Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
16 John Street
16 John Street has closed at $3.050 on a final asking price of $3.495 million. It was asking $6 million in 2012, but that was a stupid price.
A nice, 1932 house badly in need of updating, I suspect its beautiful 7.5 acre yard was the real attraction here. Will the house see 2022? Probably not.
And ditch the flags, W.B., they’re triggering
The Dixie Chicks, a trio that disappeared from the airwaves and record stores in 2003 without anyone noticing or caring, is back with a new record and a new name: The Chicks. No more reference to the Mason-Dixon line because like, George Floyd, ya know?
The world stands in awe.
Tent City, Old Greenwich
Not the Babylon Bee, but check back tomorrow
White neighbor of Minneapolis park refuse to call cops on homeless encampment
A Minneapolis neighborhood has been overrun by a homeless encampment that’s grown to as many as 300 people — amid an agreement among progressive white residents to not call the police, according to a new report.
The tent city has popped up in a park in Powderhorn Park — a diverse community of about 9,000 that’s blocks away from where George Floyd was killed last month.
In light of Floyd’s police-involved death, residents there have vowed to avoid calling the cops, feeling that doing so could put people of color in danger. But now with hundreds of outsiders flooding the park — drawing in more car traffic, including drug dealers, and resulting in at least two overdoses — the neighbors are facing a moral dilemma.
“I am afraid,” one of the residents, Shari Albers, told the New York Times. “I know my neighbors are around, but I’m not feeling grounded in my city at all. Anything could happen.”
… Carrie Nightshade was among a group of white women who promised to ignore any property damage, including to their own homes, and filed for a block party permit to limit cars in the neighborhood. The women also agreed to call the American Indian Movement, a group formed in Minneapolis in 1968 to address police brutality, instead of law enforcement if they witnessed physical violence.
But now, she feels uneasy about letting her two kids, ages 9 and 12, play alone in the park.
“I’m not being judgmental,” Nightshade said [while being judgmental]. “It’s not personal. It’s just not safe.”
Mitchell Erickson resorted to calling police last week when he was cornered outside his home by two youths, one of whom pointed a gun at his chest while demanding his car keys. After he unwittingly handed over a set of house keys, the boys became frustrated, then fled. They stole a different car down the street.
Initially, Erickson, who lives a block from the park, told the Times that dialing 911 was the right thing to do. But a couple days later, he regretted it.
“Been thinking more about it,” he texted the Times. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.
Asked about his life being put in danger, Erickson added, “Yeah I know and yeah it was scary but the cops didn’t really have much to add after I called them. I haven’t been forced to think like this before. So I would have lost my car. So what? At least no one would have been killed.”
Meanwhile, Albers’ daughter, Tobie Miller, said she doesn’t blame the illegal activity in the park on the displaced residents.
“My feeling around it is those are symptoms of systemic oppression,” said Miller, 34, who recently took a class on racial biases. “And that’s not on them.”
Reached for comment on Martha’s Vineyard where she has been quarantining with friend the pst four months, Greenwich State Senator Qlex Whateverhernameisnow told FWIW she was of two minds on whether to open a similar encampment for Stamford kindaresidents in our own parks: “I certainly don’t want to be judgmental or make this personal”, she said while clutching her pearls, “but some of our parks, like Binney, just can’t be expected to handle a large crowd of friends we just haven’t met yet. Perhaps the clambake area at Greenwich Point would be better, or the Babcock Property. I’ve never been up there, but I understand there’s lots of room for these sorts of people. And I’m told that Cos Cob folk are already using the place, so what, at this point, difference will it make?’
I was speaking with an air conditioner repairman yesterday, a 5th generation Cos Cobber Democrat, when he spotted a Trump mask and questioned me on it. “Yeah, we’re a Trump family here”, I told him (on behalf of Gideon and Susie, who were out actually working.) The repairman paused and then said, “you know, I’m beginning to see his point about all this. These people running around pulling down statues, for what? I think he’s right.” Is that enough for him to vote for Trump, or at least stay home next November? Probably not, and I didn’t ask him, but it’s a hopeful sign that our progressives are doing for us what we seemingly can’t do for ourselves. So keep it up, boys and girls, and let it burn.
