West Tisbury Home Prices Span $550,000 to $630,000 in Late-Summer Sales

WEST TISBURY -- Five property deeds were recorded in West Tisbury between Aug. 21 and Sept. 19, but only two carried a sale price by the time records were reviewed, leaving most of the period's activity still to be reflected in the town's housing data.

MARKET OVERVIEW Five deeds were recorded during the period. Of those, two included a sale price, ranging from $550,000 to $630,000, with a median of $590,000. The remaining three transfers had no price on file, which typically means the figure has not yet reached the registry rather than any indication it was withheld. With only two priced sales and three pending, the raw count suggests a quiet stretch for closed, priced transactions, though the town's overall deed activity was not unusually low for the five-week span.

TOP SALES The top recorded sale was 41 Scotchmans Bridge Lane, which sold for $630,000 on Aug. 27. The property was sold by Henry E. Russell to Abigail Russell Prior and Julia Dickinson Russell.

The second sale was 139 Oak Lane, which sold for $550,000 on Sept. 14. The sellers were listed as Griffin Gardner and Leila Gardner, as trustees, with Martha's Vineyard Bank as the buyer.

Three additional transfers were recorded during the period without a listed price: 120 Oak Lane (Aug. 27), 200 Otis Bassett Road (Aug. 21), and a third West Tisbury transfer (Sept. 14) recorded as a Declaration of Homestead rather than a property sale. Sale prices for these, where applicable, may appear in registry records in the coming days.

NEIGHBORHOOD BREAKDOWN Oak Lane accounted for two of the period's five recorded transfers. In addition to the $550,000 sale at 139 Oak Lane, 120 Oak Lane was transferred from Bruce R. Brotter to Bruce Brotter as trustee of the Bruce Brotter Revocable Trust; no price was listed for that transfer.

Scotchmans Bridge Lane and Otis Bassett Road each had one recorded transfer. The Scotchmans Bridge Lane sale, at $630,000, was the period's highest recorded price. The Otis Bassett Road transfer moved the property from Stanley A. Hersh and Tamara P. Hersh to themselves as trustees; no price was listed.

The fifth deed, filed the same day as the 139 Oak Lane sale and involving the same Gardner grantor and grantee names in reverse, was recorded as a Declaration of Homestead rather than a sale and carried no listed address or price.

MARKET NOTES Bedroom, bathroom and square-footage data were not available in the deed records reviewed, so no price-per-square-foot comparisons can be made this period.

Two of the five recorded transfers, at 120 Oak Lane and 200 Otis Bassett Road, moved property from individual owners into revocable trusts held by those same owners. These self-to-trust transfers are a distinct category from open-market sales and, consistent with that pattern, neither carried a listed sale price. The Declaration of Homestead recorded for the Gardner family is a legal filing rather than a change in ownership and is not counted among the period's sales.

With three of the five recorded deeds not part of arm's-length sales between unrelated parties, only the Scotchmans Bridge Lane and Oak Lane transactions reflect the kind of buyer-to-seller sale typically used to gauge market pricing this period.

Recorded Deeds

Source: Registry of Deeds. Sale amounts shown as recorded; transfers without a disclosed consideration are noted as such.

Compiled from official town feeds, community organizations, and local press. Outside reporting is attributed inline.