And again on overpricing

180 Round Hill Road, a 1900 house on 1 acre in the R-2 zone, was brought on the market in 2005 by our queen of overpricing at $5.250 million. It failed to sell —duh, and it steadily dropped in price as it aged on the market and acquired that dreaded patina of old listings: “if no one else wants this, why should I?”.

I haven’t checked the court record, but it appears that the owner finally surrendered it to his lender, who put it back on the market two days ago for $1.750 million. I didn’t see it yesterday, but Gideon reports that it was the buzz of the realtor circle, the price-to-value ratio sufficient to cause brokers to call their clients and tell them, “you cannot wait til the weekend, you have to come see this now”. Gid estimates it will go for $500,000 over ask, Jonathan Wilcox thinks $300,000. Either way, it’ll be gone in 60 seconds.

The frustrating thing about wildly overpriced homes, for agents, is that we often have clients looking for exactly that home and location, but not at that price; I certainly wasn’t the only one who had $3-$3.5 buyers back then who wouldn’t approach this house when it was $5.2 (nor would I let them). It’s a really nice home, and could have commanded a good price, but instead, the owner got nothing.

Sad.