It's already being built, and if they come, he'll sell it.
Real estate broker Stanley Rydzik wants to interest well-heeled foreigners in purchasing seven country estates in a Purchase, N.Y., development dubbed Stoneleigh Manor.
And he's depending on U.S.-based private bankers to help provide the financing for potential buyers of the homes, which go for $6 million apiece.
"Foreign nationals don't want to bring assets into the U.S. They're looking to be provided with money to do what they want to do," Mr. Rydzik said.
Earlier this year, he started marketing the estates overseas - an advertisement is running in the international editions of The Wall Street Journal - and plans to refer wealthy foreigners to New York-based private bankers.
The real estate broker suggests that buyers could use principal in foreign corporations or other equities as collateral for jumbo mortgages. He cites private banks with overseas offices as the type of institutions that could finance the sales.
"A lot of other big banks in the U.S. don't have the ability to check these people out or the offices around the world to serve them," Mr. Rydzik said.
Mr. Rydzik is clear on this point: he isn't expecting private bankers - a group of professionals that zealously guard the privacy of their clients - to turn him on to their best prospects.
Rather, he is rubbing elbows in midtown Manhattan with private bankers in the hopes that they will be interested in developing more relationships with wealthy foreign nationals looking to buy homes from Mr. Rydzik.
But private bankers questioned the value of this type of referral for their businesses.
"The wealth pyramid is so tiny in other countries, there aren't that many names," said Barry R. Sloane, North American regional head of private banking for Credit Suisse, a Zurich-based bank with offices in 21 countries.
"Besides anybody looking at a $6 million house already has a connection to a large private bank," Mr. Sloane said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Rydzik says he's got at least one New York-based private banker interested and is talking to others. He wouldn't disclosed the names of his banking contacts.
The homes, he said, are designed to strike the fancy of foreigners interested in acquiring a new Georgian Colonial built with "old world craftsmanship."
"A lot of them look for the older homes for what I call instant heritage," Mr. Rydzik said.
The design and landscaping of the seven estates, which are currently under construction, have been inspired by the turn-of-the-century enclave of Tuxedo Park, on the other side of the Hudson River.
