Buy in haste, lose money at leisure

101 Perkins Road was listed for $5 million in 2014 and had a full price contract just 35 days later. The buyers were represented by an out-of-town agent. I’m certainly not casting aspersions on that agent’s knowledge of the town and its relative values, but it is true that local agents usually rub their hands with glee when the see an out -of-town agent appear with her clients in tow.

In any event, the buyers attempted to resell the house in 216 for $5.295, failed, and rented it out. Today it’s back on the market, at the chastened price of $3.995 million.

There’s probably another price cut or two in this home’s future.

Greenwich Democrats nominate a First Selectman candidate who promises to devote her energies to defeating Trump

Belle Haven: Jill Oberland Sanctuary Camp

You might think that a municipal politician has enough to do addressing local issues, but in the new world of wokeness, you’d be wrong. Jill Oberlander vows to do to Greenwich what her fellow pussyhats in Greenwich Invisible are attempting to accomplish in the formerly nonpartisan Representative Town Meeting.

“We’ve been thoroughly disappointed by the failure of local Republican leadership to call out the utter breach in standards, discourse and respect for the institutions of democracy,” Oberlander said. “Every day there is another story that wrenches one’s heart and soul. It is so constant that we become inured to it, and we start to think of it as the new normal. But it is not normal, and it is not OK.”

Elected leaders in Greenwich should show more “moral courage,” she said. The town deserves more “than an evasive response of usually along the lines of, ‘We don’t need to talk about national issues here in Greenwich’,” she said.

“What we are talking about is respect, decency and protection from bullying and hate, things we should be able to expect in this wonderful community,” Oberlander said.

Why, exactly, does Greenwich “deserve” a government that insists on impotently voicing opinions on national politics? What did we do wrong?

Quotes of the day (or pre-6:00 AM, anyway)

Said the spider to the fly

The Mussalman from Somalia admits her goals and intentions regarding her adoptive country

Thus, note what what Ilhan Omar said when addressing a leftist group known as Netroots Nation:

“There’s a constant struggle oftentimes with people who have power about sharing that power. We are not really in the business of asking for the share of that power. We’re in the business of trying to grab that power,” she said.

Not to be outdone, another of “the Squad” explains why all non-whites must stay on the plantation:

Ayanna Pressley at the same conference:

We don’t need any more any brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need any more black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.

That sounds like racism to me, no? If Trump were to have said, “we don’t need any white faces that don’t want to be a white voice” he’d have made headlines and sent the Leftists even further over the age (if that is possible). Instead … crickets.

No, not YOU guys – you can stay

The Long March home

Foreign buyers disappear from U.S. real estate market

Foreign purchases of U.S. homes have dropped by half over the last two years, a fresh blow to the top end of the market in New York City, Miami and cities in California.

Foreigners bought less than $78 billion worth of U.S. residential real estate in the year that ended in March—a 36% decline from $121 billion the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors.

Their pullback is leading to price cuts in several coastal cities and causing new condos to sit empty.

A slowing global economy, a simmering trade dispute with China, President Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and a stronger U.S. dollar have made America a less hospitable place for foreigners to invest over the last year, economists and real-estate agents said.

Purchases by foreigners are now at the lowest level since 2013, when buyers from Chinaand South America first began entering the U.S. market in large numbers in search of bargains and a safe place to stow their capital.

“It’s quite striking in terms of the magnitude of the decline,” said Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ chief economist.

Real-estate agents said the pain from the foreign pullback is palpable when they try to sell high-end condos in Miami and New York or mansions in southern California and Seattle.

“Generally speaking, we are in the largest market correction since the Great Recession in New York City,” said Martin Eiden, a real-estate agent at Compass, who has had to cut prices on listings from Midtown Manhattan to Brooklyn in the last year.

“The foreign buyers have pretty much all but disappeared,” he added. “I’m helping a lot of foreign buyers get their money out of this country as fast as possible.”

No more $800,000 condos for the kids in college, either, according to the article.

