Dan Snyder owns Va.’s most expensive house

Virginia’s most expensive mansion now belongs to one of the most famous men in the commonwealth.

River View, once part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, in Alexandria, was sold on Oct. 29, 2021, for $48 million, according to TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. The agency brokered the sale of the 7-bedroom home with six full bathrooms and six half bathrooms, situated on 16.5 acres on the Potomac River.

The sale was recorded in Fairfax County property records on Nov, 1, 2021, with the seller listed as River View 7979 LLC.

But the actual identity of the buyer was recently revealed in another kind of public record.

The home’s address, 7979 E. Boulevard Drive, matches the one listed with Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder’s $25,000 donation on Jan. 7 to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s inaugural committee, according to campaign finance reports from the State Board of Elections. On the same report, in the box with “business or employment information,” it says “Washington Football Team owner.”

The house is believed to be the most expensive in Virginia and the greater Washington, D.C., region, according to several real estate websites. The home was first listed for $60 million, according to an October 2020 article from Realtor.com. The site also says it is the largest privately held parcel of the former Mount Vernon Estate. It was designed by Bethesda, Maryland-based architecture firm Rill Architects, which displays several photos of the estate on its website.

The estate, constructed by custom home builder West Wing Builders Inc., includes a home gym, spa, indoor resistance pool, steam room and sauna, according to the Sotheby’s listing. It has a game room, a 15-seat movie theater, 400 feet of water frontage and a 2,600-square-foot guest house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms. A carriage house has room for four cars, a studio apartment and a waterfront dock.  It has four fireplaces and was originally built in 2018, according to Fairfax County property records.

The land stayed in President George Washington’s family until 1859 and has had a handful of other owners,  according to a September 2020 Wall Street Journal story. The most recent owners of the estate were former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman, President and CEO Robert J. Stevens and his wife, Michelle, who bought the estate for $18.6 million from Tysons Corner developer Gerald “Jerry” Halpin in 2014.