What is it about this property that inspires such delusion and incompetence?

Photoshopped sunsets and Thomas Kinkade window lights still can’t hide the ugliness within.

309 Taconic Road, a gross monstrosity of 23,000 square space that’s been seeking a buyer since 2005 has tried a variety of yo-yo pricing strategies over the years. The original owner started at $31 million, eventually dropped it to $23,750 in 2007 and $9.750 in 2012 before losing it to foreclosure. The new lender/owner raised its price to $13,750 in 2015, dropped it to $10.9 in 2016 and then to $9.399 in 2017. Since it wouldn’t sell at $9.4, the geniuses at the bank jumped it to $12 million earlier this year, and today dropped it to $10.750.

All of these strange price adjustments fail to acknowledge a basic fact: no one wants a huge, tasteless house that lacks a single livable room. The property’s 21 acres are comprised of a postage stamp of a side yard and a cliff that drops down to a swampy hollow across the driveway, far below. Did I mention that it lacks an outdoor pool and only offers an indoor lap wallow? The only “client” of mine who ever expressed avid interest in this place turned out to be — I kid you not — a penniless escapee from a lunatic asylum, come to Greenwich to wreak a fraud upon the owner of that institution. There’s a story there, but for now ….

The lender’s best bet here is to drop the price to its land value: maybe $3 million, maybe not, less a credit for the considerable cost of razing this horrible example of a failed financier’s megalomania. I’m betting that won’t happen for another five years.