Short sale on Riversville reports a contract

Believe it when it happens

347 Riversville Road, asking $795,000. Might happen, but it’s a short sale, and those are iffy. My partner Frankie Fudrucker has the patience to work through short sales but I don’t: you’re dealing with low-level bank employees in banks’ work-out departments, who are fired or quit every few months, forcing you to start negotiations all over again. Frank can do that, I refuse.

This isn’t a Lockwood & Mead deal, though, so I don’t know the status of the contract or how solid the deal is. Washington Mutual was foolish enough to loan $1.160 on the place back in 2007, but WaMu is long gone, and Chase owns the paper, doubtless purchased for pennies on the dollar. I’d think they’d be glad to get this property off their book, but with bankers, who knows?

An odd property, with a rocky hill leading to the Merrit Parkway above it and the usable land in front, but not all that bad and, even for Riversville, an affordable price that probably makes sense. Sort of.

Spec house pending in Old Greenwich

57 Park Avenue, built in 2016 and originally priced at $3.2 million, dropped its price to $2.395 and has found a buyer. On two-tenths of an acre, and of dubious design, it’s close to the elementary school and train, and Park’s a nice neighborhood.

2,500 feet of living space above ground, the rest is in the basement.

Must be bonus season

184 Shore Road, new construction in Old Greenwich and asking $4.195 million, has a contract after just 132 days. I don’t necessarily get it because, to my eye, it suffers from mediocre architecture and a rather unpleasant location, directly exposed to beach traffic, but it is new, and that always holds some appeal, to some buyers.

The listing excitedly proclaims “not in flood zone!” . The tax card, and my own experience of over 60 years living in town, suggests otherwise, but whatever.

Real Estate Tar Babies

I see that 50 Sumner Road, way up near New York, has fired its broker but come back on the market at the same price it didn’t sell at before, $3.650 million. Some time ago — 2010— a friend of mine paid $1.650 for this place, poured a ton of money into it and tried to get $2.650 for his efforts. He sold it for $1.575 in 2017. These current owners have completely redone the house, redesigning it and making it almost new, and tried, first, for $3.6 million, then raised its price to the current $3.650. The logic of that move may elude ordinary mortals, but the fact remains: it isn’t selling.

50 Sumner road

And there’s a lesson here: certain neighborhoods have price ceilings, and owners who put more into a house than the market for the neighborhood will permit are just wasting their money, no matter how nice they make their house. And the more they put in, the deeper they’re stuck.

It’s not just Sumner Road that holds such traps, of course. I recall a house on Frontier, in Cos Cob, that I was asked to give a price opinion on. I gave it, it was rejected in favor of another agent’s far-higher price (naturally), and when it failed to sell, that agent persuaded the owners to spend $180,000 on a new kitchen. It eventually sold for the price I’d suggested, almost to the penny, but the retiree-owners, who’d told me three years before that they simply wanted to move on to their Hawaiian condominium and finish out their time on earth, had their move delayed and their savings diminished, and for what?

Another tar baby neighborhood is upper Taconic and, across the border in North Stamford, Farms Road. There are many examples of North Stamford over-improvements, but 111 Farms Road is illustrative. The owner paid just $500,000 in 2000 for a tiny 1820 farmhouse and completely transformed it, tripling its size (at least), putting in incredible wood work, and made it into a quirky, but gorgeous home. He tried for $2.895 million in 2014, which represented a loss, and sold it for $1.610 in 2017. That was a shame, from my perspective, because I had clients who loved it when it was asking $2.5 and were tempted, but ultimately balked. I’m sure they’d have struck at, say, $1.8.

111 Farms road

But all is this is to say that owners should be aware of their surroundings: don’t over-improve for your neighborhood, or you’ll just end up contributing a nice new kitchen, or even an entire renovation, to new owners. And for heaven’s sake, if you can’t get your asking price, do not put good money after bad. That’s the tar baby speaking, in the guise of your agent. Cut and run.

So when the Democrats demolish the airline industry in ten years, how will they travel to their Hollywood fund raisers?

well, darn!

Not by their touted high speed rail system, that’s for certain. Governor Moonbeam’s LA-to-San Francisco railroad fiasco isn’t the only route that’s hopelessly over budget and doomed: over in Britain, same problem, as its own London to Scotland project has derailed.

The very idea of building new rail lines across America, where even pipelines and transmission lines (the latter presumably, will be required to distribute all the magical solar energy those same Democrats envision) are fought, stalled, and blocked, inch by inch, mile by mile, by NIMBYs and “environmentalists”, is ludicrous. Our legal and regulatory structure that prohibits any such construction, combined with the very costs that are terminating California’s ($100 billion, 3X estimate, still unbuilt) and Britain’s ($60 billion — 2X initial estimate, still unbuilt) make it clear that we will never, ever witness the same determination and will that produced our existing national railroad system 150 years ago: never again.



