If you can associate an ex-president with a property you’re marketing, never be afraid to drop his name — no matter how tenuous the connection.
It’s a lesson that luxury brokers seem to have learned well. Take this nine-bedroom mansion on the market for $3.7 million in Matinecock, N.Y. The MLS property description calls the 100-year-old home a “true diamond in the rough,” noting that it “needs work” and is to be sold “as is.”
The headline of a Newsday story profiling the property proclaims that it “once served Teddy Roosevelt.” A closer reading reveals that “a descendant of the Roosevelts used to use the garage … to store his sailboat.” The boat’s gone, but its mast “is still fully intact in the garage.”
A 5,050-square-foot home on the market for $10.995 million in Marshall, Va., has a more credible claim to fame: Jackie Kennedy designed and built the house as a vacation getaway for her husband, John F. Kennedy.
The house was completed in 1963, and JFK stayed there only twice before he was assassinated, the Washington Business Journal reported in October. Those two weekends have undoubtedly raised the property’s visibility, but it’s still for sale. Source: newsday.com
