And the Wind Cries Karyn

Fun at the Gov’s Memorial Day party

Massachusetts Lt. Governor Karyn Polito Hosts Dozens Of Friends At $1.5 Million Lakefront Shrewsbury Mansion Despite Social Distancing And Mask Orders. “Lt. Governor Karyn Polito recently reminded Massachusetts residents that they should stay at home unless they need to go out to pick up “essentials,” and urged citizens to adhere to social distancing guidelines. Likewise, Governor Charlie Baker on Friday urged people not to get together in groups for barbecues this memorial day weekend. However, it appears as if Polito is not heeding her own advice. Sources are reporting to TB Daily News that the Lt. Governor had a party at her $1.5 million home in Shrewsbury on Saturday. According to the source there were over a dozen cars parked at the lakefront property at 2 Tatassit Circle at one point.”

From Florida's "experiment in human sacrifice" (NYT ) to Cuomo's elevation to sainthood, the press has completely botched this pandemic and deliberately sowed panic.

(Photo: Associated Press)

From Florida to South Dakota to North Carolina to Texas, states that relaxed their shut-down orders were denounced and ridiculed by the media (that those states’ governors were all Republicans was surely merely coincidental to that press’s reaction), yet, now that the predicted death toll hasn’t appeared, that meme has disappeared down the memory hole, and now that the “flattening the curve” argument has proved unfounded, the media and its favorite governors have turned their attention to a new justification for continuing the lockdown, the impending “Second Wave”.

There was an early precursor to that hysterical, anti-Trump reporting: Remember the headlines when Trump predicted we’d see a far lower death rate that the WHO and Dr. Faluci were predicting? I do; the media doesn’t.

[B]ack in March, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate and Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 percent.

President Trump was skeptical of both those numbers, particularly the WHO’s estimate: “Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number,” Trump told Sean Hannity. “Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”

Now, this:

Several studies have suggested that Trump was right. But, now here’s what the CDC is saying about the fatality rate the coronavirus:

• 0-49 years old: .05%

• 50-64 years old: .2%

• 65+ years old: 1.3%

• Overall ages: .4%

According to the CDC’s current best estimate, the case fatality rate of the coronavirus is .4 percent. And that’s just amongst symptomatic cases, which, the CDC estimates, is 65 percent of all cases. This means the CDC estimates that the fatality rate for all infections across all age groups, symptomatic as well as asymptomatic, is approximately .26 percent.

Sales are taking off

38 Aiken Road

Too many for this lazy scribe to compile on a holiday Friday, but the past two days have seen a slew of sales, pendings and contracts, with many of the “pendings” going to that status within just a few days of initial listing. Others are much older listings that had been mellowing on the active list for months, even years, and have suddenly found buyers.

Mind you, the feeding frenzy hasn’t reached such a pitch yet that some house sellers aren’t still losing money. 38 Aiken Road, for instance, reported as pending, was asking $3.8 million; the owners paid $6.9 for it in 2002, and have been trying to sell it since 2015, when they began at $6.950. Still, at least their wait is finally over.

For what it’s worth, the same frenzy is happening in Maine. inventory down, average sale prices soaring. Pal Nancy put her condo up for sale today and her agent told her to expect it to have found a buyer by Sunday night. Who knows about Greenwich, but I wonder about the longevity of Maine’s buying splurge: the state’s unemployment rate jumped to 11% this month, worse since the Great Depression, and that’s not counting all the people who will never be hired this summer because of the total destruction of the tourism industry by the state’s governess. I think Nancy’s getting out at the peak.

The Warping of the American Mind

A friend of mine told me that reading a novel set during WW II he encountered the term “antipathy to communism” and while he thought he knew what that meant, decided to look it up to be sure. Rather than call me, he Googled it and then he called me. This is how Google explains the term. Presumably, like Google’s editors, today’s modern reader wouldn’t understand that there could be something like antipathy to communism.

Google

Let the Great Healing begin

Ralph Northam, future democrat Governor and savior of the negro race

Biden to young black man: “If you have a problem deciding whether you're for me or for Trump, you ain’t black".

Of course, there’s also this:

“But campaigning in Alabama in April [of 1987], Biden talked of his sympathy for the South; bragged of an award he had received from George Wallace in 1973 and said ‘we [Delawareans] were on the South’s side in the Civil War.”

Missing the locust parade? I am.

Yager does Dalio

Many of you reading this are probably not participating in the drive-by procession going on as I write, but I’m sure Greenwich Pravda’s Leslie Yager will be posting details and pictures soon (EOS refused to cover it for FWIW, darn her — she’s still recovering from the grief occasioned by her sale of Barbadeos, I think, and didn’t feel up to it). In the meantime, here’s what you’re missing:

MONEY BAGS AND BODY BAGS:  Car Caravan Protest Targets Greenwich and Westchester Billionaires to Demand Fair Taxes On Super-Rich to Fund “People’s Recovery” from COVID-19 Crisis. Over 100 cars from labor, community and resistance activists to converge on the home of the billionaires.

WHAT: On Thursday, May 21st, 1pm EST, a large-scale car caravan protest of union and community members will take over Greenwich CT and Chappaqua, NY stopping at the homes of some of region’s wealthiest residents, calling for billionaires and big corporations to pay their fair share of taxes during the COVID-19 crisis.

WHERE: The caravan will meet at the Greenwich train station at 1PM, and then will proceed to the homes of a handful of billionaires in Greenwich and Westchester County. 3PM at the Whole Foods in Chappaqua (480 N. Bedford Road)

Healthcare workers, teachers, and community leaders will speak about how the richest people in each state are getting richer from the COVID-19 pandemic while frontline workers face massive shortages of PPE and Connecticut and New York state governments face the threat of massive budget cuts and layoffs.

