“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” interior designer Thom Filicia has sold his Skaneateles, New York, home in an off-market deal for $4.6 million.
The TV host not only found a buyer for the five-bedroom upstate lakefront spread, but a buyer who’s a longtime friend.
“They separately bought about 60% of the furnishings and they want to reupholster and update some pieces,” Filicia, who hails from nearby Syracuse, told The Post. The buyer, who requested anonymity, also wants to work with Filicia on renovating the boat house, making the space more child-friendly (they have a young daughter) and customizing an outdoor cooking area.
Filicia purchased the property, where he spent weekends when away from his Chelsea apartment, for $965,000 in 2008, Syracuse.com reported. He came upon it while driving back from a friend’s wedding and spotting a “For Sale” sign.
“I was not in the market to buy the house,” he said — a theme for Filicia, who also just bought a Sag Harbor home after finding a property by happenstance.
“My brother was looking for a new house in the Hamptons and asking me my opinion,” he said. Filicia found a house he liked — on the water, gated and with three modern barns — and suggested it to his sibling.
Then, a few weeks later while in Los Angeles, his phone rang. It was the childhood friend, and she wanted to know if she could buy his house and enlist his expertise for personalizing it.
“I decided that instead of having two properties in Skaneateles, I’d figure out something else, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, there’s the house I found with my brother in Sag Harbor. Maybe I should see if that’s available,’” he said.
It was, and now it’s his. (His brother went with another home in the area.)
“It was kind of like this storybook” of organic coincidences, Filicia said of the series of real-estate deals.
He now plans to split his time between fixing up the Sag Harbor home, spending time in New York City and continuing to enjoy Skaneateles, where he still owns a federal-style mixed-use building he’s in the process of converting into apartments.
As for his incredibly good luck with property acquisition processes, all he can offer by way of an explanation is simply that “[rescue] dogs and houses always find me.”
