PROVIDENCE — Patience is a virtue, but in recent years, it has also been a necessity for sellers of high-priced real estate.
For every record sale, there are other properties that have been lingering on the market, waiting for the right buyer to come along.
Two of the top sales in Rhode Island so far this year involved houses that had been taken off the market after failed sales efforts.
The first was the highly publicized purchase of a Watch Hill mansion in April by singer Taylor Swift, who paid $17.75 million in cash for 16 Bluff Ave. The price set a record in Rhode Island, besting the state’s previous top residential sale, $17.15 million, reached in November 2006 for Miramar, a Newport mansion.
A $5.3-million sale in Jamestown, announced July 26, involved a house that had been on and off the market for several years. At least three real-estate agencies had tried in vain to sell the Neville Leary House, which sits on nearly 3 acres at 314 Highland Drive.
The seller was state Rep. Spencer E. Dickinson, D-Wakefield. At one time, the house had been listed for $7 million, and last November, selling broker Terry Boyle of LandVest, of Boston, offered it though an online bid process, with a minimum bid of $3.5 million.
The buyers were not identified, but Claudia Philbrick, of Mott Chace Sotheby’s International Realty, the buyers’ agency, said they had been looking for their “oceanfront dream home” since 2007. Broker Judy Chace said the house needs a lot of work, but the buyers were taken with the location on a bluff overlooking Newport Harbor, west of Fort Wetherill State Park.
A couple who recently bought a beach house in Narragansett, Scott and Liz Lerner, of Hopedale, Mass., said they had been looking for a Rhode Island vacation home since 2008. They closed on their $1.2 million house, at 129 Sand Hill Cove Rd., near the Wheeler State Beach, in May.
So far, 2013 is turning out to be a respectable sales year for Rhode Island’s luxury real-estate market. Statistics from the Rhode Island Association of Realtors show that from Jan. 1 through June 30, 62 houses were sold at prices of $1 million and above, a level slightly below 2012, but far better than 2009-2011, when the luxury market was in a slump. The inventory levels indicate that the high-end market is still a buyer’s market.
There was a surge of high-end coastal market sales in Rhode Island at the end of 2012, spurred by the fiscal cliff budget standoff in Washington and the prospect of higher capital-gains taxes. Late 2012 sales included the Pink House in Watch Hill, which sold Dec. 10 for $12 million, and the biggest sale of the year, Hopedene, in Newport, which closed on Dec. 19 for $16 million. On Block Island, 27 houses were sold in 2012, up from 19 in 2011.
“I don’t think anything is going to be equal to the last half of last year for quite some time,” said broker David Godden of Randall Realtors. “People just aren’t plunking down the money the way they did last year.”
Many sellers have had to lower their prices to get their properties sold. One of 2013’s top sales was 521 Indian Ave. in Middletown, which sold May 4 for $4.1 million. The asking price had been $6.6 million, and the house was on the market for 307 days. David Lawrence of Century 21 Access America said several other agencies had the listing before he took it over and got it sold.
In Jamestown, a house at 201 Beavertail Rd., listed at $3.45 million, was sold for $2.85 million on May 3. Nearby, a house at 223 Hull Cove Farm Rd. in Jamestown had an asking price of $4.7 million, and it was sold on March 28 for $4.34 million after 142 days on the market.
In Barrington, Brad Faxon’s house at 85 Nayatt Rd., listed for nearly $8 million in 2009, was off the market for several years before being re-listed this spring for $4.95 million. Last month, Lila Delman Real Estate announced the sale of another Barrington residence, Southwind, at 20 Payne Rd., for $1.8 million. The price fetched for the waterfront property, sold by former labor leader Arthur A. Coia, was the second-highest sale in Barrington in the last 12 months, the agency said.
Other top sales in 2013 include 121 Carnegie Heights in Portsmouth, listed at $3.9 million, and sold for $3.1 million on July 3; and 560 Ocean Rd. in Narragansett, listed at $3.95 million, and sold on May 15 for $3.55 million.
Attorney Nancy Neis, whose elegant Victorian house at 129 Rumstick Rd. in Barrington was listed for $1.9 million in 2008, sold the house on April 30 for $1.08 million, after several periods of having the house on and off the market. Neis said she finally decided that it was time to move on with her life, and she asked her agent, Patty Deal of Residential Properties Ltd., to re-list it at a price that would get the house sold sooner rather than later.