Lots of hype about mega mansion sales, but in reality, little action
It's a story most reporters just can't resist falling for, and I have to plead guilty on this as well.
XYZ business magnate puts his mega mansion on Nantucket, the North Shore, pick a location, on the market for some catch-your-breath price, say $55 million, a seemingly popular listing price for these white elephants.
Within hours, there's a gusher of stories about what could be - stop the presses - a sale that could shatter all previously known price records in the Bay State and maybe beyond as well.
Oh, it makes for fun writing and is likely a good read as well - colorful descriptions of amenities most average home owners probably didn't even realize existed, along with an unfathomable number of bathrooms, bedrooms and just plain oodles and oodles of living space and all sorts of luxuries.
But the facts point to a very different reality. As best as I can ascertain, the most anyone has ever paid for a mansion in Massachusetts is about $26 million, a record set on Nantucket just as the real estate bubble began to deflate in 2007.
But good times or bad, reporters keep falling for the old blockbuster mansion sale story.
The latest example of this tendency to fall for the big price and ask questions later is the old Dow Jones mansion on the waterfront in Cohasset, which just hit the market for $55 million.
The prospective seller is a self-described energy tycoon who is moving to Toronto and is now trying to unload the certainly spectacular 45-room Georgian Revival mansion that for years was home to the families forged the Dow Jones media empire, now owned by Rupert Murdoch.
But let's get real here. The big price is not so much a serious number as much as a tried and true marketing tactic used to generate lots of helpful publicity.
Maybe some mysterious Saudi oil baron will bite, but, to best of my knowledge after a day of rummaging around online and reaching out to contacts who should know this stuff, the highest ever paid for any Massachusetts mansion is less than half the $55 million sought for Dow Jones mansion, called "The Oaks," which, by the way, comes with a nearby marina, inn and restaurant.
Anyway, there are lots of examples to pick on here - just take the splash Goldman Sachs co-president Jon Winkelried made when he put his Nantucket compound on the market for $55 million back in the fall of 2008, when it looked like we were heading toward another Great Depression.
Surprise, surprise, no one has taken him up on the offer and Winkelried has chopped 30 percent off the asking price, though even that number does not match reality.
To be fully honest, I authored more than my share of such mega-mansion-hits-the-market stories as a business reporter at the Herald. One giddy editor or another would walk over, often on a Friday afternoon, looking for a fresh take on some just announced would-be blockbuster sale, usually on Nantucket.
Of course, most of these mansions never get close to hitting these stratospheric prices, if they sell at all.
Yet it's a much better tale to tell than the reality, and the sellers, who know better, are only too eager to help.
A developer is the most likely buyer for a large waterfront parcel, which will likely be carved up and built out.
Not as fun a story, but much closer to the likely reality.