Christina Sommers✔@CHSommers points out,
The DC monument the mob intends to destroy was paid for by donations from emancipated African-Americans in 1876. Frederick Douglass spoke at the unveiling. In 1974, it was rotated to face a memorial honoring celebrated black educator Mary McLeod Bethune.
FWIW commentator and pet trust fund baby Blue Leader has announced that he’s flying down to D.C. on Tulip’s private jet to help out.
“They need us there”, he told FWIW. “We’re providing the heavy thinking for them until they can finally throw off the yoke of oppression and think for themselves. For instance, I’m going to point out to them that there was never a true emancipation, so any statue that suggests otherwise is a fraud upon history — our coloreds don’t necessarily understand that; it’s a little too subtle.
“And that’s why it took whites to lead the charge against that statue of Heg, up in Madison the other night — yeah, they say he was an anti-slavery abolitionist and fought slave catchers, but after he was killed at Chickamauga, they put up a memorial to him to convince the blacks that he was some kind of hero, and not just another friggin’ racist like the rest of us. By speaking truth to power, we opened our friends’ eyes, really set them free, for which we expect no thanks, just the reward of knowing we did a brave thing.
“Look, I know that I’m guilty myself, that I’m the product of white privilege, but I can put that privilege to use and atone. My racist parents sent me to Yale, and though I majored in modern dance, I minored in psych and poly-sci, so I know things and can think deep thoughts, so I can teach these people, explain to them how they should feel and act. Then I’m outta here, dude, promise. Maybe to Jackson Hole, or Aspen, but somewhere I can avoid tainting and corrupting my darker brothers.”
Of course, there’s this take, but it comes from an African-American and so can be dismissed.
Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and the first black billionaire, mocked Cancel Culture and the “borderline anarchists” who topple statues and monuments, claiming that black people “laugh” at the white people engaging in such violence. Even when white liberals topple a Confederate statue, Johnson insisted, “black people don’t give a damn.”
“Look, the people who are basically tearing down statues, trying to make a statement are basically borderline anarchists, the way I look at it,” Johnson told Fox News on Wednesday. “They really have no agenda other than the idea we’re going to topple a statue.”
The first black billionaire, who has called for $14 trillion in reparations payments to descendants of slavery, argued that vandalism and attacks on statues do not help the black community.
“It’s not going to give a kid whose parents can’t afford college money to go to college. It’s not going to close the labor gap between what white workers are paid and what black workers are paid. And it’s not going to take people off welfare or food stamps,” Johnson insisted.
He insisted that the rioters tearing down statues “have the mistaken assumption that black people are sitting around cheering for them saying, ‘Oh, my God, look at these white people. They’re doing something so important to us. They’re taking down the statue of a Civil War general who fought for the South.'”
“You know, black people, in my opinion, black people laugh at white people who do this the same way we laugh at white people who say we got to take off the TV shows,” Johnson added. He said these attempts to purge American culture of supposedly offensive monuments and media are “tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on a racial Titanic.”
“It absolutely means nothing,” the BET founder insisted.
“White Americans seem to think that if they just do sort of emotionally or drastic things that black people are going to say, ‘Oh my God, white people love us because they took down a statue of Stonewall Jackson.’ Frankly, black people don’t give a damn,” he quipped.
*(A brief Wikipedia bio of Norwegian immigrant Hans Christian Heg, dead at 34, can be found here. Interesting man)
55 Mooreland Road
So I spent yesterday in Greenwich, meeting with clients but also speaking with four agents who have extensive knowledge of current market conditions, and if their observations can be condensed in one sentence, it’s this: the boom(let?) is seeing old, stale listing finally move off the inventory list, and sales are brisk, but almost everyone who bought in the past ten years is still going to be left underwater after completing a sale at today’s prices.
