A property that's been cursed since it was built in 1916

Still on top of the hill, but slowly, slowly, sliding down

Greenwich Time reports that Leona Helmsley’s pile of bricks at 521 Round Hill Road, “Dunnelan Hall”, has slashed its price again, and is now begging for offers beginning at $22.5 million. Owners have never done well here over the past century: financial ruin, tragic deaths of children and, of course, Leona herself being forcibly transferred a few miles up the road to Bedford Hill’s Women’s Prison, but the misfortunes it’s suffered over the past eleven years can be attributed to bad pricing and some truly dumb financial decisions by the current owner.

Ogilvy set off the circus parade back in 2008, when he originally listed it for $125 million, a price that was surely designed more to garner national news coverage for his firm than to convey any realistic appraisal of value, but ridiculous prices can also serve as sucker bait: in 2010, after the disappointed sellers had grown tired of Mr. Ogilvy, they hired a new broker, and a buyer (represented by Ogilvy’s office, ironically), actually paid $35 million. That wasn’t smart but, worse, convinced he’d effected a bargain, the buyer tossed some paint on the project and returned it to the market in 2011, marked up to $42.9 million, but failed to sell it: quell surprise.

Undaunted, the idiot pulled it from the market and put some real money into it, redoing rooms, mechanicals, tearing down an unfortunate addition, etc., and brought it back on in 2014 for $65 million. Five years on, he’s down to $22.5, and still falling.

It’s not as though the prospects for this ugly pink elephant haven’t been discussed online — notably, here, over the years, where both blogger and many commenters have offered their opinions, but ….

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

Examination Day

Japan’s Supreme Court to wannabe transgenders: show us your empty purse.

Upholds law requiring that males have their weenies and scrotums removed before being allowed to register as females.

A certain seriousness of purpose must be displayed before the general public is annoyed and bothered by another’s mental disfunction. Seems fair.

The politics of envy

From Powwerlineblog.com:

One of Powwerline’s lineup of contributors, Steven Hayward, is scheduled to speak at Yale today. Here’s an excerpt from his post on the topic:

Among other things, I am going to argue at length that the current furious egalitarian mood of the left is really just a case of envy run amok, but envy is something social scientists don’t study any more, largely because it would discredit the program of the left. In looking around for scholarship on this point, I stumbled across a terrific 1966 book by a German scholar named Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. I can’t believe I never came across this book before now. It is stupendously good.

There are too many great parts of his argument to summarize or quote (though I may make a series out of this topic), but here’s one:

It would be a miracle if the democratic political process were ever to renounce the use of the envy-motive. Its usefulness derives, if for no other reason, from the fact that all that is needed, in principle, is to promise the envious the destruction or the confiscation of assets enjoyed by the others; beyond that there is no need to promise anything more constructive. The negativism of envy permits even the weakest of candidates to sound reasonably plausible, since anybody, once in office, can confiscate or destroy. To enlarge the country’s capital assets, to create employment etc., requires a more precise programme. Candidates will naturally try to make some positive proposals, but it is often all too apparent that envy looms large in their calculations. The more precarious the nation’s economy at election time, the stronger the temptations for politicians to make ‘redistribution’ their main plank, even when they know how little margin is left for redistributive measures, and, worse still, how likely they are to retard economic growth.

RELATED: Elizabeth Warren proposes annual “wealth tax” on the rich, annual audits, and a punitive tax levied on those who seek to flee.

And so it begins: statewide tax rate on vehicles. Real estate next, count on it

New Democrat majority proposes uniform mill rate on motor vehicles.

Owners of multi-family houses would get tax breaks, and there would be a single statewide property-tax rate for motor vehicles, under a wide-ranging finance proposal submitted to the General Assembly by Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney.

Republicans warned that the price tag could be hundreds of millions of dollars, in a shift of the statewide burden to more-affluent towns.

No, they won’t stop at cars. Between the Never-Trumpers who stayed home last November and our Ladies Invisible group who did vote, Greenwich has no one to blame for this coming disaster but itself.

And wait for it: town school districts will fall within the decade.

This seems like a dumb strategy, but the Republicans are known for those

So, after much consideration, I finally decided to spring $25 for an “official” Trump hat: get something to wear when I choose to stroll through dangerous liberal neighborhoods like the Upper West Side, and toss a few bucks into the Republican Party coffers while at it.

But no, you can’t just buy a hat and be done with it. Instead, the party demands both an email address and a phone number, and thoughtfully provides the following warning:

By providing your phone number, you are consenting to receive calls and SMS/MMS messages, including autodialed and automated calls and texts, to that number from each of the participating committees in the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and the Republican National Committee. Msg & data rates may apply.

