The “Visit”I’m writing this just a few hours before the arrival of our President and the excitement here in Old Greenwich is high; helicopters overhead, cops on every corner, motorcycle cops and state troopers behind the firehouse, all parking barricaded, and Secret Service agents with a bomb-sniffing dog checking the entire route, including Tig Smith’s port-a-potty. But my excitement was tempered when I learned that, while the President expected to raise $500,000 at the Franz house in Riverside, Greenwich’s tab for police overtime will be $250,000. Add in the costs of those state troopers, a couple of Presidential jets, a squad of secret service agents, lost income by shop owners who lost their customer parking and just general inconvenience and it seems to me we taxpayers could have effected an economy by sending the RNC a check for, say, $10,000,000 and asking that the President stay home. By the way, it’s sort of amusing that everyone in Riverside knew days in advance that the fundraiser was to be held at Scott Frantz’s place while at least two patrolmen I spoke with did not. Odd sort of security when you don’t tell the protectors what they’re protecting, no?

Back to Real Estate
There is a house in Riverside that was for sale by its owner seemingly forever. Many months, if not more than a year – my memory fades. The owner finally gave up and listed it with Maureen Fox of ReMax. She priced it right (sellers tend to over-price their own homes) and had it under contract in a week. So the poor guy ended up paying a 5% commission he didn’t want to, but he also sold his house, which I assume was the ultimate objective. Sometimes, you do get what you pay for.

And Sometimes You Don’t
I saw the strangest house on the open house tour last week. Hugely expensive new construction it held, to my eye, every architectural mistake one could make. It almost seems to have been built as two, separate wings, with most of the bedrooms contained in a odd, warren-like setting that another agent said reminded her of a dentists’ suite. That’s about right. I’d give further details but then you might identify it and I really don’t want to embarrass the owner. Besides if I’m right, and he never finds a buyer at the price he’s asking, he’ll be embarrassed enough. I think my message here is that, if you’re building spec houses in Greenwich be creative but not too much so: most buyers expect a Colonial with a traditional floor layout and you depart from that at your peril.

Apples to Apples
A house on Nearwater Lane sold in April 2004 for $1,285,000 and just resold this month for $1,560,000. It’s often hard to get a grip on price appreciation because so many houses are renovated between sales but this one, if not untouched by its owners, wasn’t changed dramatically. So $275,000 in a year-and-a-half. Not too shabby.

Husted Lane
A building lot at 56 Husted Lane sold for $3,500,000 in August of 2005 and, after its buyers changed their minds, resold last week for $3,250,000. That’s a haircut but probably more indicative of what happens when you try to flip real estate too quickly. I still think no one’s ever lost money on Greenwich houses when they hold for a reasonable period of years (3-4, say) and the Nearwater Lane example shows that you can sometimes get away sooner, but there’s a risk.

Two Good Riverside Houses
Barbie Jackson (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold) has just listed 45 Breezemont for $1,695,000. This is an impeccably maintained house (I’m friends with the owner and boy is he er, retentive) with a decent yard and a huge basement. The current owners converted one of the original four bedrooms to a master bath, which was a smart move but I suspect there’s plenty of expansion space if you care to add on.
Jim Foote (Greenwich Custom Realty) has listed 25 Bayside Terrace for $1,565,000. I’m no fan of split-levels even if, as this one is, they’re called a “colonial ranch” but this has a huge amount of space and feels very livable. Bayside’s a traffic-free dead end street with some highway noise, compensated for deeded access to the water. I liked this house very much.

Glut?
You tell me, but our bi-weekly listing book has exceeded its printer’s binding capacity and arrived last Friday as two volumes. I don’t believe that’s happened before. Agents I talk to agree that there are plenty of buyers out there making offers but there’s a big gap between what they’re offering and what sellers are demanding. The sellers have history on their side; the buyers the media. We’ll see.

