Overprice your house, go to jail

Seller to prisoner in just five seconds

Rene Boucher, the French-Canadian osteopath who assaulted Rand Paul, crushing six ribs, apparently went crazy when his over-priced house wouldn't sell, and he blamed Paul.

The 'socialist' doctor charged with cracking Senator Rand Paul's ribs in a crunching blindside tackle may have harbored a secret grudge against his GOP neighbor for spoiling his lakeside views and 'devaluing' his home, DailyMail.com can reveal. 

Rene Boucher, 59, told Paul in the wake of the mauling that he hadn't been able to sell his $740,000 house for ten years because the congressman's trees were 'in the way'.

It's believed Boucher was referring to woodland at the back of Paul's property that blocks the doctor's views of the picturesque private lake that forms the centerpiece of their upscale gated community.

Property records confirm that Democrat-voting Boucher has indeed put his house on the market five times over the past decade without success

Friends say the trees on Paul's property could explain why the retired anesthesiologist has failed to find a buyer for his five-bedroom, 1.36-acre home which is nonetheless described on property websites as 'overlooking' the desirable water feature

[But] One realtor pal told DailyMail.com the Boucher property probably didn't sell the home simply because it was overpriced

[Realtor Jim Bullington] said Boucher was a regular patron [article notes that Boucher hasn't worked since 2008] at Bowling Green's 440 Main restaurant where he would drink wine and espouse the virtues of ripping up the American healthcare system and replacing it with a publicly-funded service like those in Canada and Great Britain.

Bullington also remembered Boucher voicing frustration that his house had gone unsold.

'Everyone says it's priced too high. He tried to sell it himself because he didn't want to pay any commission to a realtor,' explained Bullington. [emphasis added]

Socialists couldn't be socialists if they accepted reality, so it's no wonder that Boucher didn't want to use the services of a realtor, but how sad to see that a friend of the masses was too selfish to share the wealth with one of us little people.

Don't let this happen to you.

And is this a surprise? 27 Alden Road now down a million-plus from initial ask

27 Alden Road dropped yesterday to $2.250 — it started in May at $3.3 million.

27 Alden Road — going down

We had some fun with this listing back in August, after its agent had convinced Greenwich Time to publish a tribute to it, and nothing's changed since then (the new broker has, wisely, removed some of the most telling, and damaging photos from the preceding listing, but they're still in the August post's link and, of course, in the house itself). It's basically a land sale, and a lot on this site is probably not worth even its current price. Any honest agent would tell the owner that, but human nature being what it is, who wants to believe it?

Lower standards embarrass us all

sad

Car thieves in Greenwich have expanded into Pemberwick, where old junks are now being boosted. Not long ago, decent cars, like Tommy Hilfiger's Land Rovers were the targets, and their theft brought us national attention that reinforced the town's image as a "tony" enclave (far more than Tesei's pitiful PR campaign, I might add) . Not so now:

GREENWICH — Auto thefts in the community have been ramping up, as police recorded eight stolen cars in the first half of November alone — and three overnight Monday.

Police responded to the northwest corner of town, the Pemberwick section, early Monday, to investigate the latest string of thefts. Two vehicles — a 2008 GMC Sierra and a 2012 Honda Pilot — were stolen from Hollow Wood Lane. Not far away on Monica Road, a 2017 Chevrolet Cruze was stolen.

Police Chief James Heavey referred to the latest spate of thefts as a “dramatic increase.”

He said the practice of leaving vehicles unlocked, with keys inside, was endangering the community. Car thieves were looking for opportunities, he said, and easy-to-steal cars provided them.

Please: if you insist on keeping a clunker, lock it up; stories like this make us look like Norwalk or, God forfend, Stamford.

 

I hate when this happens

221 Taconic Rd

221 Taconic Road has been dropped to $3.590 million.

This property's a charming, 1936 house on just about five acres of beautiful land, but it started off back in 2008 at $8.2 million (owner paid $4.150 for it in 2002, and did extensive remodeling), and even though it had dropped to "just" $4.950 million by 2010, when I had a customer interested in it, it was still priced too high for what it is: a small little gem on a great yard, badly in need, in my client's and my opinion, wth a balancing wing on its left. We both thought that $3.5 was the right price, but the heirs of the owner, having watched its imagined value of $8.2 melt away, wouldn't budge.

We came back in 2011, when the price dropped to $4.450 but again, no soap. My client moved on — I hope I managed to sell him something else, but I really don't remember — and now, finally, it's priced where it ought to be.

Or ought to have been six years ago, that is; it's been sitting on the market for a long time now, and that never helps a home's price. 

Florida Man strikes again

Does this chamise make me look fat?

This time, breaks into Granny's home naked, tries on her clothes while prancing around.

Police suspect that drugs or alcohol or both may have been involved, but I wonder whether it might just have been a sudden moment of self-identifying as a clothes horse.

Two contracts reported

260 Stanwich Rd

260 Stanwich Road, 2 acres in a 1-acre zone (I'm guessing it isn't sub dividable) asking price of $1.8 million. It was market as both a resident and land, and it's the land listing that's being reported as under contract. Not that the choice of which listing to report is controlling, but it's interesting to note that the house was built in 1980 and is already considered obsolete.

11 Crescent

And over in Riverside, 11 Crescent Road, $2.295 million, has also found a buyer. It sits on a 1/2 acre which, for Riverside, is considered a large lot. Given current prices in this section of town, the price seems about right.

Nude? Not for prudes.

