Price drop on Bedford Road
/167 Bedford Road has cut its price a third time since it hit the market in March at $3.150 million, and now asks $2.5. The owners paid $3.350 million for it in 2013 (from sellers who'd originally priced it in 2009 at $4.950), but it's a rare property on Bedford Road that's held its value over the past decades, and I suspect this isn't one of them.
Great property, but the house requires a complete re-do, from kitchen to baths to, probably, mechanicals. In most of the country, that kind of renovation might cost $250,000 or so, but here in happy Greenwich I'd budget $1 million, and the market for $3.5 million homes on Bedford is practically nil. There have been two recent sales between $6.5 and $8.5 million, but neither one was built in 1997. Better, I think, is to scrape this and try again, but that makes the listing a land sale, and what's that worth?
53 Bedford Road, four-acres, is priced at $2.3 million, but it's been on the market for 2,285 days (2012) with, so far, no takers. Obviously, 167 Bedford is a real house, and perfectly livable, unlike 53, so if a buyer wants it as is he or she will get a perfectly good house for what passes in Greenwich for not a lot of money. But at $2.5, I wouldn't put much more into it.
And, just to screw up comps on the street, there's 22 Bedford Road, bank-owned, that sold last December for $1.8 million. The borrowers had tried to sell it since 2011, when they priced it at $5.3 million. Big mistake.