Smart Money?
While many would-be buyers of smaller homes are sitting on the
sidelines waiting for the world to end and offer up cheap bargains in
housing, Joe Barberi (Soetheby's) listed a waterfront parcel on
Meadowbank Road in Old Greenwich for $6.9 million (it has a house on
it, but not for long). That was on Thursday; it was gone by Sunday,
buried under multiple offers. There are two ways to look at this:
either folks who can afford to spend $7,000,000 + for land have so
much money that they don't care about saving it when the price drops
or these heavy hitters, presumably far more financially savvy than you
and I, aren't expecting the end of the world and are still buying
Greenwich real estate. I believe it's the latter.

What a House Should Be
Jane Basham (Ogilvy) has just listed a house on the corner of Wilshire
and Lake Avenue that feels absolutely right, to me. It should – I grew
up in a similar, albeit far less fancy house in Riverside, so the
relatively low ceilings don't strike me as off-putting. This house has
all the rooms necessary to live and entertain in, great 'flow" as they
like to say, all new mechanicals, a really nice yard of five acres and
a very private swimming pool. It's not for everyone – if you're
feeling a tad insecure about your new wealth and think you need a 40'
entrance foyer to prove your importance, you won't like this place.
But if you're comfortable with who you are and what you've
accomplished in life, this would be a great place to raise a family.

And Then There are Always the Contemporaries.
I was showing a house to a client not long ago and he shook his head
and sighed, "another quirky home from Chris". I defended myself – I
like interesting houses, and, while some of my favorites are indeed
quirky, I think most of them are just … interesting. That includes
contemporaries, and one was just listed at 327 Stanwich Road that I
liked very much. It's set back from the road on a acre, has a nice
pool right off the master bedroom and, even on a rainy day, was bright
and cheerful. A little dated, perhaps, and the grounds could use some
upkeep but at an asking price of $1,999,000, there should be room in
the budget for improvements. It's priced just about at land value, a
sad commentary on the place in the Greenwich marketplace for
contemporaries, so if you prefer this style of house, here's one for
free.

To Market to Market to catch a Fat Pig?
Sellers reduced prices on 146 houses the past two weeks (compared with
198 new listings that came on). Some of these price reductions were
significant – from $19,000,000 to $14,000,000, for example – but for
the most part, I still don't see more going on here than a reality
check. Most of these houses were never going to get their original
asking price so when you see one marked down, that's not really
evidence of a collapse. Where I do see a weakness is in the lower end
of the market (for those of you who bought homes twenty years ago and
haven't been keeping up, that would be "starter homes" in the $750,000
- $1,000,000 range). They aren't selling nearly as quickly as they did
even a year ago and they certainly haven't appreciated in that year.
For example, I priced a house a year ago last spring at $1.050,000. If
I were to price it now, given what's currently on the market in that
price range, I think I would stick to the same figure. Why is this end
of the market being hit? The speculation among us agents includes
losing buyers to upper Fairfield – much more house for the money and,
with so many employers moving to the Rt. 7 corridor and above, less of
a penalty for the commute. And, as I've mentioned here before,
diminished borrowing power – about 15% this year. That has less
effect, I suspect, on the high-end buyers than it does on young
families just starting out.

That's Parhee to You, Mon Ami
Have you noticed the now obligatory pronunciation guide governing
newscasters' names for Third World (oh, excuse me, "developing
nations) cities? While Oslo is still Oslo and, Paris, despite my
headline, is still Paris, it is absolutely mandatory to show
solidarity with the world's poor by garbling their cities' names in
the local patois. Thus, when a hurricane approached Mehico recently,
good old Acapulco became "Acapoolco" (which, had the hurricane
actually hit, might have been more accurate, I suppose). Assuming
Italy manages to keep its living standard up we can all still refer to
Rome, but keep an eye out: if Fiat fails and the economy tanks, we may
have to revert to Roma.

