Catch-22 was a huge best seller, but Joseph Heller’s former East Hampton home is not. The three-bedroom cottage—where the author died in 1999—went on the market in 2005 with a $3.65 million price tag, slashed after nine months to $3.2 million. It was later yanked off the market and reappeared this spring listed at $3.1 million. With its literary provenance (the Brown Harris Stevens Website describes it as “home to one of America’s most celebrated authors”; listing agent Mary Ellen McGuire confirmed it’s Heller’s), tony neighbors (including real-estate mogul Arthur Zeckendorf and New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger), and an acre of land—complete with a heated pool and a separate studio building—why won’t it sell? “It’s a very good south-of-the-highway location,” says Corcoran’s Elaine Stimmel, who saw the house when it first went on the market. “But it needs a bit of work, and most buyers out here don’t want a project.”

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Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by S.Jhoanna Robledo
• Table of Contents: Oct 22, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!