I've given up being surprised by selling prices in this market

106 Lockwood Speedway was listed in May at what once would have seemed an astonishing price, $4.695 million, a bidding war erupted, and it closed today at $5,302,000. These sellers paid $3,762,500 for the place in August of ‘21, so I imagine they were pleased with this result.

Right down the street, 86 Lockwood sold for $6.150 in July, so I suppose this is the new benchmark for relatively new houses (106 in 2016, 86 in 2011 ) here, but, gee, Lockwood?

Details don't matter, feelings do!

I’d say the WaPo has the Democrat’s strategy pretty well down, and why not? They just transcribe what their masters tell them.

Kamala Harris, amid a furious battle for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, embraced a ban on fracking and offshore drilling. She supported Medicare-for-all. At one point, she advocated abolishing private health insurance. And she signaled an openness to a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Now, the vice president’s campaign says she would not pursue the fracking and offshore drilling ban — it’s a highly unpopular position in states like Pennsylvania where natural gas drives the economy — if she becomes president. She does not support a single-payer health-care system, instead focusing on what she and President Joe Biden call “corporate price-gouging” by pharmaceutical companies. And she is taking a much harder line on illegal immigration, arguing that Republicans are to blame for blocking a tough border-control measure this year.

Since Harris catapulted to the top of the Democratic ticket less than a month ago, she has been forced to reiterate that she rejects a wide array of positions she embraced five years ago, a dynamic likely to become even more evident as she rolls out pillars of her agenda in coming days. On Friday in North Carolina, she is set to outline her economic plan, which is expected to largely mirror Biden’s efforts to lower costs for middle-class families, including by curtailing late fees, hidden costs and junk fees. But Harris’s aides stress that she will roll out myriad policies that are unique to her.

In 2019, Harris articulated a series of liberal positions as she sought to distinguish herself among a crowded group of Democratic contenders, many of them tacking to the left to court voters in the primaries. Now her singular focus is taking on Republican nominee Donald Trump, with a big emphasis on winning over swing voters.

But Harris’s critics say her dramatic shifts on so many issues point to a deeper issue — that Harris has few core political beliefs and only a vague governing philosophy. That lack of a clear political identity, Republicans contend, gives them an opening to frame her image for voters.

“It’s clear the Kamala Harris who wanted to ban fracking, who supported Medicare-for-all … couldn’t win Pennsylvania or a single swing state,” said Corry Bliss, a Republican campaign consultant. “The average voter does not have a well-defined vision of her, so we have a great opportunity to define her simply on her record.”

John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who worked for Biden, said a broad message is far more important than gritty policy details.

“What is driving the contrast is Harris talks about that she’s going to be for everyone and for the middle class, while Trump is going to be for himself and corporations,” Anzalone said. “That’s the big umbrella message, and all the policies are underneath it.”

I share her despair

PJ Media’s Athena Thorne asks a question that probably must be answered in the negative

Is It Even Possible to Overcome the Left's Grip on Information Anymore?

I don't want to face it any more than you do, but the fact is that the Left has a near-total grip on the information most Americans receive.

This had been the case before the onset of the internet age, of course, but the country still had a fairly homogenous culture back then, so globalist, Christophobic anti-Americanism repulsed most people. Then came Fox News and the Drudge Report, and suddenly, people's eyes were opened to the extent of the media's bias. A brief golden age of equal media representation ensued, and it was no coincidence that we enjoyed eight years of Republican leadership under President George W. Bush and a Republican-led Congress.

But Big Left has marched through the new institutions as relentlessly as it did the old. Fox News is now compromised, and Big Tech is thoroughly infiltrated. Staffed by leftist intel assets who job-hop back and forth from government positions, social media platforms suppress anything unfavorable to their party — even if it's true — while boosting positive news — even when it's inaccurate.

The extent of the Left's control of information was driven home during the 2020 campaign season. Two things happened that year that made it impossible to ignore what we are up against any longer: the Laptop From Hell and the Basement Campaign.

Never forget what they did with the Hunter Biden Laptop From Hell story. This was arguably the greatest October Surprise in history — a presidential candidate’s son was so drug-addled that he literally handed his opponents a laptop full of tawdry photographic, email, text message, and video evidence of significant criminal behavior that ran the gamut from trafficking prostitutes to drug and gun crimes to tax evasion to FARA violations — all the way up to likely bribery of the number two guy in the White House.

And the Left disappeared it.

I remember a few months after the election, I asked a liberal friend if she had even heard of Hunter's laptop before the election, and she said she had not. "And I also heard it was fake," she sneered.

If the Left was able to suppress something that breathtaking (and juicy), then what chance do we have to get any information about their current candidates into public awareness?

Then there was Democrat candidate Joe Biden's Basement Campaign, so-called because Biden's handlers effectively hid him in a basement and didn't let him embarrass or weaken himself with public appearances. They were aided in this endeavor by the compliant media, which never called them out on it. It just went along with the campaign's COVID excuse — but also didn't even insist on a video interview. In the absence of major public stumbles or tough questioning, Biden appeared to the unquestioning public as the seasoned, steady statesman the Left said he was.

