Stanwich Road contract

170 Stanwich Road, $3.795 million, 21 days on market. Owners paid $4.6 for it in 2001, so it would appear as though the buyers are doing well here; but are they? I wonder whether this new flurry of activity represents people finding bargains or if they’re going to get burned again as happened after the 2008 crash. A lot of us, and I was one of them, thought that by 2011 the worst was behind us and house prices had stabilized. We were wrong.

There’s one house a client of mine purchased in that period that comes to mind; he paid $7 million for a house that had last sold for $11, and it seemed like a solid buy, but today I’m not sure it would fetch much more than $3.5. I actually woke up in the middle of the night some months ago worrying about that, and the next morning Googled my client to see how he was doing. Turns out, very well; his VC firm has boomed since then, and Forbes now puts his net worth at a level that allows me to stop fretting about him and worry about clients who might actually notice $3 million disappearing from their pocket.

In any event, it’s going to take a few years before we know whether we’re witnessing a dead cat bounce or a real recovery. In the meantime, I’ll remain cautiously optimistic, and wary.