The market isn't ideal either. The Main Line is flush with more than 15 luxury properties priced beyond $5 million, he estimated.
But perhaps karma is also to blame. How else to explain the Series of Unfortunate Events at Lion's Gate?
It all started in 1988, when Richard C. Grossman, who conceived the lavish, three-story residence, bought 2.4 acres on Tree Line Drive.
The ponytailed New Yorker, who was forever attired in black, borrowed nearly $18 million from banks and lending companies to finance a proposed national chain of psychological counseling centers.
Unfortunately, Grossman was subsequently revealed not to be a psychotherapist. The
counseling centers were bogus.
This came to light in the mid-'90s, as he was building his dream house near the Valley Creek Preserve. It was known as Lionshead then. Lore has it that Grossman fancied himself a Richard the Lion-Hearted.
Construction was halted in 1996. The half-built house, grandiose even by Main Line standards, was offered for sale at $10 million. Dubbs was involved then, too, as the listing agent for the court-appointed trustee. As he likes to say: "I know where the bodies are buried."
And Grossman? In 1999, he was sentenced to a more austere Big House to serve a 38-month prison term for fraud and money laundering.
Bad luck.
When Dubbs takes prospective buyers on tours - up to three hours - he points out the solid brass doorknobs shaped like lions' heads and purportedly selected by a psychic. He extols the two Juliet balconies that overlook a two-story conservatory containing an $85,000 piano; the handmade mahogany banister; the home theater with vibrating seats; and the larger-than-life Elvis sculpture.
