Price "adjustment" on Pecksland

125 Pecksland Road, purchased new in 2011 for $11.1 million, and put back on the market for $12.9995 in 2016, has been marked down to $9.750. At 14,500 square feet (and “garaging” for a dozen cars), it’s a tad large for our current market, and Pecksland itself seems to have lost its desirability in recent years, but it’s also available for rent at $40,000. Some stiff negotiation on that rental price and this might be attractive.

Do you think the feeding area on the left is for staff?

Still hanging around on Rogues' Hill

449 Round Hill, north of the Merritt and near the church, is back on the market today, relabled (per tax card) as a 1950 house instead of its previous description as 1990, is now priced at $6.650 million, a bump up from the last price it failed to sell for, $6.450. The house has been with us for a while: it started at $7.950 in 2011, quit, temporarily, in 2012, and then reappeared in 2014 at $8.250 in 2014, dropping slowly in price earlier this year to the aforementioned $6.450 million.

Nice house, good land, but a bit far north for today’s market, which would explain the market’s rejection of its charms over the past seven years.

Raising the price of a house that refuses to sell has always struck me as a rather bone-headed move.

Lost opportunity cost, but nice house for living

1044 North Street, right on the Banksville border and asking $1.050 million is under contract. That’s the same price paid for it in 2013, and pretty close to its $995,000 purchase price: in fact, assuming some negotiation from its current price, it’s probably the same, or even less.

Part of the house was built in 1834 and even with an architecturally-unfortunate edition (which made it livable for today’s lifestyle), it’s a pleasant home. But this northern area of Greenwich has always been a tough sell.

No surprise here (to me, at least)

29 Cottontail Road, just off Stanwich and asking $895,000, reports a contract after 26 days. Perfectly decent, livable house on a good street, but priced as land, so in effect a free house. My guess is that this house will be replaced by a new, far more expensive one, but it would certainly work as what in Greenwich passes as a “starter home”.

Bad news for doctors?

New England apple growers enjoy an excellent harvest.

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker

So said Ogden Nash. Unrelated, mostly, 17 Dandy Drive in Cos Cob has dropped its price to $895,000 from $975,000. This 1950s split is a definite tear-down, eventually, and anyone who invested a huge amount of money into improving it would be a fool, but at the right price: $850, maybe? $750? — a hundred thou to make it livable for the next decade might be a decent decision. This is priced at just about land value now.

Back Country bargains

571 Round Hill Road, priced at $2.675 million and surely selling for less, is reported as pending, The property ( on Aiken Road, actually, across the road from 68 Sumner Road, discussed below) sold for $2.415 in 2010. Adjusted for inflation ($2.8), the owner’s not smacking the ball out of the park here, but that’s why buyers in this price range might want to look north: large houses, large lots, and (relatively) small prices. The saving you’ll make on mortgage payments would easily pay for a nanny/chauffeur, should you need such assistance.

Got the “Zebra”

The owner’s gone back to kansas?

better an open gun cabinet than a pool outside the door; trust me, the statistics bear me out: 100-to-one.

A well deserved price cut

68 Sumner Road, way, way up Rogue’s Hill, has dropped to $1.695 million. The seller paid $2.250 for it in 2005 and tried reselling it at the bottom of the crash in 2008 for $2.750. Glad I wasn’t the agent advising her on that price. Mid 70s contemporaries aren’t at peak demand right now, especially those nestled against Bedford’s border, so this new price seems closer to reality than the previous one.

My guess: you can grab a decent house here, with four acres and a pool, for around $1.5 million. Depending on the gas milage you can eke out of that Prius, it might be a deal.

Must be an end user

19 Deerpark Meadow Road, which sold for $4 million in May, is reselling at $4.5. A great piece of land — 1.75 acres in the one-acre zone — but $4 million, in my opinion, was a high price to pay for a developer, and $4.5 would be worse. However, if someone wants to build a house for himself (or yes, herself), with no need to build in a 33% profit, this isn’t a crazy price.

I do find it amusing that the previous listing claimed that property was “within walking distance of town”. So is Banksville.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I'm friggin' blind

Looks like this, and cheek-by-jowl with its neighbors. Hmmm.

248 Overlook Drive, in Milbrook, hit the market today at $5.495 million. I am underwhelmed. These things are a matter of taste, of course, and I admit to being a bit of an unsophisticated philistine, but to my eye, this is a perfect example of what I’ve mentioned to my own kids: there’s a difference, or there ought to be, between a civil engineer and an architect, and that difference is artistic talent. Most architects are civil engineers, period.

Only because they’re long dead and buried do I dare mention that my aunt and her husband, wonderful people, were architects who worked for the federal government. They had exquisite taste in art in their personal lives, and their own designs were marvels in engineering but aesthetically, those designs were … well, they were civil servants. Another aunt and uncle commissioned them to build them a house in Ashford, North Carolina, with regrettable results, and my uncle Gerard, a psychiatrist and former acting dean of Sarah Lawrence who removed himself from New York (“fifty years in Scarsdale is enough for any man”, said he) to New Hampshire, ordered up a design for a consulting room for his patients in his new New Hampshire house. The result was so hideous, and so expensive, that, trapped — he couldn’t hire another architect without destroying his relationship with his sister — he built nothing, and continued to meet with the lunatics in his living room until he quit private practice entirely and moved further north to teach at Dartmouth.

It wasn’t just that experience with my own relatives that produced such a jaundiced opinion of architects. I’ve dealt with others (don’t mention Yale) both personally and professionally, and my civil engineer vs artist theory has been developed and reinforced over the decades. Again, I’ll admit that my taste is personal, and somebody else may find this Overlook Drive house to be the epitome of refined taste, and worth every penny of five million-and-a- bunch of dollars; we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Of course, I’m always willing to be enlightened:

“I see, said the blindman, and he picked up his hammer and saw”.

Barn door motif?

The range hood doesn’t improve things, and is there really any need for a frying pan to have a view? Cleaning grease off that window is going to be a pane in the ass.