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New buyers closed Wednesday on the nearly 8-acre property at 55 Zeb Cove in Cape Elizabeth, formerly home to actress Bette Davis and her family. The estate comes with a 7,600-square-foot home, a 2,000-square-foot guest house and roughly 1,200 feet of ocean frontage. (Photo by Peter Morneau)

A nearly 8-acre Cape Elizabeth estate that was once the home of actress Bette Davis has sold for $13.4 million — the highest sale price for a Maine home in the past decade.

The buyers closed on the property at 55 Zeb Cove Road on Wednesday, according to Bill Gaynor of Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty, one of the brokers who listed it.

Gaynor said the sale is the highest in the state in at least the past 10 years and is a record for Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty, Maine’s top seller of multimillion-dollar homes. The company’s previous record was $12 million, set in January by a Kennebunkport home that sold after just 90 minutes on the market.

The list price of the Cape Elizabeth home was $15 million, which would have made it the second-most expensive sale in Maine history.

Davis, her then-husband and fellow film star Gary Merrill and their children lived at the estate in the 1950s. The property features a 7,600-square-foot home with five bedrooms, four full bathrooms and two half bathrooms, which was built around the turn of the century after a prior homeowner demolished the house in which Davis’ family lived; a 2,000-square-foot guesthouse built in 2002; and roughly 1,200 feet, or about a quarter-mile, of ocean frontage.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime property, and the buyers are fortunate,” Gaynor told the Press Herald in a brief phone interview Wednesday morning.

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Gaynor declined to identify the new owners, citing privacy concerns, but said they live locally. Co-broker Sam Michaud told the Press Herald in July that the property had garnered interest from across the U.S. and internationally.

According to Cape Elizabeth property tax records, the previous owners were Timothy and Katherine McDonald, who purchased the home for $3.75 million in September 2016.

HUGE HOME SALES ON THE RISE

In recent years, sales of multimillion-dollar homes have increased significantly in Maine.

Maine’s luxury real estate market had a record year in 2024, with more than 1,100 properties selling for over $1 million, including 21 that fetched more than $5 million. The 1,146 high-end properties sold that year is roughly quadruple the 307 sold just five years earlier in 2019.

The all-time state record of $19 million was set in 2008, with the purchase of the late billionaire David Rockefeller’s Mount Desert Island summer home.

As of Wednesday, four homes with asking prices north of $10 million — and two more just a few thousand dollars below that mark — were listed on the Maine Realtors Association website, led by a $15 million Mount Desert Island house that went on the market for $25 million in 2022, according to the Piscataquis Observer.

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CELEBRITIES’ MAINE TIES

Davis and Merrill lived with their family — two children of their own, plus Davis’ daughter from a previous marriage — on the Cape Elizabeth property until they divorced in 1960.

Both acting stars had long-standing connections to Maine, having spent their childhood summers here, according to Merrill’s autobiography.

Film star Bette Davis is honored at Portland City Hall on July 23, 1955. Davis and her family lived in Cape Elizabeth during the 1950s. (Portland Press Herald file photo via Portland Public Library Special Collections and Archives)
Film star Bette Davis is honored at Portland City Hall on July 23, 1955. Davis and her family lived in Cape Elizabeth during the 1950s. (Portland Press Herald file photo via Portland Public Library Special Collections and Archives)

Davis, who died in 1989 at age 81, was the first female lifeguard at Ogunquit Beach in 1926. Her father was from Augusta and is buried there.

Merrill was a graduate of Bowdoin College. After his marriage to Davis ended, he moved in 1965 to Falmouth, where he died in 1990 at age 74.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Sept. 11 to clarify that the home in which Davis and Merrill lived was demolished and replaced with a new house.

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