“Almost everybody” is not “everybody”, of course, but there’s an irrational exuberance out there that is doomed to disappoint. Take this example, from a Westport agent quoted in that article on the new wave of New Yorkers flooding Fairfield County that I linked to Tuesday:
“I’m putting a property on the market this coming week in Southport,” Oshrin said. “And I said to myself, this is the one time my seller is going to get a chance to try his magic number.”
The consensus of all the agents I spoke with yesterday was that this fellow is a fool, and he and his client are going to be sadly wiser a year from now. Of course, he’s not alone: the Greenwich market also has owners who, inspired by the market rebound, are putting their own house up for sale and are pricing them as though we’re back to the fevered market of 2000-2007. We aren’t. Most of the more expensive sales we’re seeing, even though they’re in the multiple-million range and look expensive, represent a substantial loss. Yes, a $6 million sale is impressive, but if the owner paid $9 million for it in 2004, it’s still got to sting.
Here’s an example of a sale that illustrates what’s going on so far as recouping sunken cost:
55 Mooreland Road, currently priced at $5.250 million, is reported under contract. It started at $6.250 million 359 days ago, at $6.2 million, so indeed, old inventory is being cleared out.
The sale history of this property also illustrates another point. It sold for $5.6 million in 2003, when it was hugely dated and needed extensive renovation. That work wasn’t done, and when the buyers put it back up for sale in 2005 at $5.905 in 2005 they had to wait until 2007 before the current owners showed up and paid them $4.880. The house is beautiful now, and clearly the owners spent a lot of money to make it so. How much, I don’t know, but a sale of, say, $5 million isn’t going to come close to making them whole. But at least it’s finally selling, and they can thank Kung Flu for that.
On a brighter note, I showed a house yesterday (whose address I won’t share because I’d like to sell it) that is priced $300,000 less than what the owners paid for it when it was new in 1999. You’d expect some depreciation during that time, of course, but the owners have obviously maintained it meticulously over the past 20 years and made some substantial improvements, and it’s not surprising that the town appraises it at $1.5 million more than is being asked. A very good agent came up with the asking price and a wise client listened, and I expect this house to be gone shortly. So the lesson today is what I’ve always preached: price it, sell it.
Just don’t believe an agent who tells you that this is finally the time to “try your magic number”. If you do believe him and follow his advice then you deserve each other, and I’ll see yiou next year.
Surprise!
Michelle is coming.
First: Biden is senile, and when he is finally forced into the sunlight and forced to speak (his party has foolishly agreed to three debates), the public is going to panic. And what then? Too late to get rid of him as the top of the ticket, so there had better be a wildly popular VP candidate as backstop. Assuming he fulfills his pledge, Biden will have selected an uninspiring black woman of little accomplishment as his running mate, and the party will panic. Too late to dump him, but they can always toss the VP overboad and bring on someone else. And they will.
“I bet our numbers come up, because nobody liked Hillary Clinton, but I don’t think they come up much. And I know they don’t get back to those record numbers from Obama,” Griffith said of Black voter turnout. “We look at Joe Biden and see more of the same. It’s about the era he came up. It’s about his identity—he’s a rich, old white man. What are his credentials to us, other than Obama picking him? It’s nice that he worked with Obama. But let’s keep it real: That was a political calculation. Obama thought he needed a white man to get elected, just like Biden thinks he needs a Black woman to get elected. We can see through that.”
The exception?
“If he puts Michelle on the ticket, everybody turns out.”
As will every single one of the white ladies who protest.
“It’s gotta be the Babylon Bee, right?”
Dead Spin: Masters Golf Tournament must change its name
The name “The Masters” must go.
The heralded golf tournament, one of the four majors, needs to go back to its original name — the Augusta National Invitational. It became the Masters in 1939.