Germans aren't Canadians — or Americans

Intolerance of nude bodies in gym changing rooms swells among millennials, as this Canadian swimmer has learned.

It never occurred to the 67-year-old healing facilitator and former engineer that it was inappropriate to take all his clothes off in the locker room to shower and change.

But the South Shore municipality informed swimmers in its November newsletter that nudity is forbidden in changing rooms.

“The city would like to remind users of the public pools that in the changing rooms, they must be clothed, covered up or use the cubicles or toilets,” aquatic supervisor Dominique Lavigne wrote in an email to Bérard after he sent a query about the new rules.

Locker-room etiquette will get even more complicated two years from now, when Brossard opens a new aquatic centre with a universal changing room, rather than separate ones for men and women.

Lavigne noted that part of the reason the city has banned nudity is to get pool users accustomed to the idea that they have to cover up in the locker room.

Universal changing rooms are a growing trend as communities seek to make recreational facilities more gender-inclusive and responsive to the needs of people with disabilities, who might need to be accompanied by a member of the opposite sex.

From the YMCA in Calgary’s Quarry Park neighbourhood to the University of Guelph, universal, gender-neutral changing rooms, with cubicles where users can change in privacy, are becoming increasingly common.

The trend follows bitter legal battles in the United States over access to locker rooms for transgender students.

But users in the habit of peeling off their clothes without a second thought complain the increase in inclusivity is coming at the cost of less individual freedom.

Bérard, who swims laps at the Antoine-Brossard pool two mornings a week, says there’s nothing shameful about the human body, and that you can’t take a proper shower unless you’re naked.

“I’m all for respect, but when I’m taking my shower, I don’t want to wear my bathing suit,” he added.

[snip]

“It seems to be fear-based,” he said of the new rules.

But signs popping up at Montreal-area pools warning users to cover up suggest there’s a generational shift in what’s considered acceptable.

CBC’s Baroness von Sketch Show skewered that difference in its sketch Locker Room, portraying women over 40 as totally comfortable with their nudity while under-40s were horrified by seeing older women parade their less-than-perfect bodies.

While tolerance for nudity seems to be decreasing in North America — in changing rooms, anyway — that’s not the case in northern Europe, where naked swimmers rinse off in coed showers before entering the pool and nude family saunas are a perfectly acceptable activity.

Danes, who have family nudist nights and many beaches where clothing is optional, are “the most shameless people in the world,” writes British journalist Helen Russell, author of The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country.

“The result of all this embarrassment-free living? Danes have the highest level of contentment on the planet (so says the UN World Happiness Report) and don’t worry too much about what they look like,” she claimed in Britain’s Telegraph.

In Germany, nude sunbathing was considered a way to protest the authoritarian governments of, first, the Nazis (who condemned it as a Jewish plot to destroy the morals of pure Aryans) and later, the communist dictators. Today, as in Denmark, it's just a normal way to enjoy life. Not so in our country.

Americans have always had a weird attitude towards nudity, loving it in films and publications while shrinking from the real thing. Now that absurd reaction seems to have spread to Canada's young adults. I blame global warming.

If it weren't for the snow, I'd suspect this was Florida Family gone wild

Naked Canadians kidnap their friends and go wild

Oh, Canada!

Five people who were wearing only their birthday suits in Alberta in sub-zero temperatures abducted a couple and their six-week old infant.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Laurel Scott said the mother, their baby and the woman's father had been abducted from a home in Nisku, Laduc County, at around 9.30am and forced into a BMW against their will last Monday. 

It's believed the suspects who were all naked despite the extreme wintry conditions had been having breakfast and drinking trippy tea one of them had brought back from India which kicked off the 'whole crazy spell,' a relative told The National Post.

So while I'm spending my day showing houses, the folks up north are having all the fun. Hardly seems fair.

A new listing in Old Greenwich, and a sale

7 Binney Lane

The new listing is 7 Binney Lane, at $4.250 million. This was a Mark Obrien project back in the day, and sold for $4.950 in 2007 after just 14 days on the market. 2007, it turned out, was not the time to buy property in Greenwich, as the new owners discovered when they put it back on the market in 2009 at $5.195, and sold it for $3.925 in 2014. Will those buyers; these sellers, fare better? I'm guessing they will, because the market hit was taken several years ago and, while the lot this sits on is not ideal, the house itself works nicely, and Ledge is a great neighborhood.

11 Lighthouse Lane

Around the corner from Ledge, 11 Lighthouse Lane has sold for $3.885 million, on an asking price of $3.995. Pretty good.The sellers won the land they built on back in 2005, when it was listed for $1.749, and they bid $2.135. Bidding war winners rarely make out, in my experience, but a good site in an excellent Old Greenwich neighborhood apparently proved the exception.

One maybe, one definitely not

14 Chateau Ridge Lane, which unsuccessfully sought $4.2 million in 2011, is "new" to the market today at $2.425. The listing notes that, despite title being held by a bank, this is not a distress sale, but rather a property once owned by an executive at that bank. Not a terrible house at the price range, if you can tolerate its distant location. Maybe $2.1?

of course, it does have the zebra, with barbells, so maybe that asking price is right

18 Dwight lane: luxury are us

18 Dwight Lane, on the other hand, is a laugher at $2.1 million. A foreclosure reclaimed by the lender in March, 2017 for its debt of $1,359,070, the listing describes it as "completely renovated". Uh huh. There's another, larger house included in this disaster, but you'll want to subtract the cost of razing it, rather than including it in the "value".

little dump on the prairie

good luck getting a c/o for this deck