Price it, Sell It
For all the doom and gloom expressed over the current state of the market, houses that are priced right are still selling. My fellow office-mates, Bari Taylor and Dee Webber, listed 2 Lakewood Circle South for $4,500,000 on a Friday, showed it Saturday, had an agreed on price Sunday morning and it’s now under contract. So there are buyers out there, and they are buying, at the right price. This was obviously one such price.

The End of Lawns as We Know Them?
I read an interesting article in the Times last week about Scott’s new product, a genetically engineered grass that doesn’t need mowing, pesticide, fertilizer or (much) water. Environmentalists are generally supportive but worried about an “Ice-Nine” effect if the grass’s spores invade the world. Assuming that issue is addressed, this sounds like a nifty product, but bad news for the lawn care industry. Heck, between global warming ending snowstorms and now no more mowing, what are these guys going to do for three quarters of the year?

Building the Old Fashioned Way
Fine Homebuilding’s annual “House” issue contains a provocative essay from a builder who thinks the conventional method of building frame houses is out-dated, inefficient, unduly expensive and just plain wrong. He makes some good points. These days, a builder is more construction manager than craftsman, over-seeing as many as twenty different subcontracting teams, of varying skill, training and criminal backgrounds, all of whom show up and leave when they want to and often fail to arrive at all. One study in Arizona concluded that anywhere between 25% and 45% of the total time of construction of new homes is spent with absolutely nothing going on. That’s a lot of money to pay for carrying costs. Another point: the author, a builder for thirty-five years, confesses that it’s hard to do your best work when your fingertips are numb and you’re standing in five inches of semi-frozen mud. And so he advocates more factory-built components and less on-site creation, which he quotes an M.I.T. professor as saying “makes about as much sense as assembling a car in your driveway.” Commercial construction has already moved in this direction, with a buildings skin, structure and mechanicals built as three separate components. Anyone who has ever carefully framed a house and then watched as the plumbers and electricians cut it merrily apart to accommodate their product will appreciate the merits of a new approach. You can read more at the builder’s website, bensonwood.com.

Gas Prices
Okay, I realize this is a real estate column but as a real estate agent I do an awful lot of driving and $3.00 gas is a real annoyance (although I am glad I drive a Honda Accord and not an Escalade). Far more annoying than the price of gas, however, are the howls from politicians that this is all George Bush’s fault – there’s plenty of blame go around: who dreamed up mandating 55 different blends for different areas of the country, thus fragmenting our national distribution system? Who decided to dictate the use of ethanol, which, many experts say (it’s debatable) consumes more energy to produce than it yields and definitely adds additional cost? Who has stopped new, efficient power plants, natural gas pipelines, LNG terminals, the Long Island Sound power cable, offshore drilling, onshore drilling, arctic drilling, and on and on and on? In fact, we all did and if the trade off we chose was higher prices - the only thing, government subsidy and mandate fans notwithstanding, that will force conservation and make alternative energy sources economical – in favor of NIMBYism and Iowa primary politics then so be it. But let’s stop the whinging, eh? It doesn’t produce a single drop of gasoline. Repeat after me: demand (world-wide, see China) is up; supply is down – price goes higher, all over the globe. Even the dumbest, most cynical politician knows this in his heart, but demagoguery is such fun they can’t resist its allure.

Trees
And while I’m annoying my tree hugger readers, may I say a word against the latest proposal working its way through town, an ordinance granting third parties the right to bar tree cutting on private property? I like trees (almost) as much as the next guy, and massive clear-cuts like that which occurred on Langhorne Lane last year appall me, but we are already so over-regulated in town that the thought of yet another board is, in my opinion, nuts.