Tiger Woods, other big-time golfers and corporate sponsorships should demand it. In the current climate, with all the sweeping changes, it’s only right and just. Best of all, in this case, it’s a simple and smooth fix.
The Masters never felt good or even sounded good when you said it.
….
Augusta National was built on grounds that were once a slave plantation and was the property of a slave owner. And according to a 2019 New Yorker pieceabout the course, it’s believed that enslaved Blacks were housed on the property.
And be honest. When you hear anyone say the Masters, you think of slave masters in the South. There’s nothing else, nothing special. You don’t think of someone mastering the game of golf. When has anyone mastered golf?
…
Even at dictionary.com, one of the definitions you get for “master” is “owner of a slave.”
It’s a dark reminder of America’s ugly past.
Would a warning to a white power group also be treated as “a threat to an identifiable group”?
Waiting for fans in East Hartford
UCONN dropping swimming as a sport, still looking at $10 million deficit in its athletic programs. Here’s what to do: eliminate football entirely. The team is lousy, students don’t attend its games, its huge stadium in East Hartford sits empty, and the program generates $3.3 million in revenue while racking up $16.6 million in expenses. And that’s not including various other costs, like the $3 million a year being spent towards the $17 million fee for joining the Big East conference.
Intramural sports are just fine: ask “Toys for Tots” Dick Blumenthal, who turned his stint on a Harvard dorm’s intramural swim team into a claim of being a member of that school’s varsity. No more truthful than his boast of serving in Vietnam, but so what? It worked.
Go east, young man
Of those, 5,000 were changed to Fairfield County, compared to 765 in all of 2019.
The numbers don’t necessarily reflect new home-buyers coming into the state and include both individuals and entire family units. Short- or long-term renters, or those who own multiple properties and are shifting their primary residence, may also request a change in address.
However, the data indicates the people were planning to stay in Connecticut for at least a little while, since these were requests for address changes and not just those looking to have their mail temporarily forwarded.
According to Paul Breunich, president and CEO of William Pitt and Julia B. Fee Sotheby’s International Realty, an independent analysis conducted by his brokerage of New York City buyers confirms trends evident in the USPS data.
Since mid-April, 33 percent of buyers in Fairfield County, 31 percent in Litchfield County and 9 percent on the Shoreline have come from New York City, the analysis found.
“I’ve been in business for 30 years — this is a market that I have never seen before from a demand standpoint,” Breunich said. “We have our normal demand, but then we’ve got an unforeseen demand coming from New York City. Our opinion is it’s a direct result of the pandemic and also the social unrest that’s been going on.”
The sudden interest has sent ripples through the market, several brokers said.
“We were low on inventory anyway — now we’re really low,” said Tammy Felenstein, a real estate agent with Halstead in Stamford and first vice president of the Connecticut Association of Realtors. “Stamford is down nearly half of where we’d normally be. Every town is down about 30 to 50 percent of its inventory. And houses coming on the market have multiple offers.”
According to Felenstein, those departing New York cover several demographic groups — though she’s seen a large number of families. Certain locales, she said, appeared more popular, at least until recently.
“Honestly, Stamford probably is not having quite as good of a reaction, because back in April, it was a hot spot for the coronavirus,” Felenstein said. “So I think people coming from Manhattan, especially affluent people, were looking to go to more tony towns — like Darien and New Canaan.”
But has the wave crested? Or will it continue to rise?
“That’s the crystal ball question,” Breunich said. “My opinion is that it’s here to last for the foreseeable future.”
That’s the conundrum all of us face in advising our clients: is this a long term phenomenon or an ephemeral burst one would be foolish to buy into? We’re six months into the WuHan Flu and still have no clear idea of what’s happening or what is likely to happen, so I don’t believe we can offer our clients even an informed opinion, just a shrug of the shoulders, a guess, and a prayer.
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