The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!
If you believe our mainstream media, the housing market has collapsed and everyone who wants to buy a house should be sitting on the sidelines, licking their chops, waiting to pick up houses for a faint whisper of their asking price. Don't be stupid. The Greenwich market is okay, and won't be going anywhere drastic in the foreseeable future. Proof? Eleven houses went to contract on just one day: Friday, August 26. List prices were all over the place, but started at $8,000,000, and ranged down through the $5.9s, $4.9s. etc. People are buying houses here in town; always have, always will. I've seen nothing to indicate a fire sale; rather, unrealistic prices have dropped and when they do, they sell. A house that sees a one million dollar price change may cause you to think that the bottom has fallen out but in fact, even a year ago, when the market was robust, many of us probably thought that the price was crazily out of line. Wall Street is enjoying record earnings, bonuses are huge, houses will sell. No one wants to overpay but, if I had to make a generalization, it's newcomers who are lobbing ridiculous low-ball bids at houses while long time residents, having seen all the cycles and learned that Greenwich prices don't fall away to nothing, are buying what they want, at rational prices. What with mad Mullahs in Iran planning a nuclear Holocaust and the prospect of Alcee Hastings, the impeached federal judge (bribery) heading our country's House Intelligence Committee if the Democrats win this November, folks should be nervous about the future. But if you need a house now, this isn't a bad time to buy.

Revenge!
Family legend has it that my great grandmother on my mother's side, a sweet, gentle lady from New Orleans who wouldn't have dreamed of ever uttering profanity, invariably referred to Northerners as "damnyankees". Her bitter memories of the Civil War may be eased a bit with the news that Kudzu, "the vine that ate the South", has appeared in Greenwich. This stuff is just awful, according to a Wall Street Journal article I remember reading long ago. It grows incredibly fast, consumes everything it encounters, resists every attempt to eradicate it and now it's here. Lucky us; I hope my great grandmother is placated.

Speaking of Revenge
When CVS first showed up in town, it bought out and closed down almost all the local pharmacies so as to eliminate competition. Riverside Pharmacy's owners were told, basically, "we buy you out or we beat you out" so Tony and Marshall sold out and retired. I resented losing two guys who'd known me since I was an infant and when Walgreen's opened I happily shifted my business there, instead of to CVS. But there's
always been a problem: Walgreen's computer database already has a Chris Fountain in its records, an undoubtedly fine, upstanding citizen of Bridgeport. Prescriptions meant for me are assigned to him, doing neither of us any good. I have always been able to correct the confusion before but recently, on the eve of a vacation (you'll notice the sparcity of real estate news in this column – sorry) I showed up to pick up an order and was told, "sorry, you're the wrong Chris Fountain". "No I'm not", said I, "I've given you the name of my doctor (Jeff Weinberger, and if you aren't using him as your GP you're missing out on a great one), the drug in question, and the dosage. How would I know all that if I were the wrong patient?" I received the same short shrift from the clerk/pharmacist that the gentleman ahead of me received when his Walgreen discount card was declared inoperative: "You have a problem, call the customer service line. Next!" I don't blame the clerk's rude refusal to acknowledge his company's mistake, and his refusal to even attempt to resolve the problem, on him as much as I do his employer, who understaffs the store and creates the pressure that incubates such behavior (but I have always wondered why, if someone can't stand people, he or she accepts a customer service job; tax attorneys are notorious for their lack of people skills and we always kept them chained in the back, doing their magic while never letting them meet clients). What's the solution? None; the days of friendly pharmacists who know who you are long past, but when I return from vacation I'll have Dr. Weinberger call in a new prescription to CVS and go there. And Walgreen's will never know why it lost a customer.

