Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
And proud of it
That’s the DNA result 23andMe came up with a few years ago. Does that mean I cn get a teaching position at Harvard? Claim Oklahoma?
Those are cavemen I smell in the faculty lounge, Kemosabe — I’m outta here
314 North Maple
Friggin Squarespace — it published an early draft of this post and didn’t include the revisions/additions that were meant to comprise the final draft. That’s been happening a lot recently, and it’s driving me crazy. I’ve tried to recapture what I originally wrote, and am reposting it now.
314 N. Maple Avenue, $3.4 million, hit the market a couple of weeks go, and I neglected to mention it. My bad, because it’s a beautiful house. Originally built in 1925, it’s been completely redone by my friend Ferdinand Steyer, principle of Mountain Works.
Ferdinand is one of the very best of the builders working in our neighborhood — he’s at least the third generation of Austrian woodworkers in the family and though he’s been here on our shores for 40 years or so, he carries that heritage with him. Scrupulously honest and a fantastic builder, if he re-did this house, it’s perfect. Go see this house.
And of course, it has the Zebra (s)
Zebra One
Zebra chairs
We’ve seen this pelican before, and Zebra Three — do you Suppose David Ogilvy rushes around toting the same pelt and art work around the house, or hire assistants?
111 Dingletown Road dropped its price today to $2.8 million from $3.250. Back in 2013 my pal Joe Barbieri had it listed at $3.250, a price I suggested to him was pretty steep for a dated builder colonial on a back lot, but Joe still managed to sell it for $2.8 that year, demonstrating why Joe’s gotten rich at this gig while I have not. (Mind you, a final $450,000 off that price didn’t quite prove me a fool.)
The new owners spruced it up so that it is no longer dated, but it remains what it was, and lipstick only goes so far.
My guess? Watch for further discounts.
Reminds me of Idle-a-while airport
65 Clapboard Ridge Road is back today with yet another broker but the same price it expired at last month, $7.995 million. The owner paid $10 million for it back in 2007, —more fool he — and has been trying to get rid of it since 2015, when he priced it at $12.995, apparently under the mistaken impression that he’d scored a coup with that 2010 purchase. Wrong, so very wrong.
The demand for 15,000 sq.ft homes is limited these days and, to this eye, they all seem pretty much the same: big, swooping entrance halls, kitchens with spaghetti faucets and Viking ranges that will never be used, unless the caterer forgets to bring her hot plates, dated master bathrooms, high taxes, and land that has to be maintained, never mind that the family and their guests won’t venture past the fencing that keeps deer and their ticks at a safe distance. If these houses aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, there are certainly dozens of them searching for buyers.
I wish the new agent luck; he’s a friend of mine, and sells a bunch of these things, but I’m not convinced that substituting brokers while retaining a failed price will accomplish much. What’s that (falsely attributed) '“Einstein” quote, now reduced to a cliche? “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. It’s a cliche because it’s true. Get out an eraser, call the accountant, and work out the benefits, if any, of a long-term capital loss.
genius kitchen design: fill a pot with 8 pounds of cold water at the stove, add a pound of SPAGHETTI, bring to a boil and then manhandle the whole steaming thing over to the sink to drain it. Unwieldy, but at least you got to pay a plumber to provide a cold water line above the range. Trickle down economics, in a way.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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