Illustration by Tabi Walters
Prior to Aug. 29, the most expensive piece of residential real estate sold in the Ann Arbor Public Schools district was a mid-century modern mansion on Belmont Rd. built by Henry deKoning, who’s best remembered today as the contractor for Michigan Stadium. The Ann Arbor Hills home went for $3.59 million in March 2022.
The new record holder is at the far northeastern corner of the district in Superior Twp., and cost more than three times as much: $12.495 million. That’s what the family of the late Louis P. Ferris Jr. got for his eighty-five-acre spread at 4000 Vorhies Rd.
The details of the abode are mind-boggling: from a gated entrance, a heated brick driveway leads to a 15,364-square-foot mansion with a six-car heated garage and a copper roof. There are four bedrooms, seven full and three half baths, a Harley-themed commercial bar and game room—plus a sixteen-seat theater, a 3,703-bottle wine cellar, and an eleven-foot infinity pool. Ferris, a Detroit native whose many businesses included the Great Lakes Central Railroad, hired architect W. Keith Owen to design it and lived there from 1994 until his death in 2022.
The home and sixteen acres were first listed in early 2024 for $10 million. When the family moved the listing to Signature Sotheby’s International Realty a year ago, agent Dan Gutfreund listed it for $8.995 million. The buyers paid an additional $3.5 million for the remaining sixty-nine acres, where Ferris had created a cattle ranch, a sheep farm, and a vast organic-produce operation yielding figs, strawberries, kale, flowers, and more. The farm operates as The Good Shepherds CSA. Under the community-supported agriculture model, its supporters buy a share of the season’s output, with profits going to local causes that combat food insecurity.
So who are the buyers? A property transfer affidavit obtained from Superior Twp. by the Observer via a Freedom of Information Act request indicates the estate is now owned by the Andrea Claire Mansour Revocable Trust. According to public records, David and Claire Mansour also own a home in neighboring Salem Twp. for which they paid $765,000 in 2015. Claire is the daughter of Louisiana-based industrialist Claud Walker, whose company, Fibrebond, makes equipment enclosures for electrical utilities, fiber-optic systems, and the burgeoning data-center market; it was acquired by Southfield-based Eaton Corp. in March for $1.4 billion. Efforts to reach the Mansours were unsuccessful.
Gutfreund, who also represented the heirs of Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon in 2017 in the state-record sale of more than $25 million for a 315-acre estate on Lake Michigan, says the couple and their two children will live at the Vorhies home. The Ferris family is still operating the CSA and charity for the time being, and he doesn’t know how the new owners will approach that part of their property.
Gutfreund says six qualified buyers toured the estate over the year he had the listing, including one who made a lower offer. The buyers first saw the property in mid-July and went into an expedited process to close by the end of August.
“In our business, finding a buyer and a seller [is] like we’re matchmakers, and we found the perfect family to take on this home and enjoy it,” Gutfreund says. “They’re a good, churchgoing family that are gonna do good for this world.”
The Ferris sale is likely to stand as a record for many years, but the agent notes that another eye-popping deal could be in the offing in the same area: Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan’s Retreat at Turtle Point. The twelve-bedroom, fourteen-bath mansion on thirty acres north of Domino’s Farms went on the market in April for $8.75 million.
Ann Arbor Realtor Brent Flewelling has that listing. No stranger to high-end sales, Flewelling also represented the Mansours in their purchase of the Ferris estate.