A waterfront mansion in Hudson, about 60 kilometres west of Montreal, auctioned off to a buyer who seemingly vanished after making the winning bid, has now been sold.
The sprawling Oakleigh estate, which made national headlines last year as the first Canadian luxury home auctioned without a reserve bid, was sold for $3,075,000 this month, according to the deed of sale.
John Hooper, the entrepreneur who first listed the 17,000-square-foot mansion for $6.9 million in 2008, said he and his wife are now following through on their long-awaited retirement plans for a trip to Italy.
“We’re doing what we always said we’d do,” said Hooper, who has since moved from the eight bedroom home with an indoor pool and secret passage to a smaller rented house.
Hooper, a founder of the now-defunct Phoenix International Life Sciences Inc., wouldn’t reveal how he reached a deal with buyer Anna Chrostowska, the Montreal businesswoman who made the winning $3.4 million bid – including a 10 per cent commission for the auction house – last July. In August 2011, Hooper put the estate back up for sale while filing a $545,000 lawsuit against Chrostowska for not completing the purchase. She’d simply stopped returning his calls, he said.
Chrostowska declined to speak to a reporter.
Hooper’s difficulties in selling the estate – including his unorthodox use of an absolute auction where there is no reserve bid – should serve as a cautionary tale for homeowners who list their properties for more than they are worth at a time when real-estate prices in major Canadian cities have soared to record highs, brokers say.
“If you overprice your home, it won’t sell,” said Louise Remillard, president of Profusion Realty Inc., an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate.
The Oakleigh estate was listed with Christie’s in 2009 for $5.5 million, but failed to generate serious offers.
Remillard described one Montreal homeowner who hadn’t received a single offer in two years when he’d listed his lavish condo for $6 million. Two weeks after he dropped his price to around $5 million, the client got an offer, she said.
“That’s our challenge as brokers, to get people to be realistic,” she said.
“If after a few months, the market is not reacting, it means the home is too expensive.”