Widely considered the pioneer of home improvement shows like those on HGTV, former “This Old House” star Bob Vila is struggling to sell his own old house.
In late 2023, Vila, 78, and his wife, former Harvard professor Diana Barrett, put their 1940s-era Florida mansion on the market for a whopping $52.9 million, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The 6,296-square-foot waterfront home in Palm Beach features seven bedrooms, six bathrooms, a pool, and plenty of home improvement projects he’s tired of keeping up with.
He told the paper in November, “You get to a point in life where you want to simplify things.”
“In terms of doing little home improvements around here, that’s always part of the deal,” he continued. “It’s an older house, so there’s always something.”
But at that price tag, which landed the house on Realtor.com’s 2023 list of the most expensive homes in America, it’s been tough to find a buyer. So Vila and Barrett have had to slash the price multiple times. Their son, Chris Vila of PB Realty Advisors, is the listing agent for the home, per the WSJ.
Bob Vila Has Cut Price of His Florida Mansion by $10 Million
Though Vila’s massive mansion was originally listed for $52.9 million in November, he and Barnett dropped the price in March to $47.9 million, per the listing on Zillow. In May, they slashed another five million, bringing the asking price to $42.9 million — now $10 million less than their initial price.
Even so, Vila and Barrett would still make a huge profit if the home sells at the most recent price. They bought the house in 2005 for $6.1 million from Barrett’s mother’s estate, according to the WSJ. Barrett’s parents bought the property in 1975 for just $375,000.
Once Vila and Barrett owned the home, which sits on nearly an acre of land, they spent a year renovating the kitchen, expanding the guest suite, adding a new roof and updating the electrical, the outlet reported. Proud to be “preservationists,” they said they were careful to keep the original flow and many old details.
“Our goal was to keep it feeling very Old Florida,” Barrett told the WSJ.
Vila has also taken great care with the tropical gardens, the paper said, including royal palm trees that date back to the 1950s, Ylang Ylang trees, an orchid garden and other native plants. The gardens have served as a beautiful backdrop for lots of Easter egg hunts and even their daughter’s wedding years ago, they said.
Before living in Florida, Vila and Barrett raised their family in a nearly 6,000-square-foot Victorian in New Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe. They completely restored the 1897 house, as seen in 26 episodes of the syndicated series “Bob Vila’s Home Again,” which aired from 1990 to 2007, per TV Series Finale.
‘Granddaddy of Home Improvement’ is Flipping Another Palm Beach House
Vila told the WSJ he was ready to simplify, but he clearly still has enough energy to take on new projects. In December, he and Barrett bought a 4,300-square-foot Georgian Revival house for $12.5 million, according to the New York post.
Designed by notable Palm Beach architect John Volk in 1937, Vila’s purchase marked the the first time the five-bedroom house has changed hands in almost 50 years, the outlet reported.
Though media reports at the time claimed Vila and Barrett had chosen the property as their next home, the house is already back on the market six months later. The home was listed on June 5 for $15,900,000 and the Zillow listing says that renovations to the old house are still underway.
Long before HGTV existed, Vila was an accidental pioneer in home improvement television. A project manager on lots of home renovations including his own, he was asked by a Boston TV station to host a local television show explaining the process of improving his own home, according to the Television Academy. Viewers were fascinated, and a new TV genre was born.
Vila’s first series was “This Old House” on PBS, and over three decades he also hosted “Bob Vila’s Home Again,” “Bob Vila,” and “Restore America with Bob Vila.”
Vila received a Daytime Emmy lifetime achievement award in 2022 and told the Academy, “When I was growing up, there wasn’t a great deal of interest in fixing up old houses. I like the idea of being remembered as the granddaddy of home improvement.”
Occasionally, Vila still films projects devoted to home preservation, including hosting a YouTube series called “Craftsmen With Bob Vila” for the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach.
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