What took so long?

There may be a shortage of inventory right now, but even one 12,300 s.ft., 1917 mansion in need of a complete renovation is apparently more than the market wants. After eleven months on the MLS, 100 Clapboard Ridge Road has finally dropped its price from $13 million to $11.5 million.

The pool of buyers willing to put 3 years and 5 million dollars into an ancient (for America) house must be vanishingly shallow, but if there are any, surely they’d have appeared by now. I’d probably have dropped this price much sooner and by much more than what’s been done here. Then again, I don’t regularly deal in houses at this price range (“regularly” being exactly one eleven-million dollar sale in twenty years, but …) , so maybe I’m just not seeing the strategy in play here.

(This was once one of the many homes of Bruno Bich, heir to the Bic pen fortune, and perhaps it takes a European to appreciate this era and style home. If so, once the Ukraine kerfuffle settles down, we may see an oligarch from that country or its belligerent neighbor Russia show up. Someone should call Hunter, and see if he can interest one of his friends in the place; with a cut for the Big Guy, of course.)

when servants did the cooking, and no one cared whether they had a happy workspace

master bath