King Merritt Acres
Another agent and I recently discussed this development’s prospects. He predicted that new construction could sell for the low $3’s, which I thought was optimistic. It’s an interesting area because it is one of the few places left to find one acre lots. Some of those lots are too swampy or too close to the Merritt or King Street (whence came the name), but others have flat lawns and sit far enough away from the major roads to enjoy quiet. The current housing stock is being renovated or torn down and some impressive new houses are going up. Prices have soared in recent years, up $1,600,000. Steve Archino recently listed a great house on North Stonehedge for $1,439,000 and watched it sell in a bidding war for $1,500,000 (Steve: now will you quit complaining that I never say anything nice about you?). But will King Merritt support a price in the low 3’s? A new house has just come on and its fate will test my agent friend’s perspicacity.

Nina Robinson has listed 11 Hettiefred Road for $3,375,000. This 4,000 sq. ft. house has a great yard, a huge unfinished basement that has a fireplace and is already plumbed, good quality construction, etc. If anything can sell in this neck of town for the low $3’s, this is probably the one. But on a price-point comparison, similar houses, albeit on far less land, can be found in Riverside. For a family with children at Brunswick or Sacred Heart, this could be a very desirable location. For those who enjoy Tod’s Point, it’s a long way away. As always, it’s the buyers who will decide what this house sells for, not some pontificator. I wish Nina well and I’m sure that every resident of King Merritt who is even considering selling their own house is cheering her on.

Old Greenwich Acres
Another location in town with one acre lots is Hillcrest Park in Old Greenwich. This development has always suffered a bit, in my opinion, for its location north of the Post Road but, now that sewers and public utilities have gone in, it’s getting a lot of favorable attention as buyers focus on the large lots its houses sit on. There are some great old 1890’s buildings here plus a mixture of both regrettable ranches and some nicely renovated 1960’s colonials. The most recent land sale, an undeveloped acre on Hillcrest Lane, was listed last year for $1,350,000 and sold for $1,621,000. A new house is going up on the site. Bill Fossum’s listing at 12 Norton Lane was one of those renovated colonials I mentioned. At $2,395,000 he received several offers and it’s gone to contract. As of this writing, there are two houses for sale in Hillcrest Park, 73 Hillcrest Road, asking $2,349,000 and 9 Hillcrest Lane, $2,595,000. Each is different from the other, each is very nice.

Buyer/Seller Disconnect
Judging from my own experience and that of other agents, there seems to be a large gap between what buyers and sellers expect these days. Buyers, alarmed by screaming headlines in the press, think that prices are going to plunge and if they’re making any offers at all (many are waiting for the coming crash) they come in at truly ridiculous levels. Sellers, as a generality, don’t believe anything untoward is happening and are sticking to prices that might well have worked a year ago but won’t work now. My advice, for whatever it’s worth (I remind you of this column’s title) is that both parties should get real. Yes, the market has slowed (“Existing home sales drop to 2003 levels!” scream the headlines. Third best year, ever, in Greenwich? 2003) but no, we’re not entering a depression. Greenwich prices rarely dip – they do stop appreciating, occasionally, for a brief period, but if you think that you’re going to buy a million dollar house in Greenwich for seven hundred thousand dollars, don’t call your movers just yet. And if you’ve priced your house at a 10% appreciation rate for every year you’ve owned it, you’re not going anywhere soon, either.

Greenwich Mean Time
My latest novel is finally available. East Putnam Variety (next to Starbucks/Whole Foods) has copies and so, soon, will Just Books. If you don’t want to support a local business, you can always enrich Amazon.com. A tale of fake Indians who invade Tod’s Point and try to build a casino, it’s loaded with cameo appearances by noted Realtors, corrupt politicians and all my friends. I tried to offend everyone but if I neglected someone, let me know.

