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The Stoner Mansion Isn’t What You Think—but It Is a Smokin’ Bargain

With a name like the Stoner mansion, you’d expect interest in this historic house to be blazin’. However, this gorgeous brick Tudor in West Hartford, CT, has been chilling out on the market for over two years.

The mansion with the distinctive moniker ambled on to the market in June 2017 with an asking price of $3 million. A couple of years (and a few price cuts) later, the home is asking only $1 million. Let’s say it together: “Whoa!”

Why is the grand mansion built in 1928 for a local businessman named Louis Stoner having a rough time finding a buyer?

One main reason, according to co-listing agent and current homeowner Mary McGowan, is the place’s sky-high taxes. When she purchased the mansion in 2011 for $2,725,000, she believed her property taxes would be in the range of $30,000 to $40,000. Her actual tax bill? $69,000. Whoa, indeed.

She spent a few years working with the local assessor and eventually got the property taxes reduced to $55,000. Even with the tax burden a bit reduced, she decided to part with the nine-bedroom home in 2017.

But once potential buyers took a peek at the taxes on the property, mellows were harshed.

“It’s a beautiful home in a beautiful town, but the tax issue has rendered it unsellable,” says McGowan. The mildly exasperated agent also deployed the word “conundrum” when discussing the property tax problem as it relates to a potential sale.

And this home isn’t alone in the tax-unfriendly bracket. McGowan cites a different historic home in the town facing the same issue. Once priced at $5 million, the home known as “Eyrie Knoll” now sits on the market for $1.3 million.

With Stoner mansion now priced under a million bucks, an owner could become “lord of the manor,” as McGowan puts it, for only $76 per square foot. Yes, this mansion measures in at a whopping 13,132 square feet—which means (taxes aside) a buyer could strut away with a smokin’ bargain.

The new price has drawn in “schemers and dreamers” who fantasize about buying a real-life mansion in a desirable town, she says. Buyers who hadn’t considered mansion life have attempted to make the finances work to score this huge home.

However, the larger buyer pool also comes with the cold splash of reality: “Buyers can now squeak by and actually afford it,” she explains. “But they don’t take utilities, insurance, upkeep, and taxes into account.”

A secondary (but also big) reason buyers haven’t bought in? The mansion isn’t exactly a practical place to live.

“The sheer size is unappealing to some buyers,” says McGowan. She was honest in her assessment of what today’s buyers are looking for, and up to now this mansion hasn’t been it.

Buyers have sniffed around and asked about converting the mansion into a retreat or mixed-use facility of some sort, but the agent doesn’t believe the town will relax the property’s current single-family zoning.

Still, the house is beautiful and in great shape, she says. Classic features have been preserved, and there’s a great mix of old and new features and amenities.

For buyers looking to offset their monthly costs, there’s a detached carriage house on the property that could be rented out for income. All she needs now is one buyer who appreciates a “gorgeous historic home” to roll up and make an offer.

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Source: Real Estate News and Advice – realtor.com » Real Estate News