Singer and actor Harry Connick Jr. is listing his longtime Cape Cod vacation house—a waterfront home with a music room—for $12.5 million.
Connick and his wife, former model Jill Goodacre Connick, raised their three daughters primarily in Connecticut. They paid $5.3 million for the Chatham, Mass., property in 2006, according to property records. In Chatham, “our children could come and go as they pleased,” said the New Orleans native in a statement. “We could walk to town, to the grocery store and pharmacy, to Chatham A’s baseball games and the Fourth of July parade.”
The Connicks used the home primarily as a summer and early-fall retreat, but they visited during all seasons and enjoyed watching fireworks from the house on New Year’s Eve, the statement said.
The roughly 1.3-acre property is located on Oyster Pond, a saltwater basin that flows into Nantucket Sound, said listing agent Paul Grover of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Robert Paul Properties. The house, originally built in the 1960s, sits at the end of a long, tree-lined driveway. It spans about 5,300 square feet with five bedrooms, Grover said. Almost every room in the house has a view of the water, and the property has a dock that extends into the pond. The family enjoyed paddle boarding, tubing and fishing while at the home, Connick’s statement said.
Grover estimated that the dock adds about $1 million to the property value, since the permitting process for new docks is so onerous. And the pool sits between the house and pond, a setup that likely couldn’t be recreated today, Grover said. “You probably wouldn’t get permits to build the house and pool where they are currently located,” he said.
When the Connicks bought the house, it needed substantial renovations, said Grover. The couple added a new kitchen and family room, as well as a new primary suite with a room where he composed, arranged and mixed music. To match the original pine flooring, they used reclaimed wood in new parts of the house, including the kitchen counter. The house is being sold furnished.
The Connicks are listing the house because they spend less time on the Cape now that their children are in their 20s, according to the statement. Connick, a Grammy- and Emmy-winning singer, pianist and actor, appears in the upcoming movie “Find Me Falling.” He is currently on his “Back Live” tour.
Chatham has one of the most expensive housing markets on Cape Cod. In April, the median home sale price was $1.4 million, down 14.6% from the same month of the previous year, according to Redfin. The frenzy of the pandemic boom in the area has stabilized, Grover said, with overpriced properties sitting on the market, but well-priced homes moving.
Grover said he believes the highest home sale on record in Chatham was about $15 million.