Atherton's $28.4 Million Sale Shows the Overbid Era Is Fraying

The $28.4 million sale of 2 Carolina Lane in Atherton, California, closed on November 3 at 5% below its $29.8 million ask, The Real Deal reported. In the country's priciest ZIP code, that discount is the fact worth watching — not the headline number.

The case for calling a top is real. The seven-bedroom, 11,300-square-foot house, sold by a trust tied to Jeffrey Housenbold, chief executive of Beast Industries, went to contract in under two weeks and still could not hold its list price. Sellers who have grown used to competitive overbids are learning that an aggressive ask now gets negotiated.

The case against is equally concrete. The same market produced an $18 million sale at 269 Oak Grove Avenue, a 7,520-square-foot house listed in mid-October at $15 million. Median Atherton prices from July through September hit $12 million, up 65% from the same period a year earlier, with homes going under contract in an average of 19 days versus 42, according to Redfin.

Both deals cleared roughly $2,400 to $2,515 per square foot. The sensible read for owners pricing assets into this market: demand is intact, but the automatic premium for asking high is not. A trophy property that sold for $10.4 million in 2011 just fetched nearly three times that — after a concession.

This story was first reported by The Real Deal.