Roger Ailes was a major Putnam County property owner
Akiko MatsudaRoger Ailes, a former Fox News chairman, was a major property owner in the town of Philipstown in Putnam County, but he was on his way out of the Lower Hudson Valley market at the time of his death Thursday.
"In the past couple of years, he has put several of those properties on the market," said Bill Hussung, a real estate broker and the owner of Robert A. McCaffrey Realty in Cold Spring.
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There was a reason why Ailes and his wife, Elizabeth, accumulated a real estate portfolio in an area along Beverly Warren Road, which has a Garrison zip code, Hussung said.
"He famously bought a really gorgeous property on top of a mountain overlooking Boscobel and Cold Spring and then bought surrounding properties to keep them open" so that they had no neighbors, Hussung recalled.
"That’s kind of a famous real estate story that has been always told about Roger."
Among the couple's properties, at least one of them — a contemporary three-bedroom house on wooded three acres on Beverly Warren Road — was sold in December for $825,000, according to the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service.
Two other Ailes properties are still listed for sale.
A three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath home on Route 9D was initially put on the market for $1.475 million in May 2014. The price has been reduced multiple times since, and it's current asking price is $765,000.
The other Ailes property on the market is a four-bedroom, six-bath home built in 1980. The home was renovated in 2014 and priced at $2.75 million.
According to the Philipstown's tax roll, a 8,933 square-foot, four-bedroom home at 44 Beverly Warren Road is also owned by Roger and Elizabeth Ailes. The house is off the market, according to Zillow.
In December, Elizabeth Ailes sold the Putnam County Courier and the Putnam County News & Recorder newspapers. The couple purchased the News and Recorder in 2008 and resurrected the Courier in 2009 after the publication briefly went defunct.
The newspapers are both headquartered in a historic building at 144 Main St. in Cold Spring. The two-story building is also currently on the market for $1.15 million, according to the multiple listing service.
Roger Ailes hadn't been in the area lately, particularly after his attempt to take control of Putnam County's $1.5 million senior center project in exchange for a $500,000 donation came under intense scrutiny.
The Palm Beach Daily News reported in April that the former Fox News Chairman and CEO was the buyer behind the trust that paid $36 million for a house in Palm Beach.
“He really pulled up stakes and kind of fled this area," Hussung said.