High End Downtown Condos
One can’t drive down Milbank Avenue these days and not notice the huge number of new condominiums going up, all at huge prices. I wonder whether the market is deep enough to support all these projects. Not counting those still under construction and not yet offered for sale, there are twenty-five condos currently offered at $2,495,000 and up. In the history of Greenwich, twenty-eight such units have sold. Total. Now admittedly, this is a relatively new price category so we’re certainly not looking at a lifetime’s supply and as a matter of fact, one of those twenty-eight sales occurred just last week, in a bidding war at that But when I add up all the yet-to-be-completed units, those currently for sale and the thirty-four former Fareri projects on Idar Court and East Elm, I conclude that Mr. Fareri knew exactly what he was doing when he sold out to an investment group. Some famous Wall Street contrarian explained how he got rich by saying, “I bought when others wanted to sell and I bought when others wanted to sell.” Exactly.
38 Parsonage
When this house was built in April, 2002 it was originally priced at $9,950,000. That was a reach, apparently, because it didn’t sell until January, 2004, for $6,650,000. Two years later, the new owners but it back on for that same $9,950,000 and this time they got it, in just thirteen days. Lessons here are two: (a) don’t overprice your house if you want to sell it and (b) we’ve had some significant appreciation in the past two years. It’s not quite apples to apples; the house was improved during that period, but still.

Price it, Sell it
I angered a builder a year or so ago by suggesting that there were other new houses comparable to his that I liked more, at half the price. I’m no genius and the builder has been hugely successful in town so who am I to opine on value? Nonetheless, I thought to check on his progress the other day and discovered that his creation has been marked down almost 50% and remains unsold. Oops.

9 Indian Head
This property, listed by Ginny Hamilton for $2,200,000, currently holds a legally non-conforming two-family house. You could build a new two-family, each unit around 4,500 sq. ft., or build a very large single family on its 0.79 acres. Personally, I’m dubious about the prospects for a two-family in this neighborhood but if you’ve been looking for a large lot in Riverside to accommodate your mansion dreams, this is one of the few remaining.

Best Value in Old Greenwich?
Probably Barbie Jackson’s (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold) listing at 23 Tomac Avenue. It’s a very nice house with not too much of a yard but this is, after all, Old Greenwich. Started in 1988, finished in 1994 (the original builder got a bit over-extended during our last slowdown and took a flyer, so to speak, to Europe) and it needs some freshening up by way of paint, wallpaper and, if you cared to go to the expense, some updated kitchen countertops. I’d skip that last step as unnecessary but your call. The point is that, at $2,325,000, I think it compares favorably with other Old Greenwich houses asking $300,000 - $400,000 more, meaning you could spend away here to your heart’s content and still come out ahead.

And in Riverside
Don’t miss John Cooke’s (Prudential) listing at 23 Willowmere Avenue. This was originally priced (not by John) at $3,595,000 and, not surprisingly, it’s now owned by a relocation company and has been lowered to $2,750,000. I think that’s about right. Its builder went cheap on cosmetics like trim (plain) and interior doors (flimsy plastic) but, while it’s astonishing to think that you could pay this much for the output of a vacuum plastic machine, this location makes an interior upgrade well worth it. Deeded water rights and views, five bedrooms, nice yard, good deal.

Polls
Did you see that poll showing that 1/3 of all American adults think that our government brought down the World Trade Center towers? I realize that the same proportion also believes that Elvis is alive and living on Mars but, when coupled with another poll showing that 70% of Americans can identify at least two of Snow White’s seven dwarfs but only 21% two of the nine Supreme Court Justices, 73% all Three Stooges vs. 42% the three branches of government, it makes me wonder about the usefulness of the “get out the vote” campaigns run biannually. Do we really want Larry, Curly and Moe running our government? Then again, would we notice?