Sugar cereals of our youth

A look back at a misspent youth.

We were never allowed sugar cereals growing up until youngest-child Gideon became old enough to mercilessly pester our mother at the grocery store — I’d guess that would have been when he was about three, and suddenly we had Sugar Pops, From Loops and Captain Crunch in the house and on the breakfast table. We also had no TV in the house until Gid came along, so we didn’t know what we were missing.

Gideon went on to a very successful career selling real estate.

I'm so old I remember when Democrats claimed to care about our country's security

Budget talks stall over Democrats’ insistence that we cap the number of violent illegals ICE can detain.

Senators Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that U.S. budget talks have broken down over the number of beds at immigration detention centers. Shelby said that Democrats want to put a cap on the ICE detainment of criminals. According to Graham, they actually want to reduce the number of beds for violent offenders detained at the border.

Congressional negotiators are trying to reach a compromise before Friday, the deadline for an agreement on funding to keep the government open.

"I think the talks are stalled right now," Sen. Shelby, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."

“I'm hoping we can get off the dime later today or in the morning because time is ticking away,” he said. “But we got some problems with the Democrats dealing with ICE that is detaining criminals that come into the U.S."

“And [Democrats] want a cap on them. We don't want a cap on that.... [W]e haven't reached a number on the [border] barrier yet, but we are working and we're hoping we can get there. But we've got to get fluid again. We got to start movement.”

On the death of John Dingall

I’ve given you the key to the piggy bank — take good care of it

The Congressman inherited the post from his father, who began his own career in Washington in 1933, and Dingell’s wife took over from her husband in 2015, when he became too feeble to continue, so the Royal family has ruled Michigan for 86 years, and counting. And it’s been a lucrative reign.

Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds links to this article, which he label, “Congress as a Protection Racket”. Indeed.

In those days, I had a role as a lobbyist in various coalitions of trade groups as part of my legal practice. Lots of people in Washington had really wonderful jobs as lobbyists for several decades because liberals would faithfully introduce bad bills with enormous potential harm to business, the lobbyists would report that threat back to their employers and clients, trade associations and large firms would then pay them to defeat this threat. Then Dingell or some other titan would simply kill it anyway and the lobbyists could rack up another “victory,” steer contributions to the right people and stay flush. Clean Air amendment legislation routinely died in each Congress because Dingell faithfully represented the automakers and Byrd the coal industry. But anybody ‘working’ the issue could claim results.

Senior Democrats like Dingell racked up large contributions from business because by the 1980s Congress was largely designed to be an extortion racket. “Pay us to either kill what you don’t like or to insert protections for you in the bad bill we are about to pass or else.” Before 1986, high tax rates were part of a code festooned with countless arcane provisions to lessen the blow but only for paying customers. Enormous regulatory assaults were legislated but with hundreds of arcane provisions to protect those who stepped up and paid up.

If you were paying for protection, this was not a one time fee. Once your protections were enshrined in a paragraph or a sentence in legislation, there was the eternal threat of repeal or amendment so the payments had to continue.

Once I recall that all the reps in one coalition I worked with got a letter from Dingell’s AA which said: “The Chairman may lose interest in your issue if your support is not more forthcoming.” If you think of it as an invoice, it makes more sense.

Exit quote: “Frankly, I would rather have a Congress that I could bribe rather than a majority of AOC-type ideologues.”

Read the whole thing.

Bob Horton nails our New Lebanon problem

The new new lebanon school (representative)

Spot-on column in today’s Greenwich Time.

Bob is a lifelong friend, although we’ve enjoyed a complete magnetic pole reversal in our politics: in 1960, when I was in First grade and he in Third, he bet me $1 that Nixon, his preferred candidate, would beat Kennedy. I spent election night terrified, because there was no way I could come up with a whole dollar ($25 in today’s currency), and I was in big trouble with a third grader. Turned out that my fears were groundless, and my relief the next morning was so huge that I ignored, but didn’t forget, that he welched on the bet. I just ran an interest calculation on that dollar, Bob, and it seems you owe me $190, based on 3.5%. You have my address.

In any event, here’s Bob:

Greenwich’s new shiny jewel, the 62,000-square-feet, $37.3 million New Lebanon School, is set to open its doors a week from Monday as students return from winter break.

At least five of the 21 pristine classrooms will sit empty; the elementary school designed to house 425 students will be lucky to see a population of 300.

