Boring is as boring does

Ho hum

111 Dingletown Road has continued its drop from its April, 2017 price of $3.250 million, and today it’s asking $2.650. It sold for $2.550 in 2003 and, after improvements, $2.8 in 2014. There’s nothing wrong with this house; in fact, it’s quite decent, albeit access is via a long driveway to a back lot, but it’s pretty undistinguished, to my eye.

But it’s now owned by a relocation company, and the original owner isn’t around to be offended by a low offer. Re-Los tend to grow tired of hanging onto properties, so it might be worth tossing a still-lower offer at it.

good god

Greenwich's most famous Vietnam warrior vet has his feelings hurt

3rd in command, USMC “Toys for Tots” campaign, 1969

Our Senator Blumenthal has his nose out of joint because he’s been denied an opportunity to meet the next U.S. Attorney General.

WASHINGTON — In a potentially major breach of Washington political etiquette, Sen. Richard Blumenthal learned Wednesday that although he is a Senate Judiciary Committee member, he would not get a meeting with President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, William Barr, before confirmation hearings scheduled for next week.

“William Barr’s refusal to meet with Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee is entirely unprecedented and unacceptable,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “The Department of Justice’s attempt to excuse this gross break in the norms by citing a ‘truncated schedule’ is galling when they are the ones who have rushed it. My Republican colleagues should share my outrage at this appalling violation of the Senate’s independent authority.”

This from there very same prima donna who loudly refused to meet with Brett Kavanaugh when the nominee was making the same round of courtesy calls to senators. “Well, sure”, Blumenthal told FWIW, “but that’s because they asked me to listen to him, and gave me the opening to tell them to piss up a rope — boy, did the newspapers love that! This time, they didn’t have the courtesy to offer me that opportunity, so yeah, of course I’m mad as Hell. Who do they think they are?”

Riverside flip

9 Thornhill Road, sold for $930,00 February, 2018, is pending at $1.399 million. New kitchen, baths, etc., and quick turn around.

Thornhill’s a nice street, running from Riverside Lane (NoPo) to Sheephill. Many years ago I had a listing here, and the son of the owner told me that, when he was growing up, there were two cops living on the block, one in the middle, one at the end, and it was the safest street in Greenwich: not a single vandal dared intruding. The days of policemen being able to afford to live in town are long gone, alas, but the street itself remains as a quiet micro-neighborhood, with good people.

How we (I, anyway) look for comparable values

34 Circle Drive, off Indian Field, down near to I-95, has dropped its price to $2.775 million from $2.875. I’ve never used this forum as a platform to tout my own listings — in fact, I’ve refrained from mentioning my own listings completely in the past — but this house offers an illustrative example of how we idiot dirt peddlers try to come up with relative values, so I’ll point out factors that I considered when setting the price (and, full confession, the Mickster, and brother Gideon, were responsible for raising the price from my initial opinion — I was going for the owner’s desire for a quick sale, they thought we could achieve that and still get her more) for our new listing at 16 Norton Lane, in Hillcrest Park, Old Greenwich.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with 34 Circle Drive: it’s on the right side of the loop, so I-95 noise is minimized, and the street is a good one, but, comparing the two houses, Circle’s on a third of an acre, and its school district is Cos Cob and Central, while 16 Norton sits on a full acre in what I consider a more desirable area, with North Mianus and Eastern Middle School. So to me, looking at 34 Circle as a competitor when pricing Norton (and when Circle was asking $2.875), $2.950 seemed to be a good target price. In fact, I aimed to undercut it, but I was convinced by The Mickster and Gideon’s arguments to go a tad higher, which was, I hope, wise advice, and an example of why we agents reach out for second, even third opinions.

This post is not the start of some new marketing scheme of mine where I’ll disparage other listings to favor my own, and I repeat, in the 16 years I’ve been running this blog I’ve never touted my own listings at the expense of competing houses, but the similarities of these two listings prompted me to write about them (but sure, I’d prefer that a reader bought the Mickster’s and my listing, instead of this agent’s). Location, lot size, school district, age of construction: all go into the hopper when trying to value a house.

(Can’t resist — shouldn’t this trophy wall hold deer heads, or large fish?

Not bad, for Pecksland

79 Pecksland Road, asking $3.5 million, reports a pending sale. It started off in 2016 at $3.990, so this isn’t too bad a haircut, considering Pecksland’s declining popularity. The sellers paid $5.4 million for it in 2002, but that was an Ogilvy-To-Ogilvy transaction, and values had a tendency to get a bit skewed back then, when such sales were common.

