There might be a deal here

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339 Stanwich Road, bank owned, is new to the market today and priced at $1.599 million, “or best offer”. It’s being sold “as is”, which is how banks handle these sales, but unlike many foreclosure situations, the owner, a solid, long-time Greenwich resident who fell on bad times with family illness and business reversals, stayed in here all the five long years of the process and maintained the house well. Often, by the time a bank regains a property there’s nothing to do but call in a dozer; that’s not the case here.

It’s not my style of house, at all, but it did sell for $2.550 million in 2004, and if you can live with its style and are willing to put in a modest amount of money for updating, this could work.

Pecksland Sale

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138 Pecksland, $4.265 million (out of town broker, buyer). A nice old home from 1936, an era when houses like this sprang up like mushrooms on Pecksland. These days they aren’t as popular, but still, this one hung on above the $4 threshold, this time.

The sellers paid $4.675 in 2012, renovated it, and put it back on the market a year ago for $5.995. They didn’t get that, but money spent on renovations to a house like this should be considered lost as soon as it’s spent, so presumably the owners enjoyed the improvements during their brief tenancy, and got their money’s worth that way.

(More) Long term debt — yeah, that's the ticket!

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The boring old nag, Peter Berg, is out with a letter claiming that our inferior school system is damaging our property values compared to, say, Darien and New Canaan, and the solution he proposes is — surprise! — lots of new debt to be piled onto Greenwich taxpayers.

Realtors tell me that home buyers are increasingly by-passing Greenwich.

One of my walking buddies says he and his wife bought their house in Greenwich in 1985 after shopping in numerous towns in Westchester and Fairfield Counties.  With young children, they gave great weight to US News & World Report’s ranking of best schools.

Today, Greenwich High School ranks 14th in Connecticut and #548 nationally.  Darien ranks #1 in CT and #150 nationally.  Weston, Ridgefield, New Canaan, Westport Staples, and Wilton also rank above Greenwich.

Nationally, Rye (#139), Byram Hills – Armonk (#144), Blind Brook – Rye Brook, Horace Greeley – Chappaqua, and 9 more Westchester schools rank above Greenwich.

Over decades, Greenwich has deferred maintenance to keep taxes low, but homeowners are paying the price with lower home values.

Greenwich voters need to know that investments in schools, athletic facilities and other infrastructure will protect and raise property values. Longer term debt used to update our infrastructure will lower property taxes.  Politicians who say otherwise are either mathematically challenged or they are intentionally deceiving us.

There are a number of flaws in Berg’s reasoning, leaving aside that he, like all his Democratic friends, has always pushed for increasing the town’s debt, for decades, and “failed school infrastructure” is just the latest peg to hang that hat on. Next week it will be global warming, or recovery centers for those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. But, to address his points:

  1. Has Berg checked with his realtor friends about how property values are doing in Darien and New Canaan? They plummeted in 2008 and have never recovered. If anything, the performance of those towns’ (and Wilton’s and the rest of our Golden Triangle towns) housing markets provides a strong argument that US News school rankings provide a reverse index for real estate performance.

  2. Has Berg noticed that the towns he so admires have far fewer students to educate, and virtually no students who live below the poverty line? According to the US News rankings, Darien and Greenwich are two completely different worlds:
    Darien: 1,354 students 9-12, 2% “economically disadvantaged”

    Greenwich: 2,625 students 9-12, 15% “economically disadvantaged” 

Will new playing fields and school buildings actually raise the test scores of our least-advantaged kids and lift us all up to Darien’s level of accomplishment? We have the perfect test case in the New Lebanon School: let’s give that institution five years, say, to work its miracles, and then, depending on results, we can give Berg’s party’s tax hike scheme a hearing.

(Added thoughts): Have you ever noticed that politicians, of both parties, rarely speak of spending, and use “investing” instead? Whether it’s schools, bridges, stop-smoking programs, defective-gene detection, high school music halls; whatever, we’re always promised that spending now will produce savings later. Yet later never comes; instead, we get new opportuities for new investments, and the ROI on that first batch of money remains negative.

Funny that.

Here's a big Ow

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215 Riverside Avenue has sold for $1.940 million. That must have been painful for the sellers, because they paid its full asking price of $2.050 in 2016, completed a total renovation/expansion, and placed it back up for sale in 2017 for $3.2. Turned out that no one appreciated their choices in what and how to redo this house, and all that work and expended energy was for naught.

The real winners here were probably my good friends, who sold it to these sellers. With their children grown, they unloaded a property they’d paid $540,000 for in 1996 and decamped to Stamford, where they bought a very nice home, cheap, and pocketed the difference.

Smart move.

Sherwood Farms continues to disappoint

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15 Sherwood Farms has cut its price to $2.999 million. It was purchased new in 2004 for $3.450 and, after improvements, was placed back up for sale in 2012 for $4.550; things have gone downhill since then.

As conceived, this development of Rockefeller property seemed sound: sell the lots to a few, select builders, and have them sell high-quality homes for $4 million plus. It worked, originally, with sales in the high-$4s and even $5s, but as time went on, prices declined. There’s only been one sale over $4 in several years, and that one, 16 Sherwood Farms Lane, sold for $4.250, ex-MLS, by an agent selling her client’s house to another client. That’s usually not a good judge of actual market value. Other than No. 16, sales have been in the $3s and $2s. 8 Sherwood, for instance, sold for $2.450 in 2017 — it had previously sold for $3.8 in 2009.

I think buyers in Sherwood Farms counted on the development of the other Rockefeller land across Glenville Road to boost neighborhood values in general, and that may still happen, if that long-delayed development ever breaks ground. For now, the area retains its slight stigma of being on the wrong side of town, and potential buyers have noticed.

Riverside price cut

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8 Marks Road, from $1.395 million to $1.299, after just 25 days on the market. That’s a smart move; this is not the time of year to cling to a price and await the mythical “it just takes one buyer” chump to show up. Of interest to those keeping score, this same house sold for $1.475 million in 2006, but that was then, and this is now.

It’s a 1960 former spec job, and there’s nothing the seller can do about that, but give credit to the agent for putting a brave face on that irreducible fact:

“Renovated with much of original mid-century style retained.”

Indeed.

There's alway someone who thinks he's figured out the system, and goes contrarian

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6 Meadow Drive, whose listing expired last June, unsold at $2.499 million, is back today with a new broker, new agent, and a new price: $2.6 million. There are those who might question a strategy of raising the price of a product that isn’t selling, especially when on the cusp of the market’s dormant period, but this poor house has been kicking around for five years now without success, so why not be daring and try something else?

Better buy it now, or it’ll cost you even more in the Spring.