Even land on Rogues Hill must be worth SOMETHING, right? Right?

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

The former Helmsley place up at 521 Round Hill Road continues to prove itself a real estate disaster and has cut its price, again: $18.995 today, but stick around.

The reluctant owners of this 40-acre property have been trying to get rid of it since almost the day they bought it for $35 million in 2010. They must have thought they were getting a bargain, back then, because David Ogilvy had originally priced it at $125 million in 2008, and, gosh, that’s a savings of ninety-million dollars!

Chumps; they fell for one of the oldest tricks in real estate and for that matter, Middle Eastern bazaars, dating back thousand of years. “Hey, you, you wanna buy a pyramid? Five million bushels of wheat, for anybody else, but today, and only for you, I have a deal.”

While they were still under the delusion that they’d scored a coup here, these happy owners placed it back on the market six months later, marked up to $42.9, though no one in the real estate business could see $8 million in improvements made during that short period. Nor did buyers, so the owners pulled it from the market and sent three years actually renovating the place, giving renewed meaning to “good money after bad”. It’s been back up for sale since 2014 now, starting at $65 million and, as we see, now $19. Where will we see it in 2024?

Forty acres, with a potential of four building lots. Even taking into account the cost of razing this brick pile, I’d think someone willing to pay, say, $10 million will turn up, eventually.

Not for a while, though.