LITTLE ROCK — For sale: Dromborg Castle.
Sitting on a hill on the southeast fringes of Fayetteville, with rock walls, a tower and surrounded by woods filled with what’s easy to imagine as the king’s deer, this stronghold has everything a homeowner needs to withstand a siege or host a coronation.
All it lacks is a buyer.
Portfolio of Rogers, a company that specializes in luxury real estate, is facing an unusual challenge — selling a $14.3 million home, a castle no less, in an economy that’s been limping along for years.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” said Kristen Boozman, a real estate broker and Portfolio’s owner. “Ninety percent of real estate sales is marketing. We take that very seriously.”
While Dromborg isn’t the only “castle” in the state, it has very little company. Little Rock has the Rock House, a large turreted residence on Stagecoach Road; and under construction is the Ozark Medieval Fortress in Lead Hill in Boone County, a tourist attraction. Boozman said a key to marketing the castle is capitalizing on it’s one-of-a-kind nature. She said a property like Dromborg Castle doesn’t go into the state’s vast database of homes for sale, known as the multilisting. An open house for such a property is rare and strategically planned; and never, ever, does a “For Sale” sign go up in the yard.
Not that Dromborg Castle has a yard. It has grounds.
Behind a beautiful iron gate on South City Lake Road, the castle sits in the middle of about 100 wooded acres and is made up of 4 million pounds of stone.
A four-story tower gives a spectacular view of the countryside and serves as a deck for stargazing. The interior of the castle is opulent, filled with hand-carved custom molding, fluted columns, coffered ceilings, one-of-a-kind stonework and amazing cabinetry. The more than 10,000-squarefoot castle has five bedrooms, five full bathrooms, and several specialty rooms, including a men’s lounge, a library and a chapel.
Bruce Johnson and his wife, Joan, the owners of White River Hardwoods, finished the castle in 2008, in part, to showcase their products.
The Johnsons founded White River Hardwoods in the mid-1970s and sell specially crafted hardwood molding and hand-carved wood for home interiors and the cabinetry industry. The company distributes products in 50 states and 27 countries.
Joan Johnson said the couple struck on the idea of building a castle after visiting France in the 1990s. The castle towns and their cobbled-together look inspired them, but they determined that their home would have a fully functional interior.
While it may seem that stepping through any doorway in Dromborg could whisk a visitor to C.S. Lewis’ fantasy land of Narnia, the castle has modern amenities like Smart Home Technology, a commercial-grade elevator and heated floors, patios and driveways. To go along with the main home, there’s a 3,800-squarefoot guesthouse nearby.
Recently, Portfolio hosted a “targeted” open house, inviting more than 100 of the region’s top real estate agents to tour the castle.
Bruce Johnson ushered small groups through the building, pointing out fine details and letting them soak up the atmosphere.
“Can you sell this?” he asked, getting nods and smiles from the group.
That’s the plan, get the castle sold.
Portfolio’s focus is to reach potential buyers by exposing it in national and international markets, including high-end real estate publications such as Unique Homes magazine and key newspapers like The Wall Street Journal.
A lot of the push will take place online. The castle has a Facebook page and appeared in an e-mail blast from Top-TenRealEstateDeals.com in September.
“Web marketing is huge,” Boozman said.
Mark Zweig, of ZweigWhite LLC, a Fayetteville developer specializing in renovating and selling high-end properties in the downtown area, said Portfolio has its work cut out for it selling the castle.
He noted in an e-mail that Dromborg Castle is an “over the top” property for the market.
Zweig wished the sellers luck but predicted that the castle wouldn’t be a property that’ll move quickly and that the owners might have to drop some in price.
“The rich want a deal too, today,” he said.
According to data provided by market research firm CoreLogic, the rich are taking out more loans for homes this year.
For the first six months of this year, 2,572 loans for $1 million or more were originated, up 12 percent from the same period last year.
The 2011 figures also are substantially higher than the 1,527 posted for the first six months of 2009, in the heart of the economic downturn, but they are off significantly from the 10,226 for the same period of 2007, before the bottom fell out of the real estate market.
A property with a $14 million-plus price tag was rare 25 years ago, said James Gains, research economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M. But nowadays, it isn’t that unusual.
He said there is an active market for $5 million-plus homes across the U.S. that regular buyers never hear about. Still, Gains agreed that to find the right buyer, the marketing has to be global and targeted at the hyper-rich.
“They’re looking for a unique buyer,” he said. “It’s a unique marketing problem, and it will be a unique sale when it occurs.”
He said the challenge is not only finding someone who can afford the property, but one who wants a castle, and in Arkansas of all places.
He noted that the buyer may not want the property as a primary residence. Gains said second homes in Vail, Colo., for example, are regularly sold for more than $14 million.
Gains predicted that a buyer from overseas, perhaps Asia, would find the property intriguing. He noted that Arkansas is centrally located in the U.S., making travel to various destinations easier.
He added that the weak dollar could make the castle a good deal for an overseas buyer but that the flagging economy and low interest rates are not typical concerns for that type of buyer.
“These are the kind of people who can buy what they want,” he said.
Business, Pages 77 on 10/30/2011