By the skin of her teeth

The owner of 1044 North Street paid $1.050 in 2013 and managed to sell it today for $950,000. Not a huge victory, certainly, especially after deducting transaction costs, but she avoided disaster for a house she overpaid for originally.

I love this almost-abandoned section of north Greenwich, but it’s on the Banksville border, far from town, and not popular. Hell, it probably takes almost as long to reach central Greenwich by car today as it did in horse and buggy days, and that’s not a selling point.

Still, if you work in Banksville and want to escape, temporarily at least, exorbitant property taxes, this is the place to be.

Are there no poor houses? No casting couches? How about empty beds on stars's private planes and yachts?

FWIW continues to hear from its far-flung reporter pool: this one’s from LA

Actors, film workers can’t afford housing, living on the street.

I don't think he meant the "Merry Christmas" part seriously

Yet another FWIW reporter, the one our paid staffer in Old Greenwich, submits this:

CT state crew assembles to remove 70 foot pine tree on Laddins Rock Road, with eleven workers, one cherry picker, one large front loader and four dump trucks. I had a larger lightning damaged tree removed, right next to my home, with two guys from a local tree service in one day, including stump grinding.  I can't wait until the government runs health care.

Merry Christmas. 

Police conduct gun swap-meet, (don’t) get what they pay for

FWIW’s New Mexico correspondent sends along this story from Baltimore, where the residents took advantage of a police “buy-back” program to get the funds to buy better guns.

Over 500 guns were surrendered to Baltimore police within the first hour and a half of a citywide gun buyback program this week. Participants received anywhere from $25 to $500 for their unwanted firearms.

Mayor Catherine Pugh and Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle announced a gun buyback program—the first in six years—last week. Pugh said that the program was intended to "get the guns off of our streets."

The program reportedly cost the city $250,000, but there is little evidence that buyback programs are effective in reducing violence, or even in reducing the number of firearms in circulation—as one woman ably demonstrated.

Kathleen Cairns, a WBFF Baltimore journalist, tweeted a picture of a woman who was surrendering a 9mm. She hoped to use the money from the program to buy an even bigger gun.

The cops paid $25 for high-capacity magazines, which are available on E Bay for twelve bucks. Buy a couple of dozen, and the arbitrage is great. I myself have a Mossberg .22, purchased for me at Abercrombie and Smith fifty-five years ago by my father. It always had a lousy trigger pull, but I learned to hunt with it, Sadly neglected over the years, it’s now pitted with rust and essentially worthless, but I’m waiting for the next GPD buy back, in the hope of getting fifty bucks for it.

Fox Butterfield, call your office

The Miss America contest gets booted from Atlantic City.

I have never, ever watched the thing, and could care less if it’s hit its demise, but this article on the pageant’s woes contains a classic Fox Butterfield: *

[New Chairwoman Grethchen Carlson] this year controversially attempted to modernize the event by scrapping the swimsuit contest, but the ratings continued to slump.

[Wilipedia] Butterfield is the eponym for "The Butterfield Effect", used to refer to a person who "makes a statement that is ludicrous on its face, yet it reveals what the speaker truly believes", especially if expressing a supposed paradox when a causal relationship should be obvious.[5][6] The particular article that sparked this was titled "More Inmates, Despite Drop In Crime" by Butterfield in the New York Times on November 8, 2004.[7]

Big sale price but ....

11 Mayfair Lane, over off Riversville/Pecksland, has sold for $10.5 million, but it started at $22 million back in April, 2016. Our MLS records this as being on the market for just 133 days, but my own math tells me that 31 months comprise more than 133 days. Ah, statistics!

A gorgeous, though dated 1930 house on 13 acres; have I mentioned that the market for these older homes has diminished?

Exhausted by the constant rush of air between her ears, the Democrats' favorite new barmaid star announces that she's going on vacation before she even reports for work

Mind you, it’s not actually a vacation but rather a week of “taking care of herself” by which, as an oppressed member of the colored people population, she is taking a brave political stance, rather than merely goofing off.

For a woman whining about trying to pay her rent just a few weeks ago, I wonder where she’s jetting off to, and who’s paying the fare?

Ten years and a 70% price cut later, we won't have 918 North Street to kick around anymore

If Disney were to build an ersatz castle in our back country, this would be it

It’s a shame, because it’s provided great fodder as a source of chortling amusement since 2009, when it started at $16.9 million, but 918 North Street has finally sold for $4.999. I think the buyer overpaid by at least $3, $3.5 million, because the highest and best use for this horrible house is a pit, ready for a new start.

But that’s just my taste, and tastes obviously differ.

what was the stager thinking? this wall demands a flanking pair of knight’s armor

The course of a short sale is never smooth

Ear muffs for the entire family tossed in as a buyer incentive

13 Meadow Wood Drive, Belle Haven, is once again being reported as having a “contingent contract”. The house, then listed at $1.6 million, was reported as “pending” (meaning no unsatisfied contingencies) this past June but, pending or not, the deal was canceled, and the property was returned to the market at $2.7 million (!). In November a new, contingent contract was announced, but that deal, too seems to have fallen apart, replaced by yet another one today.

I can’t imagine anyone agreeing to pay anything close to $2.7 for this teardown because, Belle Haven or not, it’s right on I-95, and, at least to my ears, that ruins its value.

I’ll be curious to see if this third contract holds up.

I know what I'd have advised had I been their agent but ...

Some idiot has “won” a bidding war and purchased 20 Marks Road, asking $4.195 million, for $4.210. LA Rams’ center, Riverside native Johnny Sullivan sold it to these sellers in 2015 for $3.255 and they, in turn, put in a pool and brought in a bunch of decorator furniture, and have sold the assemblage to some naif flush with Wall Street bonus money. God bless free enterprise, and P.T. Barnum.

All this reminds me of my older brother John’s coup back in the late 60s: he bought a trashed mini-bike for twenty bucks, spray-painted it metallic blue and gold and slapped “Batman” decals on both sides of its fuel tank, and unloaded the thing for a hundred. Mini-bike buyers didn’t use buyers reps back then, so they were on their own, but children with more money than brains shouldn’t venture into the suburbs without a guide.