Price cut on Macpherson

One Macpherson Drive, $4.850 million, down from its opening price a month ago of $5.250. Great, 1929 house, beautifully renovated, on an excellent street. Well worth seeing if it’s in your range.

Looking up its tax card, I was struck by the town’s appraisal (100%, not the 70% appraised value), of just $2,401,500. That’s ridiculous: 145 Weaver Street, discussed below, is appraised at $2,798,800. The latter may be too high; the former is way, way too low.

In fact, Greenwich’s entire appraisal process is out of whack. Pal Nancy’s and my own house on Riverside saw a jump in property tax from $6,000 in 2015 to $15,200 in 2016. Conceding that the original tax was probably low, bumping it to $15 in one year was brutal. So we sold it, at far less than the town’s valuation of $1.8+.

Our tax system is broken.

Well now, here's an aggressive price

Hmmm

150 Weaver Street, over in Glenville, is new today at $3.295 million. I almost never comment on a new listing’s price because I’d rather the market speak for itself — buy or reject — instead of my own big mouth, but I’ve sold houses on Weaver and think I’m fairly up to date on pricing there, and this price caught my eye.

The house was built in 2000 (the town tax card still shows a 1908 construction date, so someone’s due for a reappraisal, maybe), and it looks to be in great shape, freshly renovated since these owners paid $2,397.500 for it 2010, but Weaver Street values haven’t appreciated as much as these owners hope or at least, that’s my take.

That’s not a comment on the house itself, which seems to be very nice, but the price gives me pause. Time will tell.

UPDATE: Well that was quick: an hour after posting this, the property’s been relisted at $3 million.

Just caught up with this news: Stamford real estate attorney Burt Hoffman, crook, committed suicide on June 8, 2018

I’ve written of Hoffman over the years, citing him as one of the worst of the worst criminals controlling the foreclosure process during the post-crash era, but it took the state a long time to catch up with him. Finally, in 2016, he was arrested for larceny and theft and resigned from the bar in lieu of being disbarred. His death followed.

A reader has just sent me a bit of what’s been going on since Hoffman’s death; suits by defrauded clients and lenders, and a suit against a limited partnership called Mimarjo LLC which, interestingly could be considered to be comprised of Hoffman’s three sons, at least one of whom is still practicing law in Stamford: Mi (Mitch) mar (Marc) jo (Jon).

My problem with dealing with Hoffman and his firm was that you couldn’t complete a short-sale or foreclosure: they managed to derail the process and sell the property to their own clients in return, it was rumored, for a substantial kickback. It came to the point that if a deal had Hoffman on one side of it, I’d just bail, knowing that any effort i expended would be wasted time.

A bit more research on the man reveals that, beside his fraudulent loan activities, Hoffman was accused of stealing from elderly clients, stripping them of their savings. Not a good person, and I wonder how he managed to continue all these years when so many of us in the real estate field knew (at least part of) what he was up to.

The Kavanaugh Effect, continued

The Democrats’ attempt at crucifying Brett Kavanaugh was so low, so despicable, that even milquetoasts like Grassley, Collins and, most notably, Mitch McConnell grew backbones and lashed back.

Now, riding on that momentum, McConnell has forced the Democrats to agree to the confirmation of 15 new federal judges, a deal brokered in exchange for ending this session and allowing endangered Democrats to return home to campaign (and endangered Republicans too, but McConnell apparently didn’t mention that).

The point is, these are lifetime appointments, and these judges will be on the bench long enough to make a significant difference. Like a number of conservatives I know, I held my nose and voted for Trump precisely because I hoped he’d do something about our federal courts, and he’s come through magnificently. NAFTA reform and our new foreign policy successes are just icing on the cake.

But Trump’s refusal to back down on Kavanaugh, combined with the awful tactics employed against the judge, seems to have inspired the previously complacent Republicans to stand up and fight. Hooray.

