York is finally having its ultra-luxury moment

The sound of water tumbling over an 18th-century mill wheel could almost drown out the disbelief: a 2,150-acre horse farm in upstate Columbia County has just hit the market for a stratospheric $90 million. 

The property — known as Mill Farm — sprawls across meadows, barns and waterfalls in the hamlet of Ancramdale, roughly a 100 miles north of Manhattan. 

Its owner, former Bear Stearns financier Daniel Slott, pieced it together over 43 years.

“What would be great for the community is if it were kept as a whole,” he told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the listing.

To date, the record residential sale in Dutchess or Columbia counties is $18.5 million. 

The number alone dwarfs anything the Hudson Valley has seen and is emblematic of a larger tidal shift in upstate New York — a massive region whose rural pockets have either been affluent or judged as provincial by city residents. 

Mill Farm’s asking price has thrust a spotlight on what brokers say is upstate New York’s first true ultra-luxury moment — a surge of high-net-worth buyers turning their gaze north from the Hamptons to the Catskills, Adirondacks and Hudson Valley.

“Upstate New York is commanding record-setting prices because it offers a rare blend of scale, privacy and culture that’s almost impossible to replicate elsewhere in the state,” Jillian Pajer of Douglas Elliman, told The Post. 

The past few years have rewritten the region’s property narrative. What was once a landscape of modest farmhouses and artist retreats has become a patchwork of generational estates marketed like private resorts. 

Pandemic-era migration started the trend, but brokers insist the appetite has matured.

“These properties deliver both a lifestyle and a legacy,” Pajer said. “The pandemic accelerated interest, but what we’re seeing now goes well beyond a temporary escape.”

Mill Farm’s $90 million tag comes with history: 15 barns, 10 houses and a Revolutionary-era grist mill reborn as a four-bedroom home where Slott still lives. 

The property is encircled by conservation land, the kind of pastoral isolation that has become the new currency of luxury. 

“Horses and farming are very much in my blood,” Slott said. When he bought his first 160 acres in 1982 for $250,000, “everything was going for nothing.” Four decades later, the same soil is being treated like Manhattan waterfront.

Nearby, in Millbrook, the Hitchcock Estate listed for $65 million, and way north in the Adirondacks, Camp Iroquois — a 1906 Gilded Age compound once featured on “Billions” — just entered contract, The Post has learned. That sale price has not yet been disclosed. 

The property unfurls across 9 acres and 12 log-and-stone structures linked by covered walkways along Upper Saranac Lake. 

It was restored by owners Joe and Yvonne LoRe, who bought it sight unseen at a 2020 auction. 

“Once we saw how beautiful it was, we decided to turn the property into a rental vacation destination for large gatherings,” Joe previously told Mansion Global.

The LoRes’ guests have included multigenerational families celebrating weddings and milestone birthdays; annual rental income is projected above $175,000. 

“Seeing older family members rocking in chairs on the porch or sitting around the bonfire while the younger generations run around and play or paddleboard is priceless,” LoRe said. The Adirondack camp, he added, offers “something for everyone of all ages.”

In the Catskills, history carries its own premium. 

The Livingston family — whose descendants include presidents Bush and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt — recently listed their Lake Delaware Farm for $14 million. 

The 1,600-acre estate straddles Delhi and Bovina and has never before left the family’s hands. Its founders, Gertrude Livingston and Governor Morgan Lewis, built the original nine-bedroom manor in 1787, complete with marble mantels, a spiral staircase and a 68-acre private lake. 

“The decision to sell the property was emotionally brutal,” descendant Elbridge Gerry previously told the Journal.

The home’s Grecian symmetry, the Olmsted-designed landscape, even the carved Doric columns — all speak to an era when aristocratic country life defined American aspiration. Now those same hallmarks lure a new generation of elite New Yorkers chasing old-world tranquility rather than social cachet.

Farther south, in Tuxedo Park, another relic of that Gilded Age glamour has re-emerged.

The 151-acre estate known as Renamor, once the retreat of Olympic fencer Robert Dow, hit the market for $29.5 million. Its 14,000-square-foot mansion and twin guesthouses anchor a property nearly one-fifth the size of Central Park. 

“Like you’re a pioneer,” Dow’s daughter Lindsay said of its secluded log cabin — an unlikely date-night spot with its own off-grid power supply.

But does a $90 million Hudson Valley farm — or even a $30 million Catskills spread — really have a buyer?

Brokers disagree. The listings, they say, are as much mood-setters as market-makers.

“There’s a lot of aspirational pricing in this market. But the asking price, it’s not tethered to reality sometimes. Sometimes it’s people just testing the market,” Joseph Satto of the Fresh Air Realty team with Compass, told The Post. 