To get beyond the 300 mark, the district will have to empty classrooms in other schools, adding to the town’s significant surplus of instructional space and incurring all the costs of maintaining more space than the district needs.

The school board and administrators have started an extensive campaign to justify building the oversized school at a time when district enrollment is expected to remain flat and possibly decline.

Part of that campaign was to be a new magnet curriculum that would attract students from all parts of town, which would, it was hoped, bring the New Lebanon student population’s racial mix in line with the district’s ethnic profile. That was part of the argument that helped the town secure construction funding from the state.

The town even incorporated a process for developing that magnet theme into the new building’s educational specifications. To achieve desired enrollment, the plan said, “the design of the magnet application/assignment policy and procedures for New Lebanon School must be concurrent with facility design.”

But no such curriculum design (or re-design) ever happened. New Lebanon still offers the magnet program it first employed years ago: the International Baccalaureate method, similar to the magnet curriculum at the International School at Dundee. The different approach espoused by the IB program worked to bring students to Dundee, but that school was re-opened to solve an overcrowding problem at Old Greenwich, Riverside and North Mianus schools. IB has not worked to convince parents from eastern and central Greenwich to send their children across town to New Lebanon.

There is no reason to suspect that a new building will change parents’ attitudes toward crosstown commuting for elementary students. With all credit to Barbara Riccio, New Lebanon principal, who said the lack of a new facility had made marketing the curriculum difficult, selling the IB method will not be easier with a new building. Western Middle School, the school New Lebanon graduates attend, wants to drop its IB program.

It is hard to suss out why the district has not spent more time and money exploring the best way to close the achievement gap at New Lebanon as it promised it would in its application for state funds. But, it is not surprising that a district that has had four superintendents in four years, with a new one beginning in July, has administrators who have learned how to navigate around the board and whoever is passing through the superintendent’s seat. Or perhaps everyone just forgot. But sticking with an IB curriculum that is not integrated throughout the next two levels of a student’s education has proven to be a failure.

We have incompetents running our town, and the BOE is their home base.

Add the grand piano to the "brown furniture" column of losers

Steinway accused of falsely claiming that its pianos increase in value

Just as owners of 18th century antiques have discovered to their (our) dismay, pianos are no longer a hot item on the market.

Angry buyers of Steinway pianos say they were duped by salespeople who told them the instruments would increase in value, though they actually plunge in price by 50 percent or more as soon as they leave the showroom floor, according to a report Saturday.

Owners of the ultra-expensive instruments, which cost between $70,000 and $150,000 when new, said salespeople lied to them about what their pianos’ worth in the future, the Hatch Institute reported Saturday.

Customers said they were shown charts of steadily rising prices for new models and were told that buying a Steinway made a better investment than Wall Street stock, the investigative journalism site said.

One Steinway brochure, titled “Your Steinway Investment,” claims that “for more than a century and a half, every handmade Steinway has increased in value,” adding that their pianos were “an investment instrument unique in all the world.”

But when owners tried to sell, they learned their Steinways were worth tens of thousands less than what they’d paid, even when the pianos were just months old or had never been played, the site reported.

“They use the word investment,” said Ronen Segev, who owns Park Avenue Pianos, which buys and sells used Steinways. “Steinways go up in value. It’s part of the expectation. Then you look at the secondary market and you see what prices are. It really shocks people.”

Company spokesman Anthony Gilroy conceded that Steinways “go down in value significantly right off the bat.” He said claims by salespeople that the pianos increase was “a very rare occurrence.”

As for the brochure making that statement, he said he “pulled it months ago from the website.” But Hatch found it was still widely in use.

In view of this, maybe our BOE should reconsider paying $155,000 for a new piano for our GHS Music Hall; Peter Sherr, who supports the expenditure, might dig a bit deeper into the market and see what he can save us taxpayers, at no cost to student performances.

(UPDATE)

Better yet, the GHS parents who have so generously raised $50,000 to pay for a new piano should retain my incredibly talented younger brother Anthony, a superb musician, Sony Music retiree and Steinway expert, to scout out a premium piano to replace the current one (which he undoubtedly played during his own days at GHS). I haven’t broached the idea with Ants, but I think a 15% finders fee for securing, say, a $155,000 Steinway (calculated from the parents’ group’s own estimate) for that $50,000 would be fair. Not that Anthony would need any help, but I’ve been pretty successful in negotiations during my time here on this mortal coil, and I’d be happy to throw in my own support, gratis.

It’s obvious (to me) that a new piano is needed; the question is, how much should it cost?

(Just to preempt Holden, here’s the video)

UPDATE: From the comments section, our very own Susie