Still in the winter doldrums
Not a heck of a lot going on this week in our real estate market, but that means no catastrophes, either. Decent houses are selling for good prices, badly-priced houses are languishing. Same old story – I wouldn’t panic and sell the homestead for pennies just yet.

Greenwich Builders
One problem in writing this column is that, to be objective, I rarely mention my own listings or clients’ projects. When I praise a competitor of a client, therefore, I tend to get heated phone calls, usually late at night. One guy who refrained from that conduct but who nonetheless deserves some credit here is my client Louis Van Leeuwen, of Greenwich Construction (323-3107). Lou’s a Riverside resident who’s been building quality homes here for a long time (I’ve sold a couple of them, and been paid well for that service, just so you know). When, while talking to a prospective buyer of one of those houses, I mentioned that Lou lived just around the corner and always held himself available to correct any problems, the buyer, from California, mentioned that in his home state, by the time you moved into new construction, the builder was 200 miles up the coast and no longer reachable. That potential buyer turned into a satisfied customer, as is right. The highest praise I can give Lou is that several buyers of his spec houses live in them for a few years and then hire him to build them a larger custom house. That’s a nice testimony. Are there other local builders with the same reputation? Of course, and I try to mention them here, on a regular basis, regardless of whether I work with them or not. My advice, though, is to take advantage of the fact that so many of our top builders live in, or near, Greenwich. We’re blessed that we can hire locally and use people who live and die on their reputation. No house is ever perfect at its moment of creation, but it should be comforting to know that you can rely on the fellow around the corner to make things right, rather than pursuer some corporate flunky five states away.

Stanwich School
I have no dog in this fight – my kids are in college and all are graduates of the public school system-but I think the opponents of Stanwich’s expansion proposal are making a serious mistake. There’s a huge demand for private school education among people moving to town and, to the extent we can offer that, our property values rise accordingly. The alternative for this project, 30-40 new MacMansions, will impact the neighborhood even more severely and do nothing to help prices. None of us like change, and so the resistance to it is understandable but change is inevitable and a larger Stanwich School seems, to me, to be far preferable to a huge new subdivision. Get over it.

More Change
The Cos Cob FoodMart switching to a CVS. Who the heck thinks the addition of yet another drug store will be an improvement over a local food store? But the Poricellis’ customers have spoken; they prefer the wider variety and lower prices at the larger supermarkets in town and have made this operation a losing proposition. I find it ironic that Greenwich, which has been blessed above all other towns by capitalism and free markets, tries to mess with that system as much as any other town by restricting what people can do with their property. If there are too many banks coming into town, shouldn’t we trust that the marketplace will cure that? If we don’t need another chain store druggist, surely that will be self-correcting within a few years. In the meantime, there’s no law (yet, thank God) that says the Poricelli family has to go bankrupt to meet the demands of a dwindling few disgruntled would-be customers. I say this with sadness – I like the FoodMart and I’m fully aware of all the good that it’s brought to town. When I was running various non-profit activities, I could always count on generous contributions from the two stores, but again, if we aren’t willing to support them commercially, we have no right to demand that they stay in business for our benefit.