Rupert Murdoch to Offer
Home on Long Island

News Corp.'s chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, is preparing to sell his waterfront home on Long Island's North Shore for $14.8 million, according to a broker retained by the family.

The asking price for the home on Centre Island, an affluent community about 35 miles from Manhattan, would be nearly double what Mr. Murdoch and his wife, Wendi, paid four years ago.

The property's 4.6 acres include a pool with 950-square-foot guest house, a tennis court, a beach cottage and a boat mooring. The white wood-frame, Federal-style main house, known as Rosehearty, measures about 10,000 square feet, overlooks Oyster Bay Harbor and has 11 bedrooms, high ceilings, oak floors, an elevator and a private generator.

The News Corp. chairman, 76 years old, paid $7.78 million for the estate in 2003. The couple added an electronic gated entrance; other work included wrought-iron fencing around the property and redecorating. Barbara Candee of Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty will have the listing.

Mr. Murdoch is currently renovating a penthouse on New York's Fifth Avenue. He paid $44 million for that home in 2005, then the highest price ever for a New York City residence. News Corp. has offered to pay $5 billion to acquire Dow Jones & Co., publisher of this newspaper.

Salvation Army Sells Estate of Joan Kroc

The Salvation Army has sold the San Diego-area home of late McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc for about $16 million, down steeply from the initial 2005 asking price of $28 million.

The charity received the 12.5-acre property from Ms. Kroc, the widow of McDonald's Corp. founder Ray Kroc, as part of a $1.5 billion bequest earmarked to pay for more than two dozen community centers. In Rancho Santa Fe, the nine-bedroom private compound includes a main house with a 1,000-bottle-capacity wine cellar, a library and a fitness room. In addition, the residence has two pools, two outdoor kitchens, two guest houses, a tennis court, landscaped grounds and a 12-car garage. Since the listing in late 2005, the price was cut to $22 million in October, then to $18.5 million earlier this year.

The buyers, who weren't disclosed, will use the estate as their full-time home after completing some renovations, according to Pari Ziatabari and Bonnie Steinberg, of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Rancho Santa Fe, who represented the buyers.

Deal in Palm Beach

Jeffrey A. Marcus -- an investor, former cable executive, sports-team co-owner and, for four days, U.S. ambassador to Belgium -- has bought a Palm Beach, Fla., property for $5.85 million, records show.

The 0.41-acre lot is on Clarke Avenue, about two blocks from the ocean and near the Breakers resort. There's a 1954 house, but Mr. Marcus says he plans to tear it down and build new. (He is leasing an apartment in Palm Beach until then.) Listing agent Carole Koeppel of Sotheby's International Realty says the property, which was listed for $6.5 million, was on the market about four months. Public records list the seller as Janina Radtke, acting as a trustee. She couldn't be reached for comment.

This isn't the first Palm Beach home for Mr. Marcus. In 2003, he and his then-wife, Nancy, paid $8.9 million for a 1926 mansion. But the couple divorced and sold the home for $8.8 million in 2004.

Mr. Marcus founded Marcus Cable Co., sold it in 1998, and works as a managing director at Crestview Partners, a New York private equity firm. He says he's in the process of selling his stakes in baseball's Texas Rangers and hockey's Dallas Stars. In 2003, he was named ambassador to Belgium, but resigned citing family reasons shortly after being sworn in, without ever having left for Brussels.

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