This is a tad alarming

Equifax hacked, 143 million Americans' records stolen

Equifax said an internal investigation revealed hackers exploited a vulnerability in a U.S. website application to gain unauthorized access to files from mid-May through July. The company, however, said it hasn’t found any indication that its “core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases,” had been comprised.

The company, which offers credit-monitoring and identity-theft protection products to guard consumers’ personal information, said it discovered the breach on July 29. Equifax said it reported the intrusion to law enforcement and contracted a cybersecurity firm to conduct a forensic review.

Equifax said hackers gained access to systems containing customers’ Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s license numbers. The company said credit-card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers were accessed, as well as dispute documents with sensitive information for another 182,000 people.

Fortunately, Equinox is on the job:

“This is clearly a disappointing event for our company....,” Equifax Chief Executive Richard Smith said in prepared remarks. 

Feel better?

Well I suppose it had to happen

25 Lower Cross. $4 million, really? Zillow says so, but ....

25 Lower Cross Road, Thomas Peterffy's place up in Conyers Farm, was purchased for $45 million in 2004, renovated, then returned to the market in 2014 at $65 million before slowly dropping to $29, and now reports a contingent contract.

Zillow estimates its value at $4 million, and shows the listing agent as David Ogilvy. In fact, it's been a Raveis listing for the past year, and, down market or no, Zillow will be shown to be quite a bit off the mark when the actual sales price is made public.

In case you missed it amid the hurricane coverage

Time to return to bed

DNA tests show that the crazy bitch who had Salvador Dali exhumed prove she is not his daughter.

It was a bizarre claim in the first place, and I never understood how she convinced a Spanish court to go along with her delusion.

Next up, we can expect her to demand an excavation of Napoleon at Les Invalides.

Price cut on Brynwood Lane

272 Round Hill Road, nee 5 Brynwood Lane

The spec house at 5 Brynwood Lane has switched brokers, changed its address to "272 Round Hill Road" (thereby knocking 9 months off its market age) and dropped its price from $12.750 million to $9.950. The new broker, David Ogilvy, claims "15,156 square feet of living space": the original listing agent, Ellen Mosher, was more forthcoming; not only accurately giving its address as 5 Brynwood Lane, but also describing the house as having 4,411 sq. ft. on the first floor and 5,594 on the second, for a total of 10,000, plus 3,918 feet in the basement gym and 1,233 in the four-car garage. David has a more flexible concept of "living space", preferring, one assumes, to eat on his Nautiflex and the front seat of his Jaguar. Hey, whatever works for you.

The house itself is a Kaali-Nagy project, so it's absolutely top-quality. Its actual size will depend on how you use it.

Truly bizarre

A couple of readers alerted me to an article in the WSJ yesterday reporting on the sale of 460 North Street for $22 million, $2 million above asking price. I'm not linking to it because it's behind the Journal's cash wall, but you can see my previous post from a couple of weeks ago on its pending sale, here.

Is it possible that there were two buyers silly enough to want to pay this much for this house? I suppose that's the most likely explanation, though I wonder whether the sale included some of the very expensive art work on the walls.

Either way, my prediction is that we can expect to see a sharp discount from this selling price when it next hits the market.

Got one of them newfangled electric cars and live on Key West? You're screwed

Gas line of Florida Keys evacuees, SEPTEMBER 6, 2017. Averge time to fill up per (gasoline-powered) car: 5 minutes

Citizens of the Florida Keys, average height above sea level four feet, have been ordered to evacuate the island chain in the face of approaching Hurricane Irma, which is expected to deliver a storm surge of 8'-12'.

Distance from Key West to Miami (also under evacuation orders): 161 miles. Average mileage of Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt: 70 miles. Average time to recharge battery: 8 hours. Average wait at a charge station while others also charge cars? Unknown.

Dang — Walt, I need a good talking to

Wally's always said I do pissy better than anyone, but I'm having a hard time coming up with posts on some of the new, over-priced listings, and even price cuts, being reported this week on our MLS. Well, "come up with" is the wrong term: it's still easy to draft "are you friggin' kidding me?!" pieces, but I'm not able to hit the "publish" button. That's probably because, with all the tragedies hitting so hard and so fast, national, international, and local, it's just too much of a reach to be snarky (a feat I accomplished in the post below, mind you, but that was an outlet for my temptation, not an actual posting on real estate: I mean, do we really care if Johnny Depp's cabana succumbs to a tidal wave?). 

I'm confident that I'll be back to form by next week, possibly even by tomorrow — a lifetime of being an a-hole has trained me to be resilient — but until I am, rest assured that there are a number of great follies popping up on the market, and they'll be put up on the dart board soon.

I hope this post isn't as mean as the ones I reference below, because it's about property, not lives, but ...

Celebrities' vacation homes in the path of Irma's destruction.

Before Hurricane Irma takes over the coverage completely, let's remember Harvey, and how Americans responded

I won't dignify them by linking to the Left's busy beavers who've called for the cut-off of federal relief funds for Texans (Houston, led by a black, Democrat Mayor, voted for Hillary), but it'd be a shame to let the current disaster go by without posting a few photos of how our real, non-elite Americans came to the rescue of their fellow citizens. Black, white, even the most despised of all, red neck Cajuns, responded. That's something our liberal betters will never understand.

Hell, even this guy

Houses depreciate

Even the orange won't help you escape this fact

As demonstrated in today's listing for Bradbury Lane, Riverside. Sold for full asking price of $3.4 million when newly constructed in 2006, now asking $3.195. Land's one thing, but the run-of-the-mill construction perched atop of it doesn't hold value. Buy what you like that suits your family, and enjoy it, but don't expect that aging structure to support you in your retirement.

That's not the case in some areas of the country, where housing prices are soaring, but in Greenwich, just buy with an eye towards providing your family with a decent house and neighborhood to live in, and you won't be disappointed when you reckon the finally tally.