Immelt home hits market in New Canaan for $5.5m

The entrance to 705 West Road in New Canaan, Conn., the home of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. The entrance to 705 West Road in New Canaan, Conn., the home of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. Photo: Lindsay Perry / Lindsay Perry Buy photo Photo: Lindsay Perry / Lindsay Perry Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Immelt home hits market in New Canaan for $5.5m 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

As it turns out, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and spouse Andrea will not be keeping a countryside vacation retreat in New Canaan.

After closing on the purchase of an $8 million condominium in Boston, the Immelts listed their house at 705 West Ave. in New Canaan for $5.5 million — slightly more than what they paid for it in 2001. The move comes as Fairfield-based GE readies to move its headquarters to Boston this summer, with Immelt joining about 200 other senior executives in heading north. GE went public with its plans to look for a new corporate home following tax increases passed in the 2015 Connecticut legislative session.

The Immelt house sits on 4 acres a mile from the Westchester County, N.Y., border, with the home totaling nearly 10,500 square feet of space with six bedrooms. nine full baths and 18 rooms in all on three floors. By New Canaan standards, the property is upper crust but not top of the line, just missing the top 50 homes as ranked by BlockShopper, according to annual taxes owed.

The Immelts‘ new condo in Boston totals 3,600 square feet of space, according to the Boston Business Journal, and is located a few blocks from Boston Public Garden. GE’s new headquarters will be built on Necco Way in Boston’s Seaport District, to include two historic buildings renovated for corporate use and a new building to be built on an adjoining parking lot.

Upon news of the move in January, the real estate community feared the worst-case scenario of some 800 homes hitting the Fairfield County market simultaneously from GE headquarters staff. But earlier this week GE announced that 500 to 600 employees, or most everyone who is not going to Boston, could be headed for the company’s former GE Capital headquarters in Norwalk (on Friday, a report from the Albany Business Review said at least some Fairfield jobs would be moved to Schenectady, N.Y.)

Still, the loss of those 200-plus employees will affect the real estate market, though experts said the impact was likely to be short-lived, with the region’s accessibility to New York remaining a major selling point.

“It’s a statewide problem that so many businesses seem to be leaving,” said Tucker Murphy, executive director of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce. “Whenever we see a company (leave) that’s had a longtime presence in the community, it’s concerning.”

This is not the first time Immelt’s home has made headlines since its construction in 2000. In 2011, the activist movement Occupy Wall Street bused in nearly 80 protesters to picket outside the gated entrance to the Immelt home for over an hour, reading from a poster-board letter addressed to Immelt chastising the CEO over GE policies.