So I was wrong — sue me

When the new construction at 73 Sawmill Road came on the market in January priced at $3.895 million, I was somewhat skeptical (“I thought this new listing’s price was a misprint, but no, they’re serious” was the somewhat cruel headline I used) and suggested that “you $2.2 buyers, keep your checkbooks dry, and be ready to pounce in 2021.”

But it turned out that the builder had his “come to Jesus moment” sooner than I expected, and today, currently priced at $2.495 million, there’s a contract reported, a full 15 months earlier than I’d predicted. I apologize to those of you who were waiting until late next year to begin bidding.

Guesses on final price? I’m going with $2.250.

This story's going viral, just as soon as the details are fully exposed

Giving new meaning to the term “sextuplet”

Six escapees from nursing home arrested for lewd sexual acts in Fairfield park

FAIRFIELD — Police arrested six people — including a pair of people in their 80s — last week after getting reports of “lewd and sexual activity” in the Grace Richardson Open Space area at the intersection of Congress Street and Morehouse Highway.

According to police, the department received several complaints of inappropriate behavior during the week of Aug. 12.

The Fairfield Police Department’s Quality of Life Unit was assigned to investigate. On Friday, officers and detectives from both the Special Services Unit and the Quality of Life Unit conducted a surveillance in and around the open space area.

Several violations were observed, and the following arrests were made: Daniel Dobbin, 67, charged with breach of peace and public indecency; Otto D. Williams, 62, charged with breach of peace; Charles L. Ardito, 75, charged with breach of peace; John Linartz, 62, charged with breach of peace and public indecency; Richard Butler, 82, breach of peace; Joyce Butler, 85, breach of peace.

All were released on a promise to appear in court. A court date was not given in the release.

(Did the police have to administer Cialis to the five guys before subjecting them to hard questioning?)

Keep house sale prices private? In many states, it's the rule

Jenifer Graham, of Salt Lake City’s Deseret News, has a good article out on the dispute between those — generally home sellers and real estate agents — who are determined to keep sale prices confidential, and other parties who believe that information wants to be free.

Until Graham contacted me for my opinion, I had no idea that so many states do keep prices private.

SALT LAKE CITY — In a nation increasingly worried about privacy, Utah guarantees its citizens a courtesy that most other states don’t: the right to keep the selling price of a home a secret. 

And it’s not alone.

Texas, Alaska, Missouri, Louisiana and Mississippi, in addition to Utah and Idaho, are considered non-disclosure states, potentially costing those states millions of dollars in property taxes and giving players in the real estate market a monopoly on information.

The rules vary from state to state, but in Utah when a home changes hands, only real-estate agents and lenders know the final price, along with the seller and buyer. That means local governments, national real-estate websites and gossipy neighbors don’t.

The longstanding practice is an anomaly in a society where there are few secrets anymore.

I’m all for full disclosure, myself. For decades, our real estate firms kept sales data to themselves, allowing them a monopoly on that information and forcing buyers to come to them for buying advice, which not surprisingly was often tilted in favor of houses on the market that just happened to be listed by the broker itself. Greenwich brokers fought the MLS, fought the introduction of listing directories that allowed competing firms to learn what the others had going, then fought Zillow, Realtor.com, and any internet posting of anything relating to their listings at all. It’s been a long fight to introduce transparency into this mess, and our Association is still manipulating data, but we’re much closer than we were before. And without knowledge of actual sales data, buyers and their representatives are at the mercy of the gatekeepers.

Graham quotes me in her article as a supporter of such openness, and I am, but the money quote — literally — belongs to an opponent, who justly fears that disclosing sale prices is just inviting the taxman to appear on the doorstep:

Steve Theobald, a real-estate broker in Salt Lake City, has a personal reason to oppose disclosure. When he moved to Utah from Maryland, he had to pay a $20,000 transfer tax on the sale of his Maryland home. “I was happy to find out there wasn’t going to be any transfer tax in Utah,” Theobald said.

Theobald believes that nondisclosure is the primary reason Utah doesn’t have a transfer tax. “They don’t tax because they don’t have the data,” he said. “The second you give a politician data about money, they’re going to find a way to tax it.”

It’s a very well-written article, and Graham presents an objective view of both sides of the argument. Highly recommended.

A warning from the NYT editorial board

With little A.G. Sulzberger at the helm, the paper declares war on America.