I notice that the listing describes this house as enjoying a “casual elegance”. My cousin Ed, who has made a very nice living (far better than this lawyer) providing special effects for the movie and advertising industries – think explosions, Tropicana oranges splitting in half in midair and squeezing their juice into glasses, etc.— once described his work truck as “elegant, without being overly ostentatious”. I always preferred his term over “casual”.

New Hillcrest Park listing

16 Norton Lane, $2.950 million. Built in 2015. Full disclosure; the Mickster and I represent the owner. The price was set based on recent comparable sales, but we’ll see. It only came on a few hours ago and we already have two appointments to see it, so that’s encouraging; it’s evidence that at least there are active buyers in this price range, and they’re out there looking now. If you’re considering selling this spring, consider the spring market started.

I thought it’d be fun to hold a FWIW meet-up here during its public open house, which is tentatively scheduled for Sunday. The five-day forecast is for a snowstorm, in which case we’ll postpone, but long-term forecasts aren’t particularly reliable, so watch this space.

V IDEO (No, I had no say in the soundtrack — feel free to hit mute; I know I did)

I'm glad someone else has finally pointed out this hypocrisy

I’ve refrained from pointing this out, because I really don’t want to be understood as believing that an actress dressing as a sex object is inviting men to treat her as a sex object, but now another commentator has, so what the hell: if you want to be taken seriously as an “artist”, or whatever you claim to be, don’t flaunt your tits and ass.

Or other body parts.

Hello! I am Sasha, and i will be your financial advisor today, okay?

Greenwich's Alexandra Bergstein quickly learns to toe the party line

And the party line is, don’t mess with the state employee union. Chris Powell, Journal Inquirer:

Meanwhile Greenwich's first Democratic state senator in nearly 90 years, Alexandra Bergstein, has gotten a telling orientation from her Democratic Senate colleagues.

Bergstein, wife of a New York investment banker, enrolled as a Democrat only in April but made good by spending nearly $300,000 of personal money on her campaign, more than triple the amount ordinarily spent under Connecticut's public campaign financing system, which Bergstein bypassed.

Striking a pose of fiscal responsibility in her campaign, Bergstein called for reforming state government's pension system. She tells the Connecticut Mirror: "I said something like, 'We have to address the pension crisis with bold, structural fixes, not just little temporary fixes.'" Whereupon she got a call from another Democratic senator-elect, Julie Kushner of Danbury, a former leader of the Working Families Party, which the government employee unions set up to run candidates against Democrats who don't take union orders.

Kushner, Bergstein said, scolded her that "people who have already taken cuts don't think about them as ‘little fixes.'" So, Bergstein said, "I immediately apologized. Point taken."

Being so new to state politics, Bergstein may not understand that those state government employees who "have already taken cuts" somehow always manage to cost more every year anyway, since the "cuts" are only reductions in the rate of increase in their compensation. But Bergstein has gotten her instructions. She now realizes that the first obligation of Democratic legislators is to serve the special interest that dominates their party, not the public. If she knows what's good for her, Bergstein will drop the pension reform stuff.

The lesson here, and one soon to be learned on a national level, is that, no matter how much a Democrat candidate pledges fealty to fiscal sanity and moderate views on other issues, she or he will bow to power, and will end up as just another shrill for the increasingly-socialist Democratic power.

Of course, that’s not considered a bug by the majority of the new crowd of “activist” voters here in Greenwich; in fact, it’s a feature.

UPDATE: Upon reflection, I realize that I should have said “agrees to”, rather than “learns to” in the headline. Bergstein is no naif, she’s a woman who’s discovered an inner thirst for political power, and if she’s already caved in to the state employees union, just days after she was sworn into office, then she’s made her choice: personal political advancement instead of principle. Another empty-suit lickspittle, though that hardly makes her unique among her fellows in either party.

Mind you, Riverside's not so much in demand that sellers can demand just any price they wish

4 Highgate Road

Well, they can demand any price, but, as Hotspur rejoined to Glendower’s boast that he could “summon the spirits from vasty deep”, “why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?”

In any case, 4 Highgate Road, first listed in April, 2016 for $4.995 million, has today reduced its price to $3.695.

And, finally, 14 Sherwood Farm Lane closes

$2,962,500 for 14 Sherwood. This was in fact a September contract, but just closed now.

It’s been a long haul for this very-well constructed house: it started at $4.875 in June, 2009 and has been on and off — mostly on — since then. That’s the risk one takes, often, with custom houses when designed to specifically to the owner/builder’s tastes and wants.

But I’m glad to see that it’s found a buyer: nice house, even nicer owners.