The $4 Million Sale

Or $3,975,000, to be exact, from calculating the price from the $55,650 in transfer and mansion taxes paid on the sale of Howard Schoor's house at the Chapin Estate that closed a few weeks ago. The reported sale has been buzzing around real estate circles here for weeks, but I've waited to post it until it came through in the Credit Bulletin.

The total sale amount in the buzz circles is reportedly much higher than the $3,975,000 recorded for the real property, as the house was sold totally furnished, and the house is quite beautifully and lavishly furnished.

Property records show the house as having 7,680 sq. ft., with current property taxes of $54,953, based on an assessment of $1,187,700. (With Bethel's 2008 equalization rate of 46%, that translates into an assessor market value for the property of $2,581,956.) It wlll be interesting to see what happens to the assessment next year.

The sale raised my eyebrows when I first heard about it, and I expect this post will lead to a trail of comments about the buyer being out of his mind. But I'm not so sure. Howard Schoor, the seller, is one of the developers of Chapin and had his pick of the litter of lots, and his pick is one of the most stunning — an entire south facing point on Toronto Reservoir. The house is beautifully designed and impeccably built. It's one of the few houses here in Sullivan County that truly qualifies as a trophy property.

Property falls into two categories — those that are on the market and those that aren't. Often, truly special trophy properties aren't on the market. Owners have no intent on selling them. But if someone offers them enough money, it's very tempting. That's often how the top properties transfer. As buyer agents, my colleagues and I periodically  represent upper end clients looking for very special properties, and owners of potential options to determine their willingness to sell. Some owners of special properties have no interest whatsoever in selling (often because there is a long family connection to the property.) But many respond with, "We haven't considered selling, but make me an offer I can't refuse."

It seems like the buyer of this Chapin home made Howard Schoor an offer he couldn't refuse.

Comments

[Rod]

David - the rumored sales price is much higher than you state, and I don't think this qualifies as an offer 'to good to turn down'. In fact, at $4m, it's hard to argue that Schoor didn't lose quite a bit of money, unless he bought/built the house for less than cost. Btw, the rumored price was [deleted].

[David Knudsen]

Yes, the rumored sales price for the total package (real property + personal property) was much higher than the $3.975M recorded for the real property. However, the only fact I have is for the real property part of the sale. The personal property part of the transaction isn't part of the public record, so I'm not willing to report on the speculation on the total deal price here. However, the numbers being bandied about for the total do bring it into the "offer I can't refuse" range.

[Ben]

That'll bring up the June 2009 sold averages for Sully!

The average price has now gone from: 150k...to 328k in a week.

Way to go Howard!

Ben

[David Knudsen]

Ben, the sale wasn't through an MLS participating broker (it was through Chapin), so won't be reported in the MLS. As I pull my data from the MLS, it won't have an impact. (I'd love to be able to pull from a more comprehensive source, but we just don't have it.)

[J]

Who was the buyer?

[Rod]

David - how did you come up with your numbers?

A $245k house has a recorded transfer tax of just less than $1000, so to achieve a whopping $55k in transfer tax, the house would have sold for $14 million.

Are you somehow including the 'mansion tax' in your assumptions (1% tax of sales greater than $1m)? And have you confirmed that this tax is lumped together with the transfer tax, in county recording?

Just so your readers understand, all we know about the sale is the 'tax' paid to the county - that's the only record of non-mls real estate transactions, and so the sales price has to be backed into. Probably a good source of firm info about the definition of the taxes paid would be the writers of the Credit Bulletin.

[David Knudsen]

I backed into the sales price by dusting off some old algebra. I figured that the total transfer tax of $55,650 had to be a combination of the transfer tax ($4 per $1,000) plus the "additional transfer tax" of 1% of the total sales price on residential sales over $1M (more commonly referred to as the "Mansion Tax"), as they're reported on the same form, the TP-584 (even though they're on different lines.) Calculating that out, the sales price would come to $3.975M.

Today I stopped by the County Clerk on Monticello and confirmed that. The clerk confirmed the sales price as $3.975M, so my assumption (and calculation) was correct.

Regarding the buyer, it is a matter of public record and you can get it at the County Clerk's office. But I don't want to post it here. It's the sale itself that's of note; identifying the buyer is more of a curiosity than anything else. Suffice it to say, the buyer is not a celebrity, and does not come from NYC or the surrounding suburbs. The buyer is from one of the counties in PA that neighbors Sullivan.