A waterfront mansion in Camden owned by the family of Charles Cawley — the founder of defunct credit card company MBNA who died in 2015 — has been sold to a next-door neighbor for more than $13 million.
The 8-bedroom home, two smaller adjacent guest houses and 10 surrounding acres overlooking Penobscot Bay sold last week for $13,736,600, according to a Trulia listing. The properties, located at 270 and 274 Bay View St., include a deep-water pier.
The sale price stands out among the highest recorded in recent years in Maine, which has seen housing prices in general soar as the global COVID pandemic has spurred an interest in living in more rural, less congested areas. There are a half-dozen mansions on the market in the $8 million to $9 million range, according to Mansion Global, but none in the range of Ringing Point in Seal Harbor, which was purchased in January 2018 for $19 million.
The buyer in the Camden sale, which was completed May 31 and recorded the next day at the Knox County Registry of Deeds, is Betsy Sherman of Miami Beach, who in 2019 bought abutting properties at 256 and 260 Bay View St. Sherman is the widow of George Sherman, a former top executive at Black & Decker and Danaher Corp. who died last summer at the age of 80 at their Camden home, according to the Baltimore Sun.
The combined assessed value of the two former Cawley properties, which the town of Camden uses to determine the tax bills for the two properties, is nearly $9 million. All told, the four adjacent properties now owned by Sherman total 15.5 acres and have a combined assessed value of $17.3 million.
MBNA, which once employed thousands of Mainers in the 1990s and early 2000s, was acquired in 2005 by Bank of America in 2005, which has since closed several call centers in Maine. The company still has several hundred employees in Belfast.