He'll get his price or hold until it's washed away by the sea

12 E. Point Lane in Old Greenwich is back on the market, still firmly lodged near the $3 range (does that make it a three-range house?). This property is appropriately marketed as a building lot, and those are popular in this area of Old Greenwich, so this one’s stubborn refusal to sell since starting on the market in 2013 is surely attributable to its price, currently $2.875.

It’s easy to understand the owner’s refusal to face reality here, because, just two years after his predecessor had paid $2.2 for it in 2003, he bought it for $3.353, in 2005, and he must feel like a real chump, now. What was he thinking when he paid that much? Who knows, but anyway, he put it back up for sale in June, 2013 for $3.6, raised the price to $3.825 (!) in December of that year, and has been seeking to unload it ever since, but all the time staying away from its true market value.

As noted, the previous 2003 sale was for $2.2, and today the town appraises the land at $2,161,400. Somewhere between those two numbers, an acceptable price can probably be found.

Maybe if the seller threw in a shoehorn ….

Riverside sale

39 Hearthstone Drive has sold for $3 million, just 89 days after being listed at $3.095. The sellers paid $1.645 for it in 2013, gutted it, expanded it (from 2,604 sq.ft. to 5,191) and essentially rebuilt it. They did a nice job, as evidenced by this quick sale.

Circa 2013

Back to the future

167 Byram Shore Road, currently listed at $2.575 million, reports a contract. Owners paid $2,575,454 for it in 2001, put a lot of money into it and listed it this time in June, 2018, for $4.7 million. Now they’re back where they started.

To be fair, so are its users

Off to pay the Commissioner of Revenue!

“Experts”: Pot revenue stream is unpredictable

And unsteady, I’ve observed.

[A] new report indicates that cannabis sales and taxes may create volatile, almost unpredictable revenue streams, depending on several market variables, including demand, cross-border sales, and prices that can be undercut by the existing illicit markets. Revenue also seems to shrink as markets mature, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts report released Monday.

Greenwich Dems — but enough about Trump, let's talk about Trump!

Local Democrat flack David Rafferty is out with an opinion piece this morning in which he says he’ll lay off Trump and national issues for just this one day, and focus on Greenwich Republicans’ nefarious plans for town government. He then proceeds to mention Trump 14 times in his 6-paragraph rant, and spends the rest of his time attacking national policies that, he says, will be brought into town by Republicans. Issues like “denying women “health services” by which he means abortion, and denying aid and succor to illegal aliens.

He concludes his screed with a demand that the Republicans running for local office disclose where they stand: for Trump, or agin’ him. That would seem to be an irrelevant demand for an election dedicated to local issues. On the other hand, I suppose it’s fair: Oberland, her running mate, and Greenwich Democrats have made it explicitly clear what they stand for: increased spending, increased debt, sanctuary for criminals free abortions for transgenders, no ID voting, and the conversion of the Old Greenwich Civic Center into a shelter for asylum seekers while permanent placements are found for them in the homes of Greenwich Invisible ladies. It’s probably important to know whether any of our local Republican candidates support this prescription for making Greenwich great again, just so we know whether to save a trip to the polls.

Republicans are making the same mistake the Democrats did, but for a different reason

The Democrats thought that dirt in the Mueller report would bring down the administration, the Republicans think that people will care that the country narrowly avoided a coup. Both are wrong.

Lindsay Graham is just the latest Republican to speak gleefully of what’s going to happen when the IG and Barr investigations are completed and released; I read the same thing on conservative websites, as well, but in fact, these pundits remind me very much of the Democrats and their scribes’ eager anticipation of the Mueller report: “just you wait, now we’ll have him!”. The Democrat’s hopes were dashed when Mueller strained and groaned and grunted and passed a nothing burger. The Republicans will probably have a real scandal to present to the public, but so what?

First, the press will bury the story so deep that the vast majority of voters will never hear of it. Second, if the TDS sufferers do catch wind of an attempted coup against a duly-elected president, they won’t care. Getting rid of Trump is a good thing, no matter how it’s accomplished. There are no principles on the Left, and just as free speech should only be protected if it’s the right kind of speech, with the right kind of opinions, a rogue intelligence operation is perfectly acceptable so long as it’s directed at Trump. One, collective yawn, then back to Epstein and Prince Andrew.

It should be an interesting year.