Thank you, but no: I don’t want any damn hat badly enough to pay you for it and give you permission to invade my house at all hours of the day with robo-calls and emails.

So no deal.

The "progressive" Democrats presidential candidates may be hoist by their own petard

Future betto campaign workers

Democrat campaign interns trying to unionize, demand $15 an hour minimum wage, plus health benefits, etc. By my reckoning, that would probably raise the going wage for door-knockers and ballot harvesters to more than 30 bucks, and that should cripple most campaigns, just as it cripples other small businesses. Bernie, send me an email: I’ll try to pitch in.

“It’s hard to be going door-to-door, telling people you should vote for this candidate because they support a $15 minimum wage when you yourself are making less than that,” added Ihaab Syed, secretary of the Campaign Workers Guild, a union for campaign staffers. “It’s hard to go door-to-door, calling for Medicare for All, when you’re not being given health care.”

In the heart of Riverside, a bit of troublesome news; maybe

19 Stoney Brook Lane, built in 2002 and sold for $3.350 in 2014, has resold for just $2.540. The sellers tried for $3.650 in 2016 before giving it up and renting it for a year in 2017. The house and the lot it sits on have never been among my favorites, but the street itself, just off Lake Drive South, is an excellent location, and so I’m surprised to see this kind of hit.

Trend, or exception? I suppose we’ll see as the spring market unfolds.

I'm waiting for Amazon to offer a twofer deal

I’d thought I was growing too old to deliberately provoke strangers, but it seems I am not, and I’m now considering buying my own MAGA hat to wear in public, but only when carrying a can of bear spray.

I'm alive, but simply not inspired

No posts for a couple of days, but what’s to write about? The political world continues on its dreadful course, Greenwich real estate has yet to awake from its Thanksgiving — MLK Day slumber, though that should change next week.

In the meantime, there’s an article from Maine saying that that states’ real estate market is booming (behind a cash wall, so not worth the link). I suspect that the phenomenon will be short lived, because Maine residents have replaced their governor of eight years, Paul LePage, with a Democrat, and given her an overwhelming majority of Democrats in both houses to whoop through new taxes: already, 3,000 (!) proposed new laws have been rushed into the legislative hopper, bills that have doubtless been stuck in desk drawers during the previous eight years of frustration.

LePage and Republicans took control of a state hopelessly in debt and mired in recession and in eight years wiped out the deficit, built a surplus and dropped taxes, while unemployment and welfare rolls sank to all-time lows. The very people who moved to Maine to take advantage of those new job opportunities have now grasped control of the legislature and are determined to undo everything that was gained.

Not much different than what’s going on in Washington.

William Raveis isn't impressed with the current Greenwich real estate market, either

We’re going to disney world!

In fact, their statistics are as depressing as those cited by David Huffinpuffer, two posts below.

Per Ryan Raveis:

“Median sales prices last year stayed about the same,” he said, “but average sales prices were down significantly.”

Raveis said there was no doubt that Fairfield County’s richer municipalities have been adversely affecting the big picture in the residential market. According to sourceMLS, while locales like Bethel and Bridgeport posted average sales prices up in both by 8 percent from 2017, Greenwich’s average sales price last year was down 8 percent from 2017. Old Greenwich fell by a little less than 12 percent and, while Darien was down just 3 percent, its number of unit sales declined by nearly 15 percent.

Part of the reason, Raveis said, is that “wealthier folks are leaving the state, and those who are replacing them don’t have the same level of income.”

According to data from the Internal Revenue Service, $2.6 billion in adjusted gross income was lost to other states as Connecticut experienced a net loss of roughly 20,179 residents in 2015. The largest group of tax filers leaving the state were those earning over $200,000 per year: between 2015 and 2016, the state saw a net loss of 2,050 tax filers earning at least that much money each year, the most since the IRS began tracking that income bracket.

“I don’t think anybody wants to die in this state,” Raveis said. “That’s why you see so many Florida and North Carolina license plates when you’re driving here in the summer — those people live most of the year outside of Connecticut.”

The ongoing perception that Connecticut as a whole is not business friendly, as evidenced by the exit of General Electric and the staff reductions at UBS and RBS, and doubts about its fiscal future thanks to the ongoing budget deficit, have had a deleterious effect, he added.

“A CEO who’s looking to move his company knows that this isn’t a particularly business-friendly environment,” Raveis declared. “And older, wealthier baby boomers are leaving.” Whether those attitudes will change under new Gov. Ned Lamont remains uncertain, he added: “I think everyone’s waiting to see what the new governor does.”