Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
199 Valley Road, asking $2.565 million, reports a contract after 90 days on the market. Sellers purchased it for $1.375 last October, gutted it and put it back on the market at the end of March. They did a nice job, and the house is right on the river, so no huge surprise here; good for the builder.
Here's that October listing, if you're curious to see what it looked like.
50 Burying Hill, which sold for $3.9 million in 2005, is reported as pending, last asking price, $2.650. A charming, 1937 home, but badly in need of updating. If the tax card can be relied on, and often it can't, because our town can be slow in recording mortgage releases, the place is (financially) underwater — taking a 32% hit will do that.
41 Club Road reports a contract after just 14 days; if you adjust for the time it takes fora building inspection and contract negotiations, that's just about overnight. It's a very nice house on almost an acre — large, these days, for Riverside — and, though built in 1930, has been meticulously maintained and renovated over the years.
Club Road has always been a popular street, because it's within easy walking distance to Riverside Yacht Club, the train and our local schools. The street can be busy, especially during the summer months, but this house is set well back from the road and is pretty well shielded from that.
The wages of sin
His mansion at 16 Doubling Road just took a million-dollar price cut today, and is now asking a mere $10.7 million. Skowron, you may recall, was convicted of insider trading and spent a little under five years before being released in 2016.
I feel sorry for his wife and children, but not for "Chip".. He had a very respectable medical practice as an orthopedic surgeon (degrees from both Yale and Harvard) before heading to the hedge fund world, to make even more money, but even that wasn't enough to support his 10-vintage car collection, his mansion, his children and his wife (who by all accounts is a wonderful woman). Greed will cause some people to do despicable things, and Skowron is an example of that.
Skowron's arrest brought down Greenwich's FrontPoint Capital and with it, his completely innocent partners and everyone else who worked at the firm. I won't lose sleep over the financial firms who suffered losses (Raj Rajaratnam, former resident of Rogues Hill Road, now residing in prison himself) was one of them, Morgan Stanley, FrontPoint's parent another), but 100-or-so people lost their jobs as the result of Frontline's demise, and that's unforgivable.
As I recall, Skowron was supposed to be worth $30 million at his peak, but at his conviction he was ordered to pay $6 million in restitution, a $5 million fine, $3.6 million in legal fees to Morgan Stanley, and a $2.7 penalty imposed by the SEC. A few years later, Morgan Stanly obtained a $35 million judgment against him, and there are doubtless other judgments out there, so whatever he sells this house for, he's unlikely to walk away with anything (the feds hold a lien of $16,354,000 on the property). In fact, I wonder that he just doesn't turn the place over to his creditors and walk away.
29 Alden Road, on our west side overlooking Greenwich Office Park, has sold for the improbable sum of $2.525 million, which should yield at least a small profit for the seller, who bought it at auction two years ago for $2.175. At one point: 2008, this property was listed for $6.495 million, but that price was almost certainly a ploy by then current, now foreclosed owner, "financial advisor" and gambling addict Russ Gerson to befuddle his creditors. The property was never worth even the $3.1 paid for it back in 2003, and probably not, in my opinion, what was paid for it today.
But the agents made money and, after all, isn't that what this is all about?
521 Field Point Road, on the Belle Haven Peninsula but outside the association's boundaries, has sold for $5.2 million. I say "disappointing" because the owners paid $6.035 for it in 2005, and originally listed the place for $6.450 way back in 2015.
As an aside, this is the second house in the past two days that has what I'd call a living room incorporated into the kitchen. Is that a new trend?
167 Zaccheus Mead Lane is pending: last ask, down from $10.5 million, was $6.495 million. We've written of this property before (several times, in fact, and so did Greenwich Time) praising its 4 acre lot, desirable location and the beauty of the original 1904 home, but the owners made some unfortunate decisions while expanding it to 13,000+ feet from 8,000, and it's sat for a number of years, unwanted.
It was purchased in 1999 for $6.2 million — $9.363 in current dollars — and assuming that some real money was spent adding on those 5,000 additional square feet, then this sale is going to represent a rather large loss.
Of course, anyone who could afford to pay $6.2 for a house in 1999 can surely afford a big bite today, but still ....
meh
16 Grant Avenue, in Old Greenwich, is reported as pending, last asking price, $3.195. The sellers will pretty much break even: they paid $2.9 for it in 2014, but it's interesting, to me, to note that this plain vanilla house sold new in 2005 for $3.310 million. According to my handy-dandy inflation calculator, that would have been $4,263,985 in today's currency.
So said the late, great Betty Moger, opining on when to list a house for the spring market, and I've repeated her advice here, many times. Case in point, 68 Butternut Hollow Road, listed January 29th at $3.395, contract in less than two moths. We call it the "Spring Market", but buyers start emerging from hibernation in mid-late January, and it's a good idea to have your house waiting for them.
63 Burning Tree Road has closed at $3.4 million. It was listed in mid-January at $3.595, and had a contract in less than two months.
Nice house, and I've always liked Burning Tree, especially the houses on the Frye Lake side, like this one.
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