Maybe if they trucked this house over to Rogues Hill it would sell better

1 Tinker Lane has renewed its listing at $3.150 million; same price as yesterday’s expired listing, and close to what its owner has been seeking for years. The house is ho-hum, and its location cheek-by-jowl to the Merritt is a turn-off, but the owner, stock-fraudster (and former owner of WGCH) Michael Better is a piece of work all by himself.

Metter helped run a “pump and dump” penny stock involving a worthless company called SpongeTech but, due to federal prosecutors’ ineptitude, he was permitted to plead guilty to securities fraud in exchange for a mere five-year probation sentence; his co-defendants received prison sentences and $12 million restitution penalties. .

Greenwich certainly attracts interesting characters.

michael metter or, as some of his victims call him, “mini-madoff”

Patterson Avenue sale

113 Patterson Avenue, asked for $2.795, got $2.395 million. Brother Gideon and Susie’s former digs, sold for $1.850 back in 2015 to people who intended a renovate/flip project. New kitchen, baths, central air added and a new furnace. I’m sure they made money here, but certainly not as much as they’d hoped.

Is there room for nude house cleaners in Greenwich?

Australian ladies double their pay, cut their hours in half.

“A NAKED cleaner has revealed how she rakes in £57,000-a-year working just 16 hours each week.

The 28-year-old business graduate and single mum, from Australia’s Gold Coast, earns a living scrubbing, scouring and sponging totally starkers.”

£92 per hour for full nudity, less for maids in their underwear. Sounds perfect for Walt, but I’m guessing, given their proclivity for college-aged country club tennis pros, there would be more demand for young male toilet scrubbers here. No problem: supply will always rise to meet demand.

Prepare for a Blue Wave

News that Julie Salazar won her primary challenge against fellow-Democrat, conventional liberal and eight-term Brooklyn state senator Martin Dilan was a shocker. Brooklyn has yuppified, and its new wave of “woke” citizens supported Salazar, a self-proclaimed socialist despite the exposure of her lies about everything she’d claimed on her resume: according to her, she was a Jew born in Columbia, to impoverished parents, grew up in impoverished circumstances in Miami, began working at 14 to support her family, and yet still managed to graduate Columbia University. But according to her own brother (and confessed by her), she was born in Miami, a baptized Catholic, her father, a commercial pilot, provided a very nice waterfront home in that city, she attended a posh, private school, took a part-time job, as he did, because their parents wanted to instill a work-ethic, not from need, and, turns out, she never graduated from any university, let alone Columbia. None of that mattered to her supporters.

All of this perfidy came out before the election, but she still won, and to me, that speaks to the hysterical hatred of Trump and the energy and determination of the anti-Trumpsters: they’re turning out in droves, and will turn out again in November; I see no such energy among conservatives to preserve our toehold.

Another harbinger: Nike sales of Kaepernick merchandise soared 31% after it released its new advertising campaign extolling his denunciation of America. That’s people putting their money where their mouths are.

And it’s not just white, educated suburban women who are frothing at the mouth in their eagerness to hit the voting booth: I had an interesting conversation with my (rural) fuel delivery guy the other day and, in five minutes, he repeated at least five lies about Trump that he’d “learned” from TV headlines, and can’t wait for “free”, single-payer health care. I gently corrected him (I don’t go for in-your-face confrontations), but it was obvious that he never goes beyond headlines, and never will. With a 96%-negative coverage of Trump in our media, and the fact that an appalling percentage of Americans receive all their news from that media, it’s astonishing that Trump still holds a 39% approval rating. But 39% won’t be enough.

All of which is to say that I’ve never seen such furious hatred for a president, and that fury is going, I believe, to drive record numbers of anti-Trump voters from their homes in two months and sweep Republicans from office.

So no more judicial appointments in the next two years, no more deregulation, and no more legislation, period. For that matter, we can expect an end to the investigation and exposure of the FBI’s illegal spying on Trump, a crime that, in saner times, might have reigned in an out of control, entrenched government agency.

Which seems a shame, but I’m old enough now to console myself that the collapse of America will come near the end of my life, and it will be my two beloved, delusional daughters who will have to live with the consequences. I tried my best, my best was not enough to overcome twenty years of indoctrination by state education.

So it goes.

The (mid) Lake Avenue neighborhood seems to be selling, albeit at a discount

Right next door to Simmons Lane - in fact this house backs up to it — 14 Mountain Wood Drive is reported as pending, last asking price $3.485, and presumably selling for less. Owners paid $3.850 million for it in 2003, renovated it, added a pool, and expanded the house by 1/3, and put it on the market last year for $4.495.

Oh well, the did get to live in a very nice house for 15 years.

Disappointment on Rouges Hill Road

17 Fort Hills Lane, former residence of ex-con Frederick Bourke, was listed by him for $15 million back when his legal troubles first arose in 2012 and finally sold for $9 million in 2014. The buyers presumably assumed that they could sell the two lots comprising its 11 acres at a profit, but after 2 fruitless years attempting to sell the original 1934 house, suitable for razing, on six of those acres for, after many price drops, $5.5 million, they threw in the towel and listed all 11 + acres, including that teardown, for the same $5.5.

That’s a substantial haircut for property they paid $9 million for, and here’s further bad news: $2.5 for a building lot here may still be too much to ask.

(The link above goes to the listing as land, so go here for interior pictures).

Pretty decent deal off Lake Avenue

2 Simmons Lane, 7,776 square feet (true figure, no basement space included), built in 2000, has sold for $2.650 million. Original price was $3.950, showing that all good things come to those who wait.

Parkway Elementary, Central Middle School. Of note, this was a July contract: the market doesn’t die entirely in summer.

Price cut, Mooreland Road

At this price, I’d expect more from a driveway than a patch of asphalt

35 Mooreland, spec project, down from its 2017 price of $11.250 to $8.755 million. Built by the high-quality firm, Fieber Group, it’s on four acres, and has all the amenities expected at this price range. Personally, if I wanted a 10,000 sq.ft. house (and I don’t, nor can I afford one), I think I’d choose below-the-Parkway 136 Parsonage at $6, rather than this one, but that’s what makes a horse race.

Fieber paid $5.675 for two lots here back in 2015, so I suppose there’s still plenty of room to make a profit, but paying $2.8+ change per lot, in this area, strikes me as an unwise investment.

Pell Place, Riverside, reported as pending

24 Pell Place, asking $3.395 million. Owner paid $3.435 when it was new in 2004, made improvements, and put it back up for sale in 2017 at $4.540. Last April I praised the house for its exceptional quality and recommended it, but suggested that it would continue to linger until the Binney Park dredging project was completed, and even then, because of its lengthy stay on the market, would probably sell for less than its new price of $3.6. The dredging is finally complete, a buyer appeared in late August, and now the contingencies in that contract have been satisfied.

I’m happy for the owner, but I do think she paid a price for the improvements at Binney — poor timing, although unavoidable — but the buyers are doing well here.

Price cut on Parsonage

136 Parsonage, down to $6.450 from its April, 2017 price of $8.295 million. It’s always tough to estimate prices in this range: it depends on the individual wants of a buyer, but this a very nicely constructed house, on almost 3 acres close to town, with great grounds. Whatever the ultimate sale price, a number starting with a 6 rather than an 8 makes sense to me.

This is one impressive pool house