We don’t have a huge inventory of Chinese buyers in Greenwich (though one did buy an $11-million house on John Street this spring), but if the NYC condo market slows, that could affect who can move out here, and what they can afford to pay.

What could possibly go wrong?

Thanks to my Musk-o-Meter, I can now see that I did lose the election. But why do I keep hearing the Volga Boatman between my ears?

Elon Musk to start implanting brain chips in us by 2020.

Computer chips implanted in brains are arriving sooner than you may have anticipated. At a press conference, Elon Musk unveiled his plan to place computer chips in people's brain, linking them to their smartphone.

Thank you very much, Elon, but I’ll wait for someone trustworthy to get into this business, like Facebook, or Google.

American Federation of Teachers says your logic and common sense is wrong

Any East Asian or Asian hands in this picture?

Illegal aliens strengthen our schools, and the care of overcrowding is private charter schools.

Responding to concerns about the effects of classroom overcrowding and English proficiency issues on the learning experience at public schools, Weingarten said, "I think there are a lot of things that actually hurt public schooling and it starts with austerity and privatization but at the end of the day, every community is better off when it has new influx of people who bring their passion, their souls, their abilities and things like that. We will never turn anyone away and that is who we are as a strength of a nation. Our diversity is part of what makes us stronger."

Hmmm. Admit a million illegals a year, kill charter schools, increase spending on public schools and hire more teachers — what a novel idea!

There were 1,354,054 active military personnel in 2014 (the latest year I could easily find).

Well, since they're already forcibly opened our borders to the world, what difference, now, does it make?

Democrats want to bar federal government from using the term “alien” or “illegal alien”,

Two years, two million dollars

That’s how long it took the owners of 25 Game Cock Road in Byram to accept the world as it is, not as they would have it be. They listed the property June 21, 2017 for $4.9 mlllion and on June 21, 2019 they accepted an offer of $2.850. It closed today.

I was not involved in this deal and so have no idea whether it was the case in this instance, but often, when a house finally sells after a long time on the rolls, it turns out that the seller had turned down one, even several offers, each successively lower, before finally selling for far less than that first offer. Again, I have no knowledge of the details here, but it seems an appropriate place to remind readers that they should give some deep consideration to almost any offer; it might well be the best you’re going to get.

Who says it's satire?

Celebrating passage of Seattle’s new wealth tax

(Photo, Seattle Times)

Babylon Bee:

Compassionate Christian votes for government to steal money from his neighbor and give it to the poor

HILLSIDE, OR—A lot of Christians are criticized for not being very compassionate to the poor. But you can't say that about Larry DeManson, a local believer who is so committed to charity for those less fortunate than himself that he always votes for government to steal money from his neighbor and give it to the impoverished.

"The Bible calls us to take care of the poor," he told reporters, "but that's tough because it costs money. But then I was looking over at my neighbors and realized they have more money than I do---why not just vote for the government to confiscate their wealth and give it to the poor? Problem solved."

First they came for the biologists, but I was not a biologist, so I remained silent.

I wonder whether any of those hands represent non-white East Asians or Chinese?

And I’m not a mathematician, but I stand in awe of those who put us on the moon. They’e next on the chopping block.

Math must remove racism, whiteness

“Math equity” doesn’t mean 1 + 1 = 2.

The term refers to the growing insistence among educators that teaching math in the classroom comes with some inherently biased methodology that must be addressed.

Proponents of “math equity” also stress the importance of social justice issues such as race, diversity and gender in math education — a trend that’s catching on.

More professors and educators are tweeting under the hashtag #MathEquity to share strategies on the topic, and webinars and other pedagogical sessions on it abound.

“Equity-based mathematics teaching requires more than implementing new curriculum or using specific practices because it involves taking a stand for what is right,” the website for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics states.

“It requires mathematics teachers to reflect on their own identity, positions, and beliefs in regards to racist and sorting-based mechanisms. It involves noticing students, learning about the worlds they live in, and building mathematics that comes from these worlds. And finally, it involves engaging other educators in partnerships to build equity-oriented communities.”