Contract on Lower Cross

86 Lower Cross Road, $2.495 million, 32 days to contract. I “get” this house, especially for a (rich) NYC couple looking for a weekend place. It’s on just 0.63 of an acre in the four-acre zone, so the lot is wildly undersized, but using the existing, grandfathered (did you know that “grandfathered” has been declared racist? Now you do.) footprint, a basically new house was able to be built here, so there’s plenty of room. And it backs up to the Babcock Property: hiking, X-country skiing, etc, are right out the door.

The previous owners bought a tired old house for $990,000 in 2014, completely gutted and transformed it, and sold it to these current sellers for $2.185 in 2020. I doubt they’ve done much to it during their brief ownership, but there wasn’t much to be done. There’s already a town-approved pool site, so if the new owners choose, they’ll have that option. (BTW, it never hurts, if you’re doing extensive work on your house that requires a survey and soil study, to plot out a pool site, if one’s available, and get it approved. You may not want a pool, and many potential buyers won’t either, but I’ve always found, when working with buyers who absolutely insist on a pool, that an approved site will satisfy them — “it’s nice to know we can.” And I’m amused to see how often, down the road, it turns out that they’d changed their mind and never built this “essential” amenity.)

We won’t know where these buyers have come from until the final closing report is filed, but I’m guessing they’ll be arriving from New York, if only on weekends.

the original, circa 2014, in all its vinyl-sided glory