More on 25 Beechcroft
Peter Janis, listing agent for this house, is miffed hopping mad. He called today to point out that I haven't been in the house to appreciate its quality and that, in his opinion, the price of this house has nothing to do with "the numbers". With deference to Peter, whom I like and know to be a good, knowledgeable agent, I think numbers do control for at least two reasons. First is the affect a sale across the street for $6.2 has on a house going for $7.950. The lower priced house may indeed be, as someone described it, "a total fiasco" but what does the buyer know? Two 9,000 sq. ft houses, both brand new, one on a pond and the other across the street from it, how much does a little body of water add in value? I suspect that the answer is, "not $1,750,000". One can point out all the special features in a house, its superb quality and its great flow, all for naught. At least in my experience, the buyer will still ask, "so why would I pay that much more? They both have plasma TVs in the master bedroom, right?"

The second reason numbers count is that bank appraisers count them. These guys can't get into the houses they base their comps on so they mostly ignore special details built into the house they're examining. Does #16's construction match that of #25? They don't know, so they don't care. They look for the most recent sale in the neighborhood, calculate its square footage and age, toss a little pixie dust into the air and presto! They have a value. In this case, the appraiser need merely look across the street to see a house the same size and age of the subject property and, when he learns that it sold just last week for $6.2 million, he's going to be inclined to value the house he's appraising at close to the same price. Or so I think. I'm wrong on all sorts of things (like how to spell Patrick Daniel Moynihan) and I could be all wet on this one. I don't want to see Peter or his listing encounter difficulty; I pointed out the two houses merely to illustrate what I fear will become the dreaded domino effect in Greenwich housing, as more spec builders dump their projects for whatever they can get.