Finally, after 15 years

474 North Street, currently priced at $2.995 million, reports a contract. The owner bought it via what looks like a short sale in December 2020, fixed it up, and relisted it at $3.599 in May 2021. Price cuts followed.

This house has a sad history. Despite it being directly on North Street, it’s got some nice features and a good backyard that buffers the traffic noise. Unfortunately, it came on the market in 2006 at $5.495 million, which was far too high. I’ve mentioned here before that I showed clients the property sometime between 2006 and, I’d guess, 2008, and they liked it, but their offer of, if memory serves, $3.2 was rebuffed. Word at the time was that similar offers from other buyers met the same fate.

So the money ran out — believe a divorce may have contributed to that — the house deteriorated badly, and the foreclosure process began. The owner did a good job of holding off the bank until 2018, but without the money to pay off the debt, foreclosures eventually do get done. In hindsight, accepting one of those $3 million bids back in ‘08ish would have been a good idea.