And a bidding war closer to home

8 Woodside Road, in Deer Park, 1.9 acres, 1927 house, was listed April 1 at $5.395 million, contract on April 20, closed Friday at $5.856.

I’m seeing a lot (a whole lot) of houses going for over ask in this market, and many more selling very close to ask. The exceptions are those whose owners (and it’s my experience that it’s rarely the agent’s fault in most of these cases) are those that have initially tried for a number far above what comparable homes are selling for in this market. It’s understandable, and common, for owners to insist that “my house is better than those” but if 3-4 agents brought in for a price opinion all come in at about the same number, it’s usually wise to listen to the judgment of professionals who’ve actually seen those houses.

And as a totally irrelevant thought, I often wonder at what happened to the original owners who, as here, built beautiful, expensive homes just before the Great Depression. Did they survive?

Certainly, not everyone lost their fortune, as can be attested to right in Deer Park itself, where there are a number of gracious homes that were built during the 30s, but Greenwich itself was not immune from the Crash. A friend of mine’s (Grandfather?) was Town Assessor during that time, and a desperate owner offered to sell him almost the entire stretch of what’s now Indian Head Road in Riverside for something like $50,000, or maybe even 1/2 that. “I knew it was the chance of a lifetime, he said, decades later, but I was as broke as the rest of us..”