Trouble continues in the Northeast Kingdom

373 Taconic Road

373 Taconic Road has cut its price again, to $8.495 million, after starting a year ago at $9.750. The owners bought this new in 2005 for $9.350 and put more money into it, so they must be disappointed to experience depreciation first hand, but up here in our northeast corner that's a common experience.

The house was designed by the late Rick Moison, a really gifted architect who created some great homes, but this one didn't appeal to me - too formal for my taste. Of course, I wasn't in the market for a $9 million house back then, unlike now, and my personal preference was almost certainly not on Tamar Lurie's mind when showing the place to visiting agents and their buyers. Go figure.

My taste may be irrelevant, but so far, potential buyers seem to share it. Worse, that formal air seems to have grown even stuffier over the past twelve years and looks dated. None of which is fatal - Moison's designs always showed a wonderful sense of space and living areas, and that's the key; the rest is a matter of redecorating to one's taste (although what anyone's going to do with an entire forest of ripped-out wood panelling is a poser).

Move this house out of the NE corridor and you have a sale, maybe. Stuck where it is, however, I'm guessing that it will be around for a while longer.

This feels more like a place for a meeting with the Godfather, rather than a place to watch a movie about him

Corporate boardroom qua hot tub?