Turns out Curt Schilling’s real estate judgment was nearly as catastrophic as his reckless, $100 million-plus gamble on 38 Studios, his now defunct video game start-up.
Schilling’s 26-acre Medfield compound is underwater all right; in fact, it’s on the bottom of the North Atlantic right next to the Titanic. The current asking price, at $3.2 million is, less than half the price Schilling first pitched back in 2008.
That’s right, 2008. Schilling has been trying to unload his overpriced Medfield jock palace for going on five years now, a record exceeded only by Manny Ramirez’ oddball, years-long quest to sell his childishly decorated penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton Towers in downtown Boston.
Like all deluded sellers, Schilling apparently just can’t come to grips with the fact that what he once thought of as a real estate goldmine has instead morphed into a financial sinkhole.
How bad is it? Enough to land Schilling and his Medfield estate on a highly entertaining website called The Biggest Celebrity Losers. A fun read, it details mammoth price cuts by Suzanne Somers, Nicholas Cage and other stars desperately seeking buyers for their costly mistakes.
Should Have Stuck With Baseball?
OK, just to be clear, I’m not a Schilling hater here. In fact, I thought his stumping for Republican presidential candidate John McCain back in 2008, when he was still on the Sox payroll, was quite the gutsy move given the squishy, Left Coast politics of the team’s owners, Tom Werner especially.
And I had high hopes that one of the more heroic pitchers of all time might find a successful second career as a hot-trotting video game entrepreneur.
But it was not to be. In fact, Schilling’s bad bet on his multimillion-dollar Medfield mansion now looks, with hindsight, like an early warning sign of even bigger problems to come.
Schilling’s decision to gamble a big part if not all his net worth on 38 Studios – and tragically tens of millions from the cash-strapped state of Rhode Island – looks absolutely reckless.
Video game companies are notoriously fickle startups, and can soak up tens of millions of dollars and often fail to produce a big hit. But Schilling ignored all the speed bumps – including rejections by top local venture capitalists who know a thing or two about launching new companies – and barreled right ahead.
Right ahead into disaster, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Yet before there was 38 Studios there was 7 Woodridge Road in Medfield.
Red Flags Ignored
Schilling ignored all sorts of warnings that the massively overbuilt modern colonial he was buying from former star Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe was a big, fat turkey.
Bledsoe spent at least $9 million and probably more back in 1999 and 2000 building a jock’s dream home on a wooded tract of land in Medfield, a nice town but one hardly known for its palatial estates.
The 20-room mansion with its sprawling campus is everything a professional athlete could possibly desire, from privacy to a tennis court that converts to an ice skating rink in winter, with lights for night action. It also comes with a putting green, heated pool, volleyball court and waterfall.
But fortune turned against Bledsoe, who got injured, then lost his job after Tom Brady’s miraculous Super Bowl victory back in early 2002.
Moving north to quarterback the Buffalo Bills, Bledsoe tried for two years to sell his jock palace, dropping the price from $9 million to $6.5 million before finally unloading it on Schilling for $4.5 million in 2004.
All this, in turn, happened when prices were soaring out of control and a massive real estate bubble was forming.
“Maybe he’ll (Schilling) actually make some money on it, because I sure didn’t [laughter],” Bledsoe joked with reporters during a visit to Gillette Stadium back in 2008, the Globe reported at the time.
Schilling must have thought then he was getting a steal. After all, he paid half price based on what Bledsoe blew on the property.
But he clearly didn’t do his homework, for even $4.5 million was completely out of whack in the Medfield market, which, while nice, is not in the same league as mansion-packed Brookline, Wellesley or Weston.
How out of whack?
The closest sale in price to Schilling’s $4.5 million purchase did not come until 2005, at the very height of the real estate market, when a home in town sold for $2.4 million.
While Medfield has a lot of nice homes, a $4.5 million sale in town would be the story of the decade, whereas it would draw little if any attention in Brookline, Wellesley or Weston beyond brokers and local gossips.
“Schilling has clearly overshot the market,” Landvest broker and mansion specialist Terrence Maitland recently told me.
Whether Schilling now realizes how big a real estate goof he made paying $4.5 million for Drew Bledsoe’s big mistake is an open question, but he clearly didn’t see it that way when he first put the mansion up for sale in 2008.
In fact, Schilling clearly thought he’d make a killing, listing it for $8 million!
It has been all downhill since then, with Schilling taking his house off the market and putting it on again more than once.
Meanwhile, the listing price has steadily drifted down, from $8 million to $4.5 million to $3.45 million and now, in January, to $3.2 million.
Zillow values the house at a significantly lower $2.8 million, so there is still room for further cuts.
Right now, it’s death by a thousand price cuts.
No, Schilling would be better off slashing the price and taking his pain all at once.
One of the greatest pitchers in Major League history needs to think big and bold again, just not in the way he probably envisioned nearly a decade ago when he spent $4.5 million for his Medfield manse.
But sadly, it may be the only way for Schilling to unload what is fast becoming one of Greater Boston’s more notorious white elephants.
Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
