
18 Pinecroft, before renovations
But it was a doozy, the mansion at 18 Pinecroft Road. 9,000 sq. ft. up, another 4,000 underground, $7.250 million, this place has so much space, so much of everything in fact that I asked the nice fellow checking hats at the door, Eric Bjork, whether I could come back and show it to some of my $3.5ish clients the next time they complained that a house we were viewing had too small a master bedroom/bath/closet etc. You want that? Pony up and I’ve got it for you.
This is not my kind of house, obviously, but I have clients with large, extended families, a squad of nannies and a phalanx of armed security guards, the whole thing – picture a Saudi Princess’s entourage descending on Paris and you’ll have the idea – and I listen to what they want. 18 Pinecroft could probably meet those wants. Looks like superb quality of finish and has a nice layout. My quibble is that the lawn’s somewhat confined (1.6 acres, with most of the yard to the side) for this price range and the houses leading up to this one are far more modest in scale. You can’t change the size of the lot, but Pinecroft is really well located, off Parsonage, close to town and yet a dead end, so there’s no traffic. I’m sure that the next building boom will see those tiny gardner’s hovels replaced by mansions, and when they are, you’ll be nestled right in with your neighbors instead of looming over them. Why you’d want to lose that lord of the manor feeling escapes me, but Greenwich is known for its down-to-earth, unpretentious residents so I’m sure most buyers don’t want to be the biggest frog in the pond, right?
But here’s a puzzlement, one that perhaps Fudrucker can answer upon his return from the SOTU tonight: this lot is 1.61 acres in the R-2 zone, which has a FAR of 0.09. By my math, the maximum allowable house size is 6,312 sq. ft,, so how were 9,000 squeezed in here?

18 Pinecroft, as renovated
But they were, and they’re for sale. It’s quite a house, and if that bonus finally vested and is now burning a hole in your (crocodile) money belt, here’s a place to spend it.