Back Bay mansion stunning, but at $18 million-plus, no easy sell
Back Bay’s gorgeous and palatial Ames-Webster mansion just hit the sales block.
The price-tag, of course, is a modest $18 million to $25 million.
Now I am sure in an ideal world the stately 50-room, 26,000- square-foot abode is worth every penny of its listing price.
Built in 1872, the sprawling, brick Back Bay mansion has served in recent years as the corporate headquarters of the Raymond Group, a local development firm.
While $25 million is a stunning number – and likely a record breaker for Boston should someone actually put down that kind of cash – it is actually a little less than $1,000 a square foot.
But the mansion, for all its beauty and 28 fireplaces, faces a tough market.
First, the rich of the Gilded Age may have loved such ornate mansions, but the wealthy of today are a different breed. If some tech tycoon has $25 million to blow, he’s going to build his own, custom designed statement somewhere, or buy a couple floors in some silly condo tower.
OK, it’s hard for me to understand – I am a history buff and love old homes, the bigger the better. But what do I know.
So it’s unlikely someone is going to buy this Dartmouth Street mansion and convert it into a single family home.
That leaves its current use, as an elegant collection of office suites.
While Raymond Property, the development company that is selling the property, is planning on moving out, some portion of the old mansion is leased out to money management firms and other tenants.
Yet if you haven’t heard already, office rents are plunging and vacancy rates are soaring amid a bust that may rival or even eclipse what has happened in the residential market.
There’s space available around the corner at the Hancock tower.
Moreover, banks and other lenders have all but gotten out the market of financing the acquisition of commercial buildings.
That leaves one other option, condo conversion.
But despite signs that the real estate market have finally hit bottom, there’s still a lot of unsold condos in newly opened or soon to open condo towers downtown.
Maybe a crafty developer could pull off such a play, betting by the time city approvals are in hand and the conversions are done, the market will have shifted again.
But that’s a very big bet to make on a very big and very expensive old house.
