A readers asks,

I would be curious to know what % of Greenwich houses are bought with a mortgage. Because if it's, say, 70% are bought with borrowing, then that is 70% of the market that no longer can get get funds to buy a house at a low enough rate to make it work for them.

I called Anne Sweeney, Jeremy Kaye's top assistant, and she gave me a top-of-the-head answer of 80% (I've known and worked with Anne for about two decades and you could take her top-of-the-head calculations to the bank, if you still had a bank). Some of those buyers take out just a million dollar mortgage to take advantage of the tax break and I suppose they could dig up that much extra cash, if they needed to but it's probably safe to say that at least 75% of our buyers require a mortgage.
Some very rough calculations show that you'd need approximately $270,000 in income for every $1,000,000 you borrowed ($6,000 interest and principle, $1,500 property taxes = $90,000 per annum, X 3 = $270,000). Multiply that by two or three to cover the (current) price of a typical Greenwich house and you'll see why the collapse of Wall Street is damping our sales. As one of my friends once pointed out, before he'd made millions and traded humility for the certain knowledge that his gifts and riches were sent directly from God, "who else is going to pay me this kind of crazy money?" Probably no one. And that's not good news if you want to sell your house.