And my friends, it worked. They won. 

Now, the campaign has swapped in Vice President Kamala Harris, and she is running a basement campaign of her own. She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. "Tampon Tim" Walz, stump at meticulously controlled rallies and private fundraisers — and that's pretty much it. They don't do interviews. They don't take questions. They respond to any criticism that may have found its way into public view with glib replies at their own events, which the media will accept and move on from.

"Kamala Harris seems to be doing everything she can to avoid answering reporters' questions," Nick Arama writes at our sister site, RedState. "She hasn't done an interview since she was handed the Democratic nomination for president without one vote of the people. She's put off the media, saying, well, maybe she'll do an interview by the end of the month. She doesn't even have any policies on her website. That makes it easier for her just to say whatever she thinks will be most appealing to whatever audience she's talking to, so she can be all things to all people, even if those things contradict each other."

….

Finally, we can't force people to see something they don't want to know. Liberals want their version of reality to be true and are wholly uninterested in hearing anything to the contrary. Meanwhile, normies and low-information voters don't even know what they don't know, so they don't realize that there is an alternative to what they have been told, let alone where to go to seek it out.

The Left's control of the flow of information is the most vein-poppingly frustrating thing we are up against. It is near-total, it is devastatingly effective, and it has only grown stronger since the last election. 

Just wait until Kampallawalla announces her plan to impose price controls on food tomorrow: the flying monkeys will be gibbering and dancing and flinging clumps of approval at her podium. “Brilliant!” “Such breathtaking genius!” “Courageous!” “Sure to work, this time.”

Too bad there’s no flying monkey willing to bring this up and give her the opportunity to tell how her memory has “evolved”

April 25, 2021

And now ….

THIS PARADE BROUGHT TO YOU BY BIDEN-HARRIS: Taliban parade US military vehicles, weapons to celebrate 3 years in power, AP reports.

Members of the Taliban on Wednesday celebrated three years since their return to power with a display at a former U.S. air base, according to the Associated Press.

Images circulating social media show uniformed troops flying helicopters and parading a convoy of armored trucks through what was once the Bagram Airfield. The hardware had reportedly been left abandoned since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021

North Street sale

As predicted here, back when it was reported pending in June, 822 North Street has not only managed to struggle back to its original 2002 sale price of $7.590 (the builder had started at $9.250), it’s exceeded it. Listed this time at $7.495 million, it has sold today for $8. These owners paid just $4.480 for the place in 2017, so they’ve made out well; other owners have not been as successful.

No surprise, as the increase in home sizes and prices has made obvious

old greenwich, 2013

Old Greenwich's median income changed significantly between 2013 and 2021

The average income in Old Greenwich in 2013, according to the IRS, was $515,838. Eight years later, that rose by 74 percent to $898,202. Compared with other areas of Greenwich, Old Greenwich had the largest income change between those years. 

The next two neighborhoods with the higest median income increase were Riverside with 68 percent and the backcountry with 66 percent. The lowest, in compartison, was the 06830 zip code, comprised of the midcountry, downtown and over into Byram. It saw an increase of only 37 percent. 

With wealth on the rise, the town has changed what it offers, merchants say.

"Ten, 15, 20 years ago, sure, maybe you needed a shoe repair shop or more hair salons or nail salons," said Richard Fulton, owner of Chilly Bear and an Old Greenwich Merchants Association board member.

Nowadays, he said, "less true retail and more services" are popping up around Old Greenwich, partially a result of the internet creating convenient ways for people to shop for clothes and other items. But, he said, it also is due to what residents want from their hometown: "More higher-end dining and yoga studios and exercise and workout."

"The butcher, baker, candlestick makers are going away and it's services that are coming along. So it's interesting, but that's what that affluence wants and that's what they're going to get," he said.

Hooligans & Lawyers chief whip-wielder David Huffinpuffer weighs in:

"Since you're coming out of New York, which is frequently where many of our buyers are coming from, they're looking for some sort of proximity to something, whether it's school or walkability to a coffee shop or whatever it might be, which is typically one of the many reasons why people might land in Old Greenwich as the first landing spot when they get here," he said. The "method by which buyers come to Greenwich or Old Greenwich has remained the same despite the ebb and flow of wealth generation."

However, the average price of a home definitely changed from 2013 to 2021. 

Haffenreffer said the average price of an Old Greenwich home as of Dec. 31, 2013, was $1,753,566. In 2021, it was $2,624,038. 

I’ve lived in a couple of small, dying towns over the years, and given the choice between vibrant growth and slow deterioration, growth is better; even if I don’t personally welcome it (or any change at all, damn it, harumph harumph).

Mid-Country sale price reported

32 Pheasant Lane, listed July 19th @ $3.895 million, reported pending in 7 days (the usual time it takes to draw up contracts, so assume it went the day or the day after it was listed), and closed today at $4 million. The house was built in 1952 and the listing shows the last renovation completed in 1991, but it looks perfectly livable to me, and Pheasant Lane is a great location, so I’m not surprised it attracted multiple bidders.

Then again, given the market these days, it may have been snapped up a builder, rather than an end user with renovation on his mind; we’ll see.