What’s happening in the Mega-Mansion market?

543 Stanwich Road

This morning a friend asked me about 543 Stanwich Road, a 17,000 sq. ft. behemoth which recently lowered its price from $17.5 million to $16.995. I responded that, if I were in the market for a huge mansion — unfortunately, my friend isn’t, either — I’d look much further south, closer to town, at 471 Lake Avenue, one house down from North Maple Avenue. 471 has a mere 14,500 sq. ft., and only 3 acres (in a one-acre zone) but it is currently asking only $22 million, down substantially from its 2019 price of $29.5. Custom built in 2011 by Wadia, one of the best, my guess is that its owner must be growing tired of entertaining low-life relators and their tag-alongs by now, and an offer close to Stanwich’s asked-for $17 million might be well received.

471 Lake Avenue

Or not. But there are currently 14 similarly sized mansions on the market, ranging in price from $30 million to $7.3, and in size from 23,700 to 14,532. Most of them have been on the market for years and years, and suffered millions of dollars in price reductions, with current asking prices well below what the owners paid originally. Sic transit cæmento.

There is hope, though. Of the 44 of this sized mansions that have sold since 2007, 1 has sold this year (435 Round Hill Road, $17,616,666, 2009 purchase price $20 million), 10 sold in 2021, and almost all of them had aged, if not mellowed, in fine, charred-oak barrels for a long, long time.

So there’s hope for the owners of some of these, and if the paltry single sale this year is an indication of a huge wave of buyers gathering their strength to surge into the coming fall market, all will be well. Or perhaps 2021 exhausted the current supply of people looking for houses to get lost in.

I told my friend that the mid-2000s Russian pool of lovers of the ostentatious was drained when Putin lured his kleptocrats home and redistributed their ill-gotten gains to his own pocket, but there’s surely been a new batch of thieves who’ve sprung up since then, and if so, they are probably ready to blow the joint and come here to this safe harbor for their treasure: you rarely hear of the Indian Harbor Commodore seizing someone’s yacht, for instance, and that should prove caviar to their troubled souls.