After more than two and a half years on the market, Paula Pennington de la Bretonne’s estate at 11001 Highland Road has sold for $6 million.
In a deal that closed Friday, Dr. Andre Bruni and his wife, Dr. Jessica Bruni—who together own Sensible Dental Family Dentistry—acquired the property, which sits on 12.5 rolling acres in one of Baton Rouge’s most desirable locations. The property includes a five-bedroom main house with a home theater and a gym, a three-bedroom guest house, several smaller buildings, a saltwater pool and a man-made lake. Jo Landreneau, an agent with C.J. Brown, represented the buyers.
Though the deal marks the highest priced residential sale ever in the local market, the sale price is just one third of the $18 million the home was listed for when it went on the market in October 2012. The asking price was later reduced to $12 million.
Shannon Smith, de la Bretonne’s daughter and the real estate agent who listed the property, could not be reached for comment by this morning’s deadline. But high-end realtor Quita Cutrer, who showed the property to potential buyers, says there are a couple of reasons it sold at such a relative discount.
“This just isn’t a market where you’re going to sell $10 million or $20 million homes,” Cutrer says. “Now, there are a few houses, maybe five or six, that would sell in the $6 million range, but they’re new constructions and they have not turned over yet so they do not show up in the comps.”
Cutrer says the de la Bretonne compound will likely not be used by realtors as a comp—a property used to prepare a Comparative Market Analysis—because it is such a large piece of property and built to a scale unmatched in the local market.
“The square footage is just too far out of range compared to anything else around,” she says. “But the buyers got a great deal.”
—Stephanie Riegel