Satto, a developer and head of Fresh Air Realty, sees the shift as both symbolic and structural. 

“The likelihood of that home trading for that much is highly unlikely,” he said of Mill Farm, “but there is sort of a bump in the luxury market.” 

What makes the bump matter, he argues, is who’s behind it. 

“There’s definitely more interest. There’s a different buyer profile that’s sort of discovered in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills.”

Those buyers, he said, are often founders, tech CEOs, and media heavyweights who have outgrown the Hamptons. 

“They see what they can get in the Hamptons and then they see what they can get upstate for $2 or $3 or $4 million. You’re getting a different kind of lifestyle and you’re getting a lot more bang for your buck,” Satto said. “For some people, they don’t want the scene of the Hamptons. It’s definitely more low-key kind of buyers … celebrities and other people that want to be up here for privacy’s sake.”

The migration is not purely pandemic-born restlessness; it’s a cultural recalibration.

 A generation of high earners who once measured prestige by proximity to Manhattan now measure it by escape from it. Routes 27 and 87 have become metaphors: one leads to traffic, the other to trees.

“It’s two, two and a quarter hours from Manhattan, and you’re in this idyllic setting,” Satto said.

In Dutchess County, he added, “you’re going to see things like $9, $10 million, maybe even beyond that. Those would be outliers, but the trend lines are going in that direction.”

The expectation, he said, is that within the decade, ultra-luxury buyers will normalize numbers once thought implausible. 

“I think we’re going to start to see it. It’s not going to become the Hamptons. But I think there’s going to be a much higher end… the ultra-luxury buyers that are starting to focus more of their attention on this area,” Satto said. 

“The Hudson Valley has always been and still is incredibly undervalued,” Jason Karadus, of Corcoran Country Living, echoing that sentiment, told The Post. 

Karadus calls the region “the most undervalued luxury market in the Northeast.” 

He sees the $90 million Mill Farm listing not as delusion but as declaration. 

“We’re seeing a lot of people from California — both north and south — looking for luxury in the Hudson Valley,” he said. 

Many are what he terms “climate migrators,” drawn to its temperate seasons and lack of wildfire anxiety. 

“There’s a growing interest for more land. It doesn’t have to be 400 or 500 acres. But even to be able to afford 25 or 30 acres and have that privacy, I think, has also fueled it.”

He concedes that the buyer pool for a 2,000-acre estate is small. 

“We’re seeing traffic on these homes. But it takes a while to sell them. It’s obviously a much smaller buyer pool,” he said. 

Yet compared with the Hamptons, the math is irresistible: “When you look at what you get for even $3 or $4 million a year versus other markets, it’s crazy. You can’t even compare it.”

James Augustine who reps the $90 million property with Compass did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

“I think buyers are ready to have an escape house — someplace to feel inspired, safe, and where they can bring their family,” Eric Amaral of Coldwell Banker Village Green Realty told The Post.

Amaral describes a ripple effect across the Catskills, where boutique resorts and design-driven farmhouses have multiplied. 

“I do see an uptick in luxury sales,” he said. “More families are moving to the Catskills, creating a higher demand for high-end homes.”

Investors, too, are circling. 

“I’m seeing more investors and high-end buyers moving their business here too,” Amaral added. “Large land parcels tend to do well with buyers who crave privacy.”

International interest has also ticked up, fueled by global marketing and social media.

“America is still a safe haven for larger commercial purchases as well,” he said.

The Hudson Valley’s appeal lies not in nightlife but in nightfall: the stillness after the city hum fades. The new crop of buyers isn’t looking for pool parties or paparazzi — they’re seeking permanence. 

“Increasingly, people want to put down roots in the Hudson Valley because they recognize not only the beauty of the land but also the area’s long-term potential,” Pajer said.

What unites Mill Farm’s waterfalls, Lake Delaware’s marble mantels, Camp Iroquois’s boathouse, and Renamor’s gold-leaf salon is not just acreage but attitude. These are properties measured in legacy, not liquidity. 

“These estates function like private resorts, with vast acreage and sweeping views, while also carrying historic pedigrees that make them feel like generational properties rather than just weekend retreats,” Pajer said.

For now, the market is pricing its ambitions ahead of its sales, testing how far prestige can stretch beyond the commuter belt. But whether or not Mill Farm fetches $90 million, brokers agree the symbolic value is already baked in. Each headline-grabbing listing pushes the psychological ceiling higher — and with it, upstate’s ultra-luxury identity.

The Hamptons may still rule the summer-share economy, but the Hudson Valley is quietly building something rarer: a sense of grandeur without spectacle.

As Karadus put it, “It’s really undervalued… It’s just a matter of where you want to be.”