The Ocean Club property at the crescent of Revere Beach was sold at auction, again, last week for $1.7 million.
This was the former property of developer Steve Fustolo, a great guy who came along just as the market was turning and got himself into what came to be known as the Ocean Club.
He put together an assemblage of land that is quite impressive and paid big time money for that assemblage – millions in fact.
He came as close as anyone during the last big real estate run-up to changing the face of Revere Beach by planning a project that literally defied the laws of gravity.
His plans were for a grand condo development and he actually placed 200 units under deposit and was ready to move ahead with construction when the bottom fell out of the condo and real estate marketplace across the nation.
This wasn’t about Revere. This wasn’t about Fustolo. This wasn’t about incompetency. It was about the collapse of the real estate market.
Ultimately, Fustolo lost the property but someone close to him (the lenders who owned the notes) bought it out of foreclosure at auction. Then that party lost it and the second auction of the property was held last week with another Fustolo advocate (lenders who owned some of the notes) apparently buying back the property, this time for $1.7 million.
The problem with this major waterfront property today is that even if you bought the property for $1, that still wouldn’t be bargain enough or reason enough to own it as construction costs per square foot for the project and projected sales price for individual units wouldn’t fetch enough to pay for the construction price of the project, let alone to produce profit after the sales.
So why do it?
If you are Fustolo you remain dogged in your belief that this is going to be the project of all projects one day.
And you are probably right.
But who among us has the time to wait or the money to make it happen?
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