200 Cognewaugh
Ed Mortimer’s new listing is pretty impressive, to my eye. Anyone who traveled this road over the past year must have marveled at the huge quarrying going on as the builder prepared the site (and its neighbors all wrote to me; they weren’t as impressed). But the work’s done now and a beautiful house sits on a beautiful, flat lawn of two acres. I realize it sounds silly to say so but I was struck by how much house this is for “only” $5,000,000. I’ve seen comparable construction in other locations asking more than $6,000,000. Cognewaugh is not my favorite road in town; a bad place to forget a pint of cream for the morning coffee, but 200 is close to its Valley Road terminus and that mitigates things. By the way, while I’m not wild about the street itself I do love the sign someone with a sense of humor in the traffic department has posted near its end: “Caution, Winding Road”. If you’ve made it down far enough to read the sign, you’ll have figured that out by yourself.
Over reaching a remodeling permit
The old trick to get around the requirements of a new building permit was to apply for just a remodeling, take everything down except one wall and then, when no one was looking, knock that down too. The town’s cracked down on this recently, which is a good thing, but the stricter enforcement has caught up some innocent folks, too. Well, if not “innocent”, then people acting in good faith. What happens is that you start out with the intention of remodeling but, as I can attest from my own projects, you never know exactly what you’ll find behind walls until you open them up. When you do, and discover, say, extensive termite damage, then one wall has to go, then another and so forth, all while your contractor is saying, “you know, it’d be a lot cheaper just to knock down this part and build new.” Before you know it you’ve exceeded the limits of your permit and Jim Mahoney, our zoning enforcement officer, has stuck a bright red “stop work order” on your project. Your subs all disappear to work other jobs, you miss the summer building season and you’re stuck in bureaucratic hell. That’s bad. My advice is be aware, and wary, of how much of the house is coming down and try to keep Mr. Mahoney abreast of your doings. He’s a pretty reasonably guy, in my experience, and if you look like you’re acting in good faith, rather than trying to evade the rules, I’m sure he’ll work with you.
Get Our Attention
As the fall selling season slips away (only six more weekends before Thanksgiving!) sellers are taking price reductions in the hope of not having to wait for Spring to unload. Good idea, but don’t nibble: a $2,000,000 drop from $18,995,000 is a good start; $250,000 from a price of $7,500,000 is just silly. If that’s all you’re willing to drop it you’d be better off putting the money in the house – updated bathrooms, perhaps, or new kitchen counters. Of course, if your house isn’t going to fetch what you’re asking for it then you’re running the risk of just sinking in more bucks that can’t be recaptured but hey – you probably knew that when you over-priced it in the first place.

Flowers for Ferdinand
Or for Old Greenwich merchants at least, courtesy of Scott Frantz. Two days after the President left town Mr. Frantz delivered very nice bouquets and a polite note of apology to every retail establishment, including our Raveis office, that had been inconvenienced by the loss of parking. These weren’t the $10 bunch of roses you pick up at the gas station to make up for abandoning your wife while you played golf, either. Regardless of your feelings towards President Bush, Mr. Frantz is indisputably a class act.