Mention in New York Times clinches sale of Newport home

This Newport home was featured in The New York Times Sunday real estate section, which resulted in a quick sale. / COURTESY BEN JACOBSEN
This Newport home was featured in The New York Times Sunday real estate section, which resulted in a quick sale. / COURTESY BEN JACOBSEN

NEWPORT – What happens when your house is featured in The New York Times Sunday real estate section? A quick sale, that’s what.

The federal style house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms – featured on April 27 in the article “$1,400,000 Homes in Rhode Island, California and Illinois” – is owned by John K. Grosvenor, an architect and principal of Northeast Collaborative Architects, and Cheryl Hackett, a writer and architectural historian.

Listed at $1.39 million, the Isaac and Elizabeth Sherman house is under contract to a buyer who had been interested in it before the article was published, but who made a final offer they accepted after learning the house would soon be featured in the Times, according to Michelle Drum, the listing agent. The offer was close to asking price, according to the owners.

“The article just clinched it,” Grosvenor said. “The article came and they were deathly afraid they were going to lose out.”

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Said Hackett: “It turned a mild buyer into a serious buyer.”

The newspaper’s print edition this year has a circulation of 1.1 million on Sunday, and digital subscribers exceed 1.2 million.

The story also was picked up by wire services, and posted by the MSNBC website.

At the time the story was published, the property had been listed for about two months.

Drum, an associate broker with Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty, said the house was selected for the newspaper feature after the writer contacted her, searching for houses to profile within a specific price range.

“They actually called me,” said Drum. She had previously worked with the newspaper on a property in Providence. “They were looking for properties that were interesting.”

Hackett had been writing a running blog covering the renovation of the house, www.homesofthebrave.wordpress.com, which also attracted the attention of the writer.

The photographer who shot the images published as part of the feature spent the greater part of a day, photographing exteriors and interiors.

Initially, when the story appeared online on a Wednesday, in a slideshow format, Hackett and Grosvenor assumed it might only be an online feature. Then, reading their print edition Sunday, Hackett said, they spotted a familiar house.

“Holy, can’t quote me on the next word, there it is,” she said.

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