Selling The Soundtrack: Billy Joel's 'New York State Of Mind' Sanctuary Hits The Market; Rufus Wainwright's Laurel Canyon Home Listed For Sale

Imagine waking up every morning in the house where a chart-topping song was born, the walls echoing with the creative energy that inspired it.

That's the opportunity potential homebuyers are being offered in Highland Falls, New York, a charming village in the Hudson Valley. It's where Billy Joel wrote his 1976 hit "New York State of Mind" — and it's on the market for $2.5 million.

Joel, a long-term renter, wrote the song in one of the home's two upstairs bedrooms, and the owners honored the Piano Man by wallpapering the bedroom with sheet music and naming it "the Billy Joel Room."

"It's such an iconic song and part of our country's zeitgeist, and especially after 9/11, it became an anthem for New York City," Ellis Sotheby's International Realty broker Jody Atkinson told Realtor.com.

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The property has a storied past. Financier J.P. Morgan purchased the land from the township in 1862 for $60,000. He used the property as his summer estate, which he called Cragston.

The house was rebuilt as a five-bedroom home after a fire destroyed it in 1948. The fireplace, mantel and an outdoor patio survived the fire. The house also has an outdoor pool, a vineyard, an awning-covered patio and unobstructed views of the Hudson River.

"When you go there and you step out of the car, your jaw drops open," Atkinson said. "It's unobstructed and always will be. Nothing can be built in front of it because the railroad owns it."

The grandson of an Irish immigrant maid who worked for Morgan purchased the house around 1980 and passed it on to his three children.

The house operated as a bed and breakfast for about eight years, so a potential buyer could continue that business.

With its three-bedroom, two-bath carriage house and a pool house that's been converted into a one-bedroom, one-bath building, the house is also suited for a family compound.

But if New York is not your state of mind, you could consider acclaimed Canadian singer, songwriter and composer Rufus Wainwright's Laurel Canyon home in Los Angeles. In the 1960s, Laurel Canyon was a center for counterculture where many prominent folk and rock musicians lived, including Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison of The Doors, Carole King, members of The Eagles, Neil Young and James Taylor.

Wainwright and his husband Jorn Weisbrodt have listed the 2,100-square-foot residence, built in 1926, for $2.2 million, according to the New York Post.

"I wrote ‘Unfollow the Rules' here, including one of my favorite pieces, ‘Peaceful Afternoon,'" said Wainwright, known for his rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah. "We have had many of those here, and I hope that the next tenants enjoy it as much as we did."

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