Back to the future II

24 Pell Place, Riverside, sold for full price, $3.435 when it was built in 2004. Placed back on the market a year ago at $4.540 million, it's lingered on the market since, suffering a series of price cuts. Today it was dropped to $3.6. Assuming normal negotiations, this house is probably going to end up back where it started fourteen years ago. Or lower.

Which surprises me, because, while its exterior design in front is unfortunate, it's a very nice house inside, and extremely well-built. It normally enjoys a beautiful view over Binny Park, and I wonder if the interminable dredging project of Binney Pond has hurt its chances.

If this is within your price range, I'd recommend that you check it out: it could work for your family. And the dredging is almost done.

No no no, you're selling the house, not the swing. Better a fuzzy foreground than a fuzzy house.

Back to the future

106 Porchuck Road sold for $1.650 million in 2001, $2.0 in 2013, renovated in 2014 and put back on the market for $2.950 in September, 2016. It closed yesterday at $1.675.

Contemporaries have always been a slow sale in Greenwich, and prices in the Porchuck Road neighborhood have been in decline since the 2008 crash.

I DO NOT — DO NOT (!)  — UNDERSTAND THIS SETUP. Who among us doesn't enjoy a bit of exhibitionism now and then, but every day? I say let the teenagers next door get their sex education the traditional way: online.

and the flying saucer attached to this faucet is for ...?

Back Country woes continue

43 Richmond Hill Road has dropped, again, and is now asking $3.295 million, a price that actually offers quite a bit of house for the money. But this street, after a brief flurry of activity in the 2003-2007 years, has witnessed a continuing loss of value.

43 asked $6.395 when it was newly built in 2004, and finally sold for $4.9 million in 2006. That proved to be its high-water mark. After some improvements, it was put up for sale again in 2010 for $5.495, and sold in 2014 for $3.7. This time, in 2016, it was initially priced at $3.995, and as we've just seen, it has yet to find a buyer.

There a number of things working against this house: it's miss-mash architecture (what gives with that tower/silo thing to its left?), decent, but not fantastic quality, boring interior, and its location so far from town. All that, and the fact that Richmond Hill homes no longer command their lofty prices of 12 years ago.

I'd have taken a more aggressive price cut

85 ROUND HILL ROAD

85 Round Hill Road dropped today from $6.495 million to $6.249. It's a lovely old house located on almost 4 acres in the R-2 zone, on lower Round Hill, but its style is not particularly appealing to today's younger buyers, and its price history suggests that today's teeny price cut isn't going to change that reality.

It was first listed at $7.495 and dropped to $6.695 during the ensuing year to $6.695. After taking 2016 off, it was returned to the market at nearly the same price that failed to producer the year before: $6.495. Now it's at $6.295.

The elevator may be going down, but at a crawl.

Price it (right) and they will come

10 Deer Park Court has a contract after just eight days on the market. This time, it was priced at $3.595 million, whereas when the owner and her previous agent tried to sell it in 2016-2017, they started at $4.750 and over the ensuing year of failure only cut the price to $4.450.

This sale will undoubtedly be shown in our MLS statistics as selling almost instantly at very close to its asking price, but a lot of our resurgent sales activity this spring can be attributed to situations like this: the owners have finally grown tired of holding on to homes they no longer want, and are cutting their prices to more reasonable levels.

Buyers who can afford to wait should practice patience with overpriced homes. Owners with unsold homes, however, should employ the opposite tactic: don't sit on an overprice home, patiently waiting "for the right buyer" to come along. 

They won't.

His mistake was leaving the bar, where no one would have noticed him

nothing to see here, move along, move along

Naked man arrested for wandering around Riverside's J House hotel.

How determined is Congress to paralyze the administration? This determined, and this petty

I can too read a book; i just need a few pictures in it to help me along a bit

Nation of Islam congressman Elison demands answers to who added frosted windows to administration offices.

At a House Financial Services Committee hearing today, Ellison quizzed Mulvaney on whether the glass was clear when the OMB director arrived at CFPB and if it was frosted now. Mulvaney told Ellison that "part of it is" now frosted.

