Honey, I shrunk the house!
Lance Armstrong rides from West Austin mansion into 'charming' Clarksville bungalow
Former cycling superstar Lance Armstrong is remaining in pricey West Austin, but he’s shifting gears from a mansion to a bungalow.
In June, Armstrong sold his 8,158-square-foot Colonial Revival estate along Windsor Road in the Old Enfield neighborhood for nearly $6.9 million. The buyer was Carey Smith, an entrepreneur who founded a fan manufacturer called Big Ass Fans. The six-bedroom, seven-and-a-half-bathroom mansion was most recently listed at $7.5 million after hitting the market in 2016 at $8.25 million.
Now, Armstrong is the new owner of a decidedly less Austin-tatious home — a Tudor-style cottage built in 1933 in Clarksville and spanning about 3,000 square feet. That’s roughly 63 percent less space than he and his family occupied in the mansion.
Laura Gottesman, Armstrong’s realtor, confirmed the purchase, which was first reported by the Austin Business Journal. In an email to CultureMap, she describes Armstrong’s new three-bedroom, three-bathroom pad on Palma Plaza as a “charming 1939 bungalow in a wonderful area in Old West Austin.”
The ABJ reported Armstrong spent at least $1.28 million on the bungalow purchase.
The downsizing of Armstrong’s living quarters dovetails with the downsizing of his career. Armstrong was a hometown hero after capturing seven consecutive Tour de France titles, cementing his status as the world’s premier cyclist. But Armstrong was stripped of those titles in 2012 after racing officials determined he’d taken performance-boosting drugs — something he repeatedly denied but later admitted.