If you were dreaming of owning the spectacular Shea Mansion at 356 Richmond, recently featured here and here on Buffalo Rising, you are too late. It was listed for sale and shown for just one day, after which, it sold for 3% over the asking price, or $617,885. The former owner said that the cash deal closed in 31 days. This price is $150K more than the next highest price ever paid for a Richmond Avenue property. I suspect this new record will be broken in the near future as well.

Prior to the sale, a pair of Buffalo Rising’s talented comment section prognosticator’s guessed that the house would sell for a substantial mark down from the ask at $537,500. They probably felt they were being generous at that price. According to Zillow, the house was last sold in 2007 for just $152,500. The house has had some major upgrades since then, but this recent sale price represents more than just the value of recent renovations. It represents the new value people now find in Buffalo’s finite supply of historic buildings and the beautiful walkable neighborhoods they create. This is not your baby-boomer father’s Buffalo. This is a new Buffalo that is very definitely moving in a positive direction.

Today’s Buffalo is seeing investment that has been unprecedented in my life time. The change started as a trickle less than a decade ago. Today 100 million dollar project announcements are common place, people invest in million dollar iron fences around their mansions, and houses sell in one day for over $600,000 on streets that were once considered borderline slum areas.