By

Pat Ammons | pammons@al.com

The Huntsville Times

on November 19, 2012 at 11:16 AM, updated November 19, 2012 at 3:16 PM

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The former home of Daniel Klibanoff at 3307 Lookout Drive on Monte Sano recently sold for just under $1.4 million. (The Huntsville Times)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – SOLD — finally. The 17,000-square-foot former home of Daniel Klibanoff on Monte Sano sold in mid-October, signed and sealed. Huntsville’s highest dollar residence at one time, with a listing price of $14.4 million, sold for under $1.4 million.

The home with a panoramic view and more amenities than you can count has been on the market since 2007. At that time, it was appraised for $14 million, said Ed Pendergrass, a realtor with Averbuch Realty, who represented the couple who bought the home.

Public real
estate records list Jason and Mandy Selman as the buyers. Jason Selman is a
dentist who owns Complete Dental, which has offices in Huntsville, Madison and
Athens. 

Klibanoff bought the 26 acres on the northern tip of Monte Sano in December 1998 and began construction on the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in 1999. He lived in the home from 2003 until 2010, when he lost it to foreclosure.

The home was built with every attention to detail, from maple flooring to South African pear wood walls in the den. The basement includes a movie theater, a large wine cellar and an equipment room with about 15 heating and air conditioning units – “I lost count,” said Roy Claytor, a longtime Huntsville real estate agent who listed the house.

The home is spectacular and the view is “mindblowing,” Pendergrass said. “You feel like you can see almost to Decatur.”

For all its features, the home proved difficult to sell. Klibanoff dropped the price on the property several times while he still owned it, and several offers didn’t make it to the signing table. Four agents, all who specialize in high-end real estate, listed the house over the five years it was on the market.

Selling a house of this size and value has been particularly difficult since the real estate market took a nose dive along with the economy, both Pendergrass and Claytor said. Not many people have been buying executive homes, as houses like the one on Monte Sano are called.

Another factor is the house is in not-so-flashy Huntsville, not Beverly Hills or Palm Springs, where $14 million houses are a dime a dozen, said Claytor, who is an agent with Crye-Leike Real Estate. Pendergrass agrees. “A property like this in a bigger market, you’re talking about several million,” he said.

Here, however, people who can spend that kind of money on a home, typically want to build their own. “If you’re buying a $1 million property, that individual is building their expression of success,” Claytor said. A buyer has to accept that expression as his or her own, he said.

That is particularly true with a house as architecturally distinctive as the Klibanoff house. Its modern feature “are not going to appeal to everybody,” Pendergrass said. And there’s the fact that the house will forever be known as “the Klibanoff house.”

“That turned off a lot of people,” Claytor said.

It’s not that there wasn’t interest in the property. Claytor showed the house many times. He got a lot of calls from curiosity seekers, but he also had real interest, including from sports figures who have connections to the area. Some folks in the Nashville music industry also looked at the house.

There were also some who wanted a foreclosure property they could flip. The relatively unknown quality of the Huntsville market in the national real estate picture limited that interest, however, Claytor said.

The longer the seven-bedroom, nine-bath house stood empty, the more challenging it became to sell. Keeping a place that size up — it includes a pool house and infinity pool — requires a lot of work. “It’s like managing a commercial property,” Claytor said. As it sat empty for more than two years, things began to deteriorate. The pool needs work and a new computer system will have to be put in to operate the extensive mechanical systems.

Of course, there is also the cost of living in a place like this. Because the house has lost its homestead exemption due to the foreclosure, the property taxes “are in excess of $60,000,” Claytor said.

Keeping the utilities on will cost $3,000 to $3,500 a month, and insurance will cost the buyers more than $3,000 a year. The mahogany siding has to be sanded and sealed every other year. Factor in lawn maintenance on 26 acres and pool maintenance, and you get the picture.

So it took just the right buyer to finally sell one of Huntsville’s most distinctive homes. Pendergrass said his clients plan to redo the kitchen and other things to personalize it. He expects if they ever want to sell, they’ll get a good return on their investment.

Claytor is please the property has finally sold and is in the hands of a local family who want to return it to its glory. It will once again be a place “Huntsville can be very proud of as a significant home in the community.” 

Click here to see a photo gallery of the home when it was on the market in 2010. 

Updated on Nov. 19 at 3:15 to add the names of the buyers of the home.