A waterfront Hudson mansion, auctioned off to a buyer who seemingly vanished after making the winning bid, has now been sold.

The sprawling Oakleigh estate, which made national headlines last year as the first Canadian luxury home auctioned off without a reserve bid, was sold for $3,075,000 this month, according to the deed of sale.

John Hooper, the entrepreneur who first listed the 17,000-square-foot mansion for $6.9 million in 2008, said he and his wife are now following through on their long-awaited retirement plans for a trip to Italy.

“We’re doing what we always said we’d do,” said Hooper, who has since moved to a rented house in Kirkland from the secluded eight-bed-room home, with an indoor pool and secret passage.

Hooper, a founder of the now-defunct Phoenix Inter-national Life Sciences Inc., wouldn’t reveal how he reached a deal with buyer Anna Chrostowska, the Mont-real businesswoman who made the winning $3.4-mil-lion bid – including a 10-per-cent commission for the auction house – last July.

In August 2011, Hooper put the estate back up for sale while filing a $545,000 lawsuit against Chrostowska for not completing the purchase.

She’d simply stopped re-turning his calls, Hooper told The Gazette at the time.

Chrostowska declined to speak to a reporter.

Hooper’s difficulties in selling the estate – including his unorthodox use of an absolute auction where there is no reserve bid – should serve as a cautionary tale for Montreal homeowners, many of whom are continuing to list their properties for more than they are worth at a time when real estate prices in major Canadian cities have soared to re-cord highs, brokers say.

“If you overprice your home, it won’t sell,” said Louise Rémillard, president of Profusion Realty Inc., an affiliate of Christie’s Inter-national Real Estate.

The Oakleigh estate was listed with Christie’s in 2009 for $5.5 million, a price that still failed to generate serious offers.

Rémillard described one Montreal homeowner who hadn’t received a single offer in two years when he’d listed his lavish condo for $6 mil-lion.

Two weeks later, the client got an offer, after he dropped his price to around $5 million, Rémillard said.

“That’s our challenge as brokers, to get people to be realistic,” she said. “If after a few months, the market is not reacting, it means the home is too expensive.”

alampert@ montrealgazette.com Twitter: @RealDealMtl