Mystery Sale Of The Week

Gideon Fountain posting for Christopher Fountain…

Every once in a while, we see a report of a sale price that seems “off”. Very rarely is it a ridiculously high price, more often it’s a price that is clearly too low. Today’s MLS hotsheet includes one of those “reporting purposes only” sales where a property sells off market but usually still involves a couple of brokers. The brokers report the sale, pretty much as a courtesy to fellow brokers, because all of us are in constant need of fresh ‘comps” to help us price things.

Got the picture? Ok, so today we learn that 4 Chasmar Road, Old Greenwich, has closed at $850,000 which, to me, seems surprisingly low. And it’s not just me, the Town of Greenwich has it at $959,000 and (those Bozos at) Zillow have it at $1,427,100. For once, I agree with Zillow.

So what happened here? Certainly there are property owners out there who shrink at the thought of putting their house on the market and “having all those people come walking through”. In fact, that fear, or reservation, is particularly common among the ultra-high-end clients. They instruct their broker to sell their $20M+ property “quietly”, off-market. It almost never works so eventually the broker wins the fight and puts it up on the MLS and bingo! it sells immediately.

So that’s just rich people being silly, but what was the excuse on Chasmar? A quick, easy sale is nice but if it comes at a cost of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, maybe not.

4 Chasmar Road, Old Greenwich, closed today at $850K. Previously sold for $760K in August, 2001. (lot is .43 acres in the R-7 zone, about 2 1/2 times the size of the minimum lot requirement in that zone)