Downtown sale

138 Havemeyer Place has sold for $3.7 million. Built in 2016, this wouldn't be my own choice in living, but the buyers rented it for the past year, so clearly it suits their needs, and that's what makes a market.

Fortunately for spec builders and agents, there's one born every minute

54 Mallard Drive, asking $3.395 million, is reported as under contract, 

When it first hit the market last year I ridiculed its $3.925 price. I'm still chortling, though this time, the joke's on the buyer.

Lake Avenue auction

560 Lake Avenue up for auction online, minimum bid $1.420 million. It's not a bad house, or wasn't back when it sold for the (ridiculous) price of $5.450 back in 2006, but it's been ridden hard and put away wet:, The property's been the subject of a foreclosure suit since 2010 and court records show that the owners have brought in roommates to presumably share expenses: a commune isn't, generally, a good bet for proper maintenance. Worse, I see no evidence from those same records that the owners and their friends have actually been ejected — I'd want some assurance on that matter.

Here are some interior pictures from a post back in January, 2017. The place is a wreck, but if a number in the low $2s  takes it, it's probably salvageable. Otherwise, I'd let it go.

This link to its expired listing might work, or not: it may be restricted to MLS members, but try it.

Historical illiteracy reigns supreme

Oh, never mind

The NY Post reports on Trump's awarding a posthumous Medal of Honor to a WW II vet's widow, and that's nice, but this part is just appalling: 

In June 1945, Conner and soldiers from the 7th Infantry, 3rd Battalion were in France staring down a fierce attack by 600 German troops and a half-dozen tanks.

Germany officially surrendered in May, 1945, and the Battle of the Bulge, where this soldier performed so heroically, extended from December, 1944 through January, 1945. No one expects a snowflake reporter to know battle dates, but is it too much to demand that a copy editor know basic facts of modern history and spot the impossibility of any American forces fighting Germans in June, 1945?

Well yes, I suppose it is.

Sad.

Price cut in Old Greenwich

5 Brown House Road, new construction, has a new agent and a new price: $2.495 million, down from last year's $3.395. Brown House isn't one of the town's finest addresses, but neither is it the worst. Convenient to town, but the school district's Dundee, so busing is in order.

I'd want to confirm its claimed 5,000 sq. ft., to make sure a third of that isn't buried in the basement, but otherwise, it looks to be a decent house, especially at its new price.

Worst job of staging, however, that I've seen in a long time but that, of course, is a temporary affliction.

Defying market trends, a large sale, quickly

29 Calhoun Drive, which sold new just a year ago this month for $5.7 million, has now sold for $5.8. Twenty-five days on the market. After transaction costs, the seller is bound to have a bit of cash, but it's rare, in my experience, to see a resale after just a year come close to the price paid, let alone exceed it.

Cos Cob Flip

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.

The Back Country is the new Bailiwick

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.

Insta-sale in Riverside

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.

Chip Skowron may be out of prison, but he's not out of the woods

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.