Sometimes brokers get it wrong

15 Heusted Drive, Old Greenwich, dropped its price again today to $1.495, down from an original ask of $1.695. According to its tax card, these owners paid $1.3 for it in October 2020, and from what I can see from the improvements list, they painted it and hung some curtains. Where did that $1.695 figure come from? For that matter, what’s with $1.495? The fact that, at the owners’ insistence, the price is dropping $100,000 every week suggests that the agent missed on her number and is reluctant to admit that.

The house is located in the AE flood zone, and is well below the required 13’. Heusted does flood, from time to time, even without help from a mythical global warming sea level rise. UPDATE/CORRECTION: Readers tell me that Heusted does NOT flood. That’s not my memory, but I don’t live there, so I’ll defer to their experience.

And the lot itself, like most on Heusted, is undersized: 7,405 square feet, instead of the 12,000 required in the R-12 zone. Grandfathering ensures that it can stay, but it can’t be expanded from its current 2,100 sq. ft., and improvements are restricted.

Heusted is a great neighborhood, close to the Village, the school, and the train, and someone is bound to want to live here. It’s that original price I wonder at; this new one will certainly help.

UPDATE: I’ve heard from several readers who defended both this neighborhood (no argument there) and the house itself, which I get: at this price, there’s very little inventory that can compete. As for that initial price, I’m told that three separate agencies were brought in, and all three came up with the $1.7 figure. The market has proved those “experts” wrong, but it’s not the owners’ fault for listening to them, and good for the owners to insist on a quick correction.