By Katherine Clarke

Blue Heron Farm, the onetime Martha's Vineyard summer home of President Barack Obama and his family, is coming to market for $39 million.

The property is owned by the family of British architect Norman Foster, who routinely spends his summers there. Foster is the founder and chairman of Foster + Partners and has designed buildings like Wembley Stadium and the cylindrical London building known as the Gherkin. Foster married his third wife, Elena Ochoa Foster, in 1996. He has five children.

A limited company tied to the Fosters purchased the roughly 30-acre property for $22.4 million in 2011.

The property, in Chilmark, Mass., includes a roughly 7,000-square-foot classic white clapboard main house with wraparound porch, as well as a guesthouse designed in quintessential New England Cape-style with cedar shingle siding, according to the listing agents, Maggie Gold Seelig of MGS Group Real Estate and Brian Dougherty of Corcoran Property Advisors.

In a written statement, Foster said his family was drawn to the property for its siting, "a beautiful approach through a long avenue lined by trees to arrive at a classic New England house that had grown from historic farming roots."

He said the property provided a "feeling of space, freedom and isolation -- although located conveniently in the heart of the island."

The Fosters have invested significantly in upgrading the property, renovating the main house, overseeing extensive tree planting and building a new pool and pool house, Foster wrote.

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama rented the property for three summers starting in 2009. At the time, the property was owned by Mollie and William Van Devender from Mississippi.

Foster told the New Yorker earlier this year that he met the president following his family's purchase at a neighbor's home and Obama suggested they rent it back to his family, exerting a kind of "jokey pressure" on the architect. Foster said he declined the former president's request.

A spokesperson for the Obamas declined to comment.

The Foster family declined to comment on why the home was coming on the market.

Foster's firm is working on a number of major projects, including the new stadium for the British soccer team Manchester United.

Although the luxury market has slowed on Martha's Vineyard since the pandemic, agents report that properties with significant pedigree are still selling. In late 2023, a property owned by veteran news anchor Diane Sawyer sold for $23.9 million after just two months on the market. It had been asking $24 million. The median sale price of a home in Martha's Vineyard was $1.1 million in April, down 32.2% year over year.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 25, 2025 12:09 ET (16:09 GMT)

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