
The Winner and still champion, this (lovely, 23-acre) back-country Greenwich estate took 21 years to sell, finally closing in 2012 for $8M.
I think this sort of thing is more common in wealthy enclaves like Greenwich, where every listing broker has heard clients utter these three lines s-o-o-o-o many times before:
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We don’t need to sell.
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We’re not going to give this place away.
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All it takes is one! (reflecting the mistaken belief that, if you wait long enough, a rich sucker will finally appear)
I was about eight years old when I first noticed this phenomenon.The family would drive up to Ogunquit, Maine every summer and one year we drove past a nice new for-sale sign posted in a field just outside of town. The next year, that sign was still there, looking a bit worse for wear.
By the fifth year, the weather had taken its toll and the sign was illegible, pretty much just faded letters and peeling white paint. Over the years, I saw this exercise repeated on other fields, with the same results. “What’s the point of that?”, I wondered. And I am still wondering!
23 acres for $8,000,000? Heck, why buy a ranch in Wyoming when you can own all that in Greenwich?