Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
50 Hillcrest Park Road has sold for $2.3 million. That's a discount from its 2004 price of $2.785 million, and its 2013 sale price of $2.565, but it's still an act of catching a falling knife (which I literally tried the other day, unthinkingly — cut the hell out of my finger, but avoided stitches). Horrible architecture, no yard; what's to like?
2 Ledge Road
It's become tiresome to follow the news these days. A story about students and teachers required to wear slippers in school to "eliminate the hierarchy" is both beyond parody and yet so typical of what's going on in our society as to sink beneath mentioning. Or the budding movement among "woke" make feminists, both here and in Scandinavia, to forbid little boys to pee standing up: apparently it's a symbol of male toxicity, or something.
Or yesterday's news that a staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee has been leaking secrets to journalists for the past 30 years. Yes, there's a deep state, despite denials by "true" Republican conservatives, and all Democrats, but who ever doubted it?
Today's news is yesterday's news, and I'm sick of it. Is let's focus on local real estate for the nonce, even though there's nothing much new there, either.
2 Ledge Road. Old Greenwich, a spec house on the market since 2016, for instance, dropped its price from $5.495 million to $4.295 and has finally found a buyer. Anyone who thinks that hiring a poor architect saves money should consider this case study.
7 Old Mill Road has cut its price to $6.450 million from its opening offer of $6.875. Perfectly nice house, though not a style that's currently popular, but there are currently 61 houses for sale in the $5.5 — $7 price range, so competition is fierce, while buyers are few. Twenty-eight houses in that category did sell in the past year, but most of them had been marked down considerably.
Will this one escape their fate? Time will tell.
28 Dairy Road has sold for $3.950 million, four years after starting off at $5.795. A poor bargain even at its sale price, in my opinion, but I was struck by this bit in the listing:
OWNER PAID $5,125,000 BEFORE RENOVATION
Pre-fab, stuck down in a holler, what's to like? Though I admire the seller's admission that he'd foolishly overpaid for the place back 14 years ago.
7 Carriage Road, off of Cognewaugh, new construction, has sold for $2.350 million. Undistinguished architecture, but it's new, and has bells and whistles attached, so no huge surprise here. Builder paid $850,000 for the lot, for those of you interested in computing construction costs: take away a third for overhead and profit, and Bob's your uncle.
49 Midwood Road, $3.825 million (price corrected per sharp-eyed reader). Impressive price that shows there's a healthy market for building lots close to town, especially in Deer Park, but I''ll note that it took four years and a series of price cuts from its 2014 offering of $5.795 to find a buyer.
one cAN OVERDO PHOTO SHOP, AND HERE'S PROOF
101 Dingletown Road is back on the market again, at $3.190 million. The property was once listed for $5.999 back in 2012, but now it's owned by a bank; hence the slightly more realistic price.
But I'm mostly impressed by the resourcefulness of the former owner, who managed to drag out the foreclosure for nine years, from 2009 until this year, while renting out the place at $10,000 per month. He mitigated his loss, then gave it up to via strict foreclosure and pocketed approximately a million bucks. God bless Connecticut's foreclosure process.
The house itself is a piece of crap, but I suppose the bank will eventually get somewhere around $1.5 -$2 million, and only lose a million or so. Cost of doing business.
These signs are really just advertisements for the listing broker and, as the New Canaan realtors have (finally) discovered, house searches are mostly performed on the internet these days. The signs are ugly, and so far as I can tell, their absence hasn't affected sales in Greenwich one whit.
"For sale by owner" signs are, to my knowledge, protected by a homeowner's right to free speech, so they can remain. "Commercial" speech is subject to more stringent regulation.
16 Chieftans has sold for $2.450 million. That's not all too bad a price for something the owner paid $3.3 for in 2011, but new in 2000, it sold for $3.2 million which, by my handy inflation calculator would have been $4.655 in current dollars. Compare this house to what the same money would buy you in Cos Cob, or Old Greenwich north of the Post Road, and the disparate values are astonishing.
The bloom's off the rose for this west side development.
216 John Street, last asking price, $9.5 million. That's for 43 acres, which encompasses eight building lots, and a 1735 house.
Mrs. Warburg was a contemporary and close friend of my mother's (and one of our town's wealthiest citizens) , and though I rarely met her, my mother thought the world of her. Warburg was a very generous philanthropist, both here in Greenwich and worldwide.
One amusing note: my mother, dining with her, noticed she was wearing a very nice garment and completed her: "Oh, Greenwich Hospital Thrift Shop, of course". A down to earth woman.
(My pal Sally Maloney found the buyer - she's good at that)
Of note, perhaps, is that a four-acre building lot in this area of town is now marked down to about a million dollars.
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