Patience a Virtue

If you wanted to bring a new spec home into the world, 2009 was not the year to do it.

This, the builders of 406 Anderson (5br/4ba, 4500 sq. ft.) learned.

The newly completed, big "plantation" style home launched in January 2009, when nobody was buying anything. (Maybe milk, bread and eggs.) The start price: $3.699m.

That was an ocean-view price on a non-ocean-view street, but more to the point, just awful timing.

It wasn't long before the listing began to look desperate. There were $200k cuts in early and mid-February 2009.

By mid-March, it was down $300k more to $2.999m. Even that didn't work, and soon it rented out.

406 Anderson popped up again this year for agents to view in June, while off-market options were being explored. We toured but did not write up this big, pretty, new(er) house because it wasn't publicly offered. We figured that would be the next step.

But no. Anderson sold pretty quickly – for $3.2m, closing last week.

Not bad for "almost new," and $200k more than the same property was offered for in the hard days of 2009. Looks like holding on, renting out and trying again worked here – patience truly was a virtue.