Hey y’all! When down-home celebrity chef Paula Deen sold Riverbend, her sprawling Savannah, Georgia, estate, in 2020 for a teaspoonful more than $6.8 million, it pegged a record for the highest amount ever paid for a home in the Hostess City of the South.
Now, the very same 4.62-acre riverfront compound, about 10 miles southeast of Savannah’s historic district and owned by a family from northern California who renamed it Vila Sacadura, has just been sold for $8.4 million, once again making it the most expensive home ever sold in Savannah.
Listing agent Ridley Stallings of Corcoran Austin Hill Realty commented, “Vila Sacadura is a truly exceptional property, and the sale record is just a reflection of how special this property is, an iconic piece of coastal Savannah.”
Altogether, the manicured spread has 14 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms across 28,000 square feet of casually luxurious living space divvied up between the main house, two guest cottages, a dock house, and a customized barn/guest house.
At more than 14,000 square feet, the French Caribbean-style main residence, which has six bedrooms and six bathrooms, plus a couple of powder rooms, is nothing short of commodious, with a soaring, wood-clad ceiling in the colossal combination living and dining room that helps with the heat and humidity that blanket Savannah during the late summer months.
The centerpiece of the home, unsurprisingly, is the vast kitchen that’s outfitted with professional appliances, back-to-back copper sinks in the double-wide island, and a massive pantry for food, tableware, and culinary equipment storage. Elsewhere are a family room and informal dining area that open to outdoor living and entertaining spaces, a cozy wood-paneled den with a saltwater aquarium, and a spacious, river-view primary suite with two fireplaces, one in the sitting area of the bedroom and the other in the lavish bathroom.
A deep loggia spans the back of the house, with an outdoor kitchen and plenty of room to eat and relax out of the sun. The loggia looks over the swimming pool, beyond which a tree-shaded lawn rolls down to the estate’s 300 feet of river frontage. At the end of the private dock is a charming dock house complete with a kitchen and a bathrooms
The gated, cobblestone driveway passes under a vine-draped pergola that connects a twinned pair of one-bedroom, one-bathroom guest cottages before it arrives at the front of the main house, which sits amid lush, sculpted plantings.
Near the front of the property is a fully customized, 10,000-square-foot barn that, in addition to garage space and a huge entertainment lounge with a wet bar, has five bedrooms and two bathrooms. There are magnificent live oak trees that drip with Spanish moss across the estate, which also includes groomed gardens and a half-acre stocked pond.
The buyer was represented by Taavo Roos at Seabolt Realty. Vila Sacadura was listed with Ridley Stallings and Melissa Hall Rowan of Corcoran Austin Hill Realty, the same dynamic duo who represented the buyer in another recent, record-breaking transaction, the $6.167 million sale of a downtown mansion that marked the highest sum ever paid for a private home in Savannah’s historic district.
Click here for more photos of Savannah’s Vila Sacadura.