And this is the old market

544 North Street has dropped its price to $2.999 million — it started off in 2015 at $3.995.

A 1924 pseudo-Tudorish concoction, located down what realtors call “a private lane” and what I’d describe as a shared driveway, it sold for $3.1 million in 2005 and then, improbably, for $3.725 to these owners just a year later in 2006. Some improvements were performed in 2012 and it is in fact a very nice house.

But there are lot of houses very much like this on the market right now, and very few takers.

This may be the new market

Going up?

19 Home Place, down by Bruce Park, is reported as pending. Ninety days on the market, so it will presumably be selling for close to its asking price of $2.195 million.

New, 2018 construction on 0.15 of an acre, and offering no privacy, vertical living (though it offers an elevator), and in an unpopular school district, this clearly is not what was once considered the traditional Greenwich real estate offering.

But for a childless young hedgie couple working on Steamboat Road, it’s an easy walk to work, the park and our ever-expanding Bruce Museum, and a short Uber ride to Greenwich Avenue restaurants and the train. What’s not to like? And I’m sure it offers far more than the same money spent in Brooklyn.

Looks like a decent deal

One Finney Knoll (Riverside, overlooking Balducci’s) has sold for $1.5 million. This was not the best of the lots in this tiny mini-development of the original 5-acre (about 5, though I’m going on memory) property, but it’s a nice house, and sold for $1.665 in 2012. Other houses here have done better: 7 Finney, for instance, substantially larger, sold for $1.907 in 2015, and, renovated, is pending at $2.450.

Cos Cob and Central schools, alas, due to the vagaries of our school districting north of the Post Road, but the houses were all put up by the same (local, good-guy) builder in 2006, and are all of high quality, so picking up this one for $1.5 strikes me, as noted, as a good deal; nothing wrong with being the cheapest house in a good neighborhood.

Go west, young man; just don't build a house there

25 Selden Lane, off Riversville on our western border, is still kicking around after eight years. Owners paid $2.275 million for its 7 acres (two lots) in 1998 and put it back up for sale again in 2008 for $7.5 million.

Both lots, with house, can be yours today for $2.295.

In fact, at this price, it looks pretty good.

UPDATE: As several readers have pointed out, I erred when in an earlier draft I said that the house was circa 2007. In fact it dates back to 1987. I regret the error, and hope no one placed a bid on it based on my misreading of my own notes.

Back, head bowed

106 Lockwood Road, Riverside, has a new price: $3.199 million, and a new broker. It asked for $3.985 when it was newly constructed in October, 2016. Failures like this are testimony to buyers’ common sense: by the time they’ve seen four-or-five homes in a given price range, they’re far more attuned to market value than any individual home owner.

Full price, five days

26 Chapel Lane, Riverside (September listing), went to contract in mere days and closed yesterday at $1.035 million. Probably headed for the dumpster, but as a Riverside starter home, it could work (no worse, certainly, than Pal Nancy’s and my own starter, though ours was priced at $40,00, back in the day, and three states north of here).

Slap my ass and call me Sally

80 Howard Road, recent (2016) construction priced at $5.3 million, is reported as pending. Howard Road is located way up Taconic in our far northeastern corner and has never been known to have been a popular draw, so anything approaching this home’s asking price … surprises me.

I’m guessing out-of-town agent, out-of-town buyer, but in these lean times ….

UPDATE: Oops! the report shows that the selling agent is local. What can I say? Some of my peers are experts at discovering heretofore unsuspected value.

Interesting Riverside Downsizer

42 Indian Head Road, new today at $2.195 million. For this location, that seems like a reasonable price. Sellers paid $2.345 for it in January, 2007, when its renovations were fresher.

Ain't Happening

642 lake Avenue, still licking its wounds at being rejected for the past three years at $4.995, is back on the market with a new agent and a new price, $3.650 million. The house remains what it was: an undistinguished 1972 contemporary on a bland, 2-acre lot.

The town has generously appraised this place at $2.758; I’d give it land value only, and that’s going to be less than our optimistic tax collector is calculating.

The times aren't just a changing, they've changed

1927 was then, this is now

137 Old Mill Road was originally listed in June, 2014 for $11.5 million, and that price remained stubbornly unchanged for the next four years, doubtless because its owners and their listing agent firmly believed in their agent’s glowing appreciation of the house and its provenance:

SUPERBLY RESTORED CLASSIC GEORGIAN DECORATED BY NOTED DESIGNER HOWARD SLATKIN WITH WONDERFUL ADDITIONS IN CHARACTER BY FAMED ENGLISH ARCHITECT CHRISTOPHER SMALLWOOD - 2 STORY LIBRARY WING (ONE IS OCTAGONAL)IN A MANNER OF DALYESFORD AND GARDEN ROOM AFTER OSTERLY HOUSE, TWO OF THE MOST FAMOUS 18TH CENTURY ENGLISH HOMES DESIGNED BY ROBERT ADAM. GRAND SCALE, HIGH CEILINGS, SUPERB DETAILING - LIVING ROOM WITH EXQUISITE PANELING, MEMORABLE DINING ROOM, GREAT COUNTRY KITCHEN/FAMILY ROOM PLUS UPSTAIRS FAMILY ROOM. TWO BEDROOM GUEST HOUSE WITH LIVING ROOM, WET BAR AND BATHROOM. CHARMING POOL HOUSE.

Right: that’s what a couple of 35-year-old super star achievers are looking for.

As of today the property has a new agent and a new price: $6.7 million. but both agents are of the same generation, and are both romantics, still harboring visions of back country fox hunts and swapping houses among the oh-so-dear trust fund children during Greenwich garden parties. In fact, those kids all disappeared to Berkley in the late 60s and never came back — they’re hidden in the wine country out there, emerging only when the occasional wild fire forces them from their walled enclaves. Today’s Greenwich buyers, the ones I know, came up from nowhere, beat the shit out of their competitors by being smarter, quicker, and far-faster than their peers. They’ve never heard of the Osterly House, or Robert Adam, or any of his imitators, and couldn’t care less about whatever the “manner of Dalyesford” might have been (and I’m with them in their ignorance). They aren’t likely to be intimidated or snowed by references to grand back country fox hunt tours that are no more, and won’t be returning, ever. This home’s original listing verbiage is directed at 1965 buyers, who cleared out of town long ago.

Time for this era of sellers and their agents really stopped in about 1968, but just as a Hinkley yacht will keep coasting even after its mainsail is dropped, the market for these homes continued, haltingly, through 2008, when it finally ran aground.

The ludicrous $11.5 million 2015 price for this relic, together with its listing's fulsome prose*, brings to mind Captain Ahab, stumping about on the teak deck of that Hinkley, screaming about white whales.

Today's price, its new agent’s slightly less pretentious wording notwithstanding, is just as nuts.

Right across the street from this one, the baseball player’s house at 390 Round Hill just sold for $3.5. I’m giving this a $3.2 price tag, and I’m probably being a romantic nostalgic at that.

Old-timey tv a designer touch by Howard Slatkin, perhaps.

gold-plated sink trap: another contribution by Christopher Smallwood?

• and to my pedantic, smarter younger brother Anthony, I do know the definition of “fulsome” — in this case, I find the description fulsome, even it its writer meant it sincerely.