Even market for million-dollar homes in Rhode Island starting to sag
The Providence Journal, January 19, 2009 by Christine Dunn, Journal Staff Writer
Former Texaco Inc. chairman and chief executive officer Peter I. Bijur purchased a waterfront mansion on Bristol's Poppasquash Road last month for $3 million one of the biggest residential sales in the history of the quiet seaside town.
Bijur, 65, who is retired, lives primarily in Vero Beach, Fla., but he said he bought the Bristol house because he wanted a second home in New England.
The sale on Bristol's priciest street came near the end of a year that was not generally kind to Rhode Island's high-end market--houses priced at $1 million and above.
While the rest of Rhode Island's real estate market was struggling in 2006 and 2007, the high-end market held its own. As the overall number of single-family house sales fell in 2005 (2.7 percent), 2006 (14.4 percent) and 2007 (8.6 percent), the high-end market kept chugging along, with 186 sales in 2005, 187 in 2006 and 190 in 2007.
But fallout from the continuing housing downturn and the financial meltdown in September finally affected the pocketbooks, and the mindset, of affluent buyers, according to real estate agents.
There were 138 agent-assisted high-end house sales in Rhode Island in all of 2008, down 27 percent from the 2007 level, according to new statistics from the Rhode Island Association of Realtors.
And the current inventory of high-end houses for sale -276-would be a two-year supply at last year's sales pace...
..."The financial crisis hit nine months into the year, so it can't be completely responsible" for the high-end decline, said John Hodnett, principal broker and partner at Lila Delman Real Estate.
Hodnett said he witnessed a number of failed deals in which buyers who made "pretty good" offers were rejected outright by sellers who weren't quite tuned in to market realities. Most high-end sellers don't have to sell, so they don't have the same motivation to negotiate as people in average distressed circumstances, he said.
Hodnett said he is still optimistic about 2009. A new president and the possibility of stimulus packages to jump-start the economy, coupled with low interest rates, he said, "could get the ball rolling again" in real estate this year...
...In 2006, Rhode Island had a record house sale of $17.15 million, but today the most expensive house for sale in Rhode Island is priced at $15.9 million. It is the Gray Craig estate near Second Beach in Middletown, which was purchased in 2007 by actor Nicolas Cage for $15.7 million. A famous Newport mansion, Astor's Beechwood, a privately owned Bellevue Avenue waterfront property with a 5-plus acres, is also for sale, for $14.9 million. Both sellers are represented by Lila Delman Real Estate...
The Providence Journal, January 19, 2009
Christine Dunn, Journal Staff Writer
|
