
8 Hobart Drive
As the end of the year approaches, the best of the heretofore unwanted inventory is being plucked off at substantial discounts from their original asking prices. Eight Hobart Drive is reported as under contract today, with its last asking price set at $4.199. It probably is selling for less than that (records show that Summit Development paid Patriot Bank $3,963,590 for it in March of this year, so Patriot isn’t the only one to take a bath on this place). In 2008 its spec builder demanded $7.8 and isn’t he sorry now. Very well designed house but a postage stamp of a yard and it was never, ever going to fetch what the builder thought it should. Foreclosure, like one’s own hanging in a fortnight, tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully.
I mentioned last week that Summit unloaded another Patriot failure, 39 Boulder Brook, which was originally priced at $8.595 million. Final asking price? $3.999.
83 Perkins, more of a land sale than residential (i.e., a teardown graces the property) dropped from $3.4 million in antediluvian days to $2.595 and has a contract.
And so it goes. I do warn my clients that, just because a house has sat unloved forever doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t want it too. My advice is to toss out an offer after a house has languished but before that drastic price cut that will bring out competitive buyers.There’s some fine timing involved, guessing when the seller is sick of a property and is ready to accept a reasonable, albeit cut-throat price, and when he’s still standing fast. Often these bids are met with a rude response but as I’ve mentioned here before, that always leaves the satisfaction of a year or three later watching the silly fool go down in flames. 8 Hobart being a perfect example, 20 Herron Vue being another.