"So when somebody walks by your office, they are obscured from seeing what you're doing?" Ellison asked.

"Yeah... it is the point," Mulvaney replied.

"And yet you are the champion of transparency, right?" Ellison continued. "...And yet you have obscured yourself physically. It just occurs to me that as we're talking about transparency and all that, and about how we've got to be more accountable, and yet you're obscuring yourself."

Mulvaney said that 13 offices at CFPB got frosted windows at a cost of $3,500, a design plan originating with former CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

"And yet you're the one who did it," Ellison retorted.

"I've been to your office; I can't see into it," Mulvaney responded.

Ellison told Mulvaney that with the CFPB office's frosted glass "who knows what you're even doing in that room."

After the hearing, Ellison wrote a letter to Mulvaney expressing concern that the frosted windows "limit the transparency of senior officials at the Bureau and create an appearance of impropriety."

Ellison asked for responses to several questions by April 18, including "whether you directed Bureau officials to frost the glass in your office and if so, on what date you ordered these changes."

"Please confirm that 13 offices at the CFPB have frosted glass. Please identify the location of each office with frosted glass. For each office with frosted glass, please provide the date on which the order was placed to frost the glass and the date on which the project was completed," the congressman continued. "Please identify all individuals who occupy offices with frosted glass. Please also specify whether the individual is a political appointee or a member of the civil service. For each individual who occupies an office with frosted glass, please identify the date on which that individual was hired."

Ellison also wants to know how much the project cost and whether it complied with GSA rules on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification standards for sustainability.

Attention, homeowners: the world is scheduled to end April 23rd, and Lockwood & Mead stands ready to help you

so you don't forget, call today!

An unknown (to scientists) death planet is due to align with the earth in less than two weeks, and the planet is doomed. Here at L&M, we totally believe that prediction, but there are doubters out there, and they are sure to be eager to take advantage of what they perceive as a bargain. Our strong recommendation is that you list your Greenwich property with us at a fire sale price: $150,000, say, or, for mansions, as high as $1,000,000, but with a required closing within two days. That will give you as much time as possible to enjoy your wealth in the final days, while the poor deluded fools who don't know what's coming will repose in happy ignorance.

And we promise to refund 25% of our commission if doomsday comes and goes without consequence.

When the market's turned against you, accept it and adjust, or just hang on

125 Pecksland  Road dropped to $10 million today, down from its original 2016 price of $12.995. The builder/first owner tried for $14.750 in 2010 before selling it to the current seller for $11 million in 2011, who, in turn, spent a great deal of money on the place before trying to recoup it at that 2016 price. 

Now that money has been shown to be wasted, at least in terms of resale value. I'm just guessing, but I see a final selling price in the high-sevens, low-eights, for this property, quite a ways down the road.

The entire place is festooned with animal pelts, but there's a picture of the Zebra, just in case visitors miss the other references

You tell me why the stager came up with this chair, so ludicrously placed in a bathroom, and I'll tell you why you should fire her

One thing to understand about short sales: as the buyer, YOU are establishing the market price

Remuddled 

Short sales, where the owner walks away with nothing and the bank cuts its losses, are often considered by the buyer as some sort of bargain discount, and they then try to resell it at it's "proper" price. Wrong: if you paid "X" for it, then that's what the market says it's worth — otherwise, someone would have paid more *.

Case in point is 86 Lower Cross Road, a house on 0.6 acre in the R-4 zone, which sold via short sale in December, 2014 for $990,000. The buyers tried to resell it for $1.795 in 2016 and, finding no buyer, eventually dropped it to $1.150 in June, 2017. When even that price failed to produce a buyer, they proceeded to gut the existing  house and build a remodeled one that, to my taste, anyway, fails in every sense, and have placed it up for sale today at $2.288 million.

It's possible that they'll now find a buyer, and if they can get anywhere close to this asking price I'm sure they'll make out, but, had I been asked, I personally would have advised them to cut their losses back in 2017, rather than pour more money into an ill-advised purchase.

* when you're seated at the poker table and can't figure out who's the chump, YOU'RE the chump