Noah lands on Mt. Ararat

11 Highgate Road, in Riverside’s “Harbor’ Point (there is no harbor here, but is that any worse than a 1970s tract development on a flat cow pasture being named “Flintlock Ridge?) has sold for $1.350 million. The original structure was wiped out by Hurricane Sandy in 2013, so any new home here will have to be built on stilts, but even so, this price seems reasonable. 0.67 of acre in the R-1 zone limits the allowable size to around 5,000 sq. feet or so (including garage); that should be sufficient for normal humans.

Water views over cattails, so not direct waterfront, though there’s a community dock and a small beach available. The original 2014 listing included a restriction that the property couldn’t be sold until the master lot, 54 Cathlow Drive was sold, but the owners gave up on their effort to unload Cathlow for $16 million in 2015 and last year freed this lot to be sold as a distinct parcel.

Harbor Point’s a pleasant neighborhood, if you can get past the residents’ proclivity to sue one another over basketball poles, walls, fences and loud popcorn machines, and at this price, a nice house could be built at a reasonable cost, one well within the current price range of houses here.

Probably not the result they were hoping for

110 Shore Road, now asking $2.795 million, reports a contract. The owners paid $3,919,318 for it in 2006; obviously a price reached only after scrupulous negotiation, but today’s result shows that the buyers should have kept that pencil sharpened a bit longer.

A nicely renovated 1925 home, with a detached, one-car garage, it was priced at $3.895 back in 2014; a number that has suffered a number of indignities over the years. Our GMLS shows a “days on market” of 22; my math’s different, and I’d say it was on the market for four-and-a-quarter years, but then, I’m not interested in perpetuating a myth.

She was probably returning from protesting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago

Woman dragged off flight when she refuses to relinquish “support squirrel”

And in Florida after she’d spent Saturday clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court, I’m guessing.

We’re living in the crazy years.

Half measures will avail us nothing — usually — in this case, however ...

Wine thief jumps to his death to avoid prison.

A former personal assistant who was about to plead guilty to ripping off his ex-boss — the multi-millionaire head of Goldman Sachs — leaped to his death from the Carlyle Hotel Tuesday as his lawyers waited for him in court.

Hotel staff had been alerted by his sister that he was sending alarming texts saying he might kill himself over the case, police sources said. When security forced open his door, he was naked and sitting on the window sill.

He smiled at them and then jumped, sources said, his body striking a 17th floor balcony with such force that half of him landed on a terrace two floors below, the sources said.

Riker’s Island, then prison, being beat on by gangs? Right choice, I’d say.

Psychological impact

Just in time for Halloween, a haunted house

A reader tells me that this Stamford house, 315 Hycliff Terrace, which is on the market for $899,990, reduced from $945,000 after just a week on the market, was recently the site of an ugly attempted murder/suicide. The husband managed to kill his wife but botched his own suicide, and after the police rejected his story about home invaders, was eventually released on bail. He returned home, and finished the job.

The house itself doesn’t seem to amount to much: Zillow labels it as “new construction”, although it was built in 1928 and last remodeled in 1980, but that’s Zillow (and real estate agents) for you, and, for Stamford, seems overpriced, but I do wonder how the market will react. People die in houses all the time, even by suicide, and generally those deaths don’t affect value, but murders cast a certain pall over a property: according to Trulia, a homicide on the premises can drop a home’s value 10% - -25%, and, in my experience, sometimes more. The Dairy Road home where the owner was dragged into the basement and slaughtered, for instance, was torn down and even had its address changed from No. 8 Dairy to No. 10, and still took years to sell, though much of that time on the market can probably be attributed to its being both designed an built by Mark Mariani and grossly overpriced.

I’m curious to see how this one fares.

As if lingering corpses weren’t enough, fogged double-panes indicate failed seals, requiring replacement..

4,015 days later, a spec house finds a buyer

12 Intervale Place (Belle Haven península, near I-95), last asking price $4.375 million, is reported as pending. This is a good looking, beautifully made house, but when finished in 2007 it was put on the market at $6.450, and that was far, far too high, even though 2007 was the peak of the market.

It’s been on and off the market as a rental in the intervening years, but all in all, eleven years is a long time to wait to cash out of a building project.

But again: nice house, and these buyers are probably doing well.