WHO: A coalition of unions and community groups from CT and NY, including SEIU 1199 New England, SEIU 32BJ, CT Working Families Party, Hedge Clippers, Prescription Addiction Intervention Now, Connecticut Education Association, UAW, Make the Road CT, Strong Economy for All Coalition, Center for Popular Democracy Action, Make Billionaires Pay, Irvington Activists.

One in twelve Connecticut nursing home residents have already died of COVID-19, as have one out of every 530 New York City residents.  Millions have lost jobs and income, while the net worth of many billionaires has soared. The protestors will drop body bags and money bags at the mansions of the ultrarich, with the message “money bags for the rich, body bags for the rest of us, with trash bags for frontline workers.”

The caravan will stop at the homes of some of the many billionaires and ultra-rich residents of Greenwich:

• Ray Dalio, net worth $18 billion, Bridgewater Associates: Richest man in Connecticut, got state government to subsidize his hedge fund

• Steven A. Cohen, net worth $13.9 billion, Point72 Asset Management, million-dollar Trump donor forced out of business on insider trading charges

• Cliff Asness, net worth $2.6 billion, AQR Capital: State-subsidized hedge fund billionaire lobbying for more hedge fund tax breaks

• Jonathan Sackler, Purdue Pharma, $14 billion family fortune:  Death-dealing opioid profiteer

• Edward P. Garden, Trian Partners:  Hedge fund manager exploiting farmworkers & fast-food workers

• Stephen Mandel, net worth $2.8 billion, Lone Pine Capital, Billionaire hedge fund manager pushing privatization of public schools

• Betsy McCaughey, Yankee Institute for Public Policy, Trump advisor & austerity propagandist who attacks the ACA

• Lucy Stitzer, net worth $1.5 billion, Waycross family fund for Cargill and MacMillan fortunes: Cargill destroys the environment and abuses workers

• Douglas T. Lake Jr., DC Capital Partners/Caliburn International, Trump-connected hedge fund that caged immigrant kids through Caliburn subsidiary

Somehow, I don’t think they’re going to make it past the gates of Conyers Farm to accost Cliff Asness, but I’d pay very good money to watch him in action if they do. Sic ‘em, Cliff.

April sales figures per GAR

They’re here!

May 21, 2020 (Greenwich, CT) - The Greenwich Association of REALTORS® announces the statistics for home sales in The Town of Greenwich, CT for the month of April 2020.

There were 34 single-family residential closings reported during this period according to figures provided by The Greenwich Multiple Listing Service, Inc., the multiple listing service used by REALTORS® in the Greenwich area.

The number of single-family residential closings decreased compared to April 2019 when there were 35 closings. The median sale price for a single-family home decreased to $1,733,500 from median sales price in April 2019, which was $2,304,000.

The average days on the market (DOM) for residential homes was 300 days; which was an increase from 194 days in April 2019.

There were 11 condo/co-op residential closings reported during this time period; which was a decrease from April 2019 when there were 17 closings. 

The median sale price for a condo/co-op increased to $940,000 from the median sales price in April 2019, which was $712,000. 

The average days on the market (DOM) for condo/co-op residential homes was 162; which was an increase from 143 days in April 2019. 

Pending sales as of 4:45pm Wednesday, May 20th for Single Family homes were 45 and 18 for Condo/Co-Op.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a heaven for?

15 Pilot Rock Lane, Riverside, is back with a new agent and a (slightly) new price: $4.699 million, instead of $4.750. Pilot’s in the Harbor Point Association, a nice neighborhood down at the foot of Indian Head, but the house is a 1960 obsolete relic, and the land, a generous 1.75 acres, is not waterfront.

These owners paid $3.4 for it in 2004 and, somewhat surprisingly, continued to live there rather than build new. Of course the house is perfectly livable, as is, and I’d certainly be happy to live there myself, but the usual course of business in Greenwich when a property’s value is entirely comprised of the land is to build new. Hence my surprise.

In any event, they decided to move and in September 2017 put it on the market at $10.250 million. Pricing decisions like this offer a persuasive argument against the legalization of marijuana.

That price has dropped over the ensuing three years and is now, perhaps, approaching reality. That still seems steep for water glimpses, but as noted, Harbor Point’s a nice place.

If the lockdown’s ever lifted, you could open a diner

And just in time to enjoy the three-day weekend ....

78 Pastures Lane in New Canaan couldn’t find a buyer at $5.6 million from May 2019 until it was pulled from the market in December, but it was re-listed as a summer rental for $40,000 per month two days ago; the owners got $50,000.

It has 10,000 sq. ft. of living quarters, eight acres, a pool, and a tennis court or, as the listing says, “room for everyone to have fun and be safe!” Magic words these days.

Pre-holiday activity

99 Porchuck Road, $1.595 million, has a contract. This new construction has been discussed before. Started at $2.095 in March 2019. It sits on what I’d consider a challenging lot — hills and wetlands — in an inconvenient location, but it is new construction, and that holds an appeal to many buyers.

43 Mianus View

Also under contract is 43 Mianus View in Cos Cob, new from the foundation up, asking $1.875 million since December. Meh. Not bad, not a breathtaking bargain, either.

18 Baldwin farms S., under contract since April, has closed at $2.360 million. Last asking price was $2.697, it started in June 2019 at $2.899.