Home’s price sheds light on local market

One of the top 10 home sales in September in the Richmond area was for a house with 12,870 square feet that sold for $931,900.

It is assessed for $1.845 million.

Is this a crazy market or what? Yes and no.

The house, at 330 Pembroke Lane in Goochland County, was a foreclosure. It was listed in 2006 for $2.995 million, according to the county assessor's office.

It didn't sell. Nor did it sell as a short sale for $1.2 million, after the lender agreed to take less than what was owed on it.

That means the new owners bought it for about half the assessed value -- and for $2 million off the original list price.

Granted, the market in the $1 million-plus range in the Richmond area is not good. Houses that sell the most here are for $250,000 or less, according to the Richmond Association of Realtors.

That aside, the house itself is strange, Realtors say. It has a rambling floor plan instead of a cohesive, grand floor plan, they say.

The house could be appraised for more than $2 million based on square footage alone. But it doesn't have the features associated with a house of that size in that price range, agents say.

One would expect a big media room. The house doesn't have one, nor does it have a den.

It has seven bedrooms and eight full baths, although even that configuration is up for interpretation, agents say.

The house is situated in a neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes on a 3.65-acre lot with a swimming pool.

Still, it's a lot of house.

Consider, the No. 1 selling house in September was off Three Chopt Road in Richmond's West End.

That house has 5,652 square feet -- less than half the square footage of the one in Goochland -- and, at $2.2 million, it sold for more than twice the price of the one on Pembroke Lane.

-- Carol Hazard