Ace real estate attorney Joel Kaye sums up the usual long, drawn-out process of getting a typical Greenwich property sold thusly: “Nobody wants it, nobody wants it, somebody wants it, everybody wants it.” He’s alluding to the phenomenon whereby a property will sit on the market, unloved, for months, sometimes years, waiting for a buyer, only to find, at the very end of the process, suddenly and simultaneously, a bunch of buyers appear!
There’s no magic, of course, it’s caused by price reductions. The only mystery is what price will spark the fire? If a property priced at $10,000,000 is getting no action, will cutting it to $8,999,000 do the trick? Not if it’s actually worth $6M, it won’t. In a case like that, especially after months and months on the market, you’d need to cut the price below $6M to see a reaction, but there will be a reaction, guaranteed, and frantic buyers will, if allowed, bid it up to $6M or even above that number
100 Club Road, a listing I shared with broker George Crossman, went through six prices:
$6,995,000 9/2012
6,395,000. 11/2012
5,999,000. 3/2013
5,495,000. 5/2013
4,897,000. 10/2013
3,999,999. 1/2014
That last step, pricing it one buck below $4M, produced the long-awaited bidding contest, with four couples jumping in, pushing the final sale price to $4,250,000.
Anything unusual about this? No, it happens every day in towns like Greenwich. As long as the real estate is desirable, there will be a price at which multiple bids will happen. Won’t happen in parts of Detroit (or Caribou, Maine, for that matter), but in Greenwich, yes.
Greenwich Bored And Razed 