Realistic Pricing
Last week a house finally went to contract at somewhere close, I presume, given its last asking price, to $2,000,000. Nothing unusual about that, but it originally came on the market a year ago for $2,850,000. That’s a long time to try to sell your house. Try any price you want – it’s your property, after all - but remember that you have just one chance to be “new”. If you don’t get offers right away, start whacking that price or your house will look stale and unwanted, all to your disadvantage. Case in point is a really nice house I’m aware of that came on for close to $7,000,000 over two years ago. It is now priced at $5,300,000 and remains unsold. The scary thing about this is that the owners paid more than $5,000,000 for it in 2001. Ouch.
Whoppers
Twenty houses asking $7,000,000 and up sold this year vs. twenty-four during the same period (January-July 31) last year. But things have slowed down in the nosebleed range: only three sold in June and July this year compared to eight in the same period last year. Forty-two in this price range sold in all of 2005 while there are sixty-seven available today. If the three vs. eight is a harbinger, I detect a glut.

An Interesting Market Technique
A newly constructed house that hasn’t sold was just bumped up in price by a couple of hundred thousand dollars. This tactic always intrigues me – if it isn’t selling at the lower price, how will a higher price do the trick? People do try this from time to time and I suppose it must have worked, once, somewhere. I’ve never known it to, though. Recently a rental that was going nowhere jumped its price from $11,000 to $13,000 a month. The listing expired last month.

And Here’s another Interesting Pricing Decision
Buy a house at the end of January for one price, change your mind and put it back on the market in May. How much has your lordly presence added to its value? One seller set his worth at a cool million. The marketplace seems to disagree, because it remains unsold.

Tuesdays, Thursdays
Broker open houses are divided between Tuesdays and Thursdays. North Street and west on Tuesdays, east of North Street, Thursdays. It always surprises me when I see, say, a house on the far western edge of town being shown on a Thursday “due to client’s request”. Request all you like but you’d be better off saving your breath. No agent I know of is going to schlep to your side of town when he’s down in Old Greenwich. If a particular date is inconvenient or impossible, postpone the open house.
Speaking of the Western Side of Town
I recently saw two very nice new houses there at 5 Comly Terrace (Barbara Zaccagnini’s listing) and 15 Canterbury Drive (Lucille Skorvanek) and priced at $1,549,000 and $1,435,000, respectively. If you’re priced out of eastern Greenwich, where new construction now begins at $1,750,00 or you just prefer Glenville (yes, it happens), these would be very much worth considering.
And Still Further West
I was showing an Old Greenwich house to a prospective buyer (okay, he’s a “prospect”, but that sounds so mercenary) from New York and he asked about closing costs. I started rattling off items like pre-paid interest, attorney’s fees and so forth until he interrupted me and said “no, I mean what’s the mortgage tax?”. I had forgotten, until then, that New York imposes all sorts of taxes on buyers: buyer’s tax, “mansion” tax, county tax, etc. The difference between the two states, on a $2,000,000 house, is over $45,000. Yes, the same $2,000,000 will buy more house in Westchester but, when you also compute an annual tax bill that’s twice as high, Greenwich still looks good.
Terror in the Sky
The recent incident in London has sent all good Pcers scrambling to find some inoffensive term to describe the perpetrators. CAIR goes crazy when someone refers to an Islamic Terrorist or even terrorist (one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and all that) yet “suspects” (The New York Times’ preference) or “detainees” (Mother Jones) are a bit, er, vague. So it was with great relief that I stumbled across some moonbat’s website and discovered the phrase “Faith-based, would-be martyrs”. I assume that, had they succeeded in their quest to blow a few thousand passengers to bits, we could drop the “would-be” modifier. How sweet. I have incorporated this into my new vocabulary and will offend no more.

Historic Preservation
Riverside architect Jay Haverson has a problem: he purchased a two acre lot on Round Hill Road in the four acre zone and, thanks to the inexplicable rule that penalizes undersized lots, he is only allowed to build a 5,445 sq. ft. lot instead of the 7,840 sq. ft. otherwise permitted on two-acre parcels (and 5,880 on a one acre lot – go figure). He’s okay with that, but the lot has a very old (1827) cottage on it that he’d like to preserve. He’s stripped off all later additions and preserved the original, 1,650 sq.ft. structure and would like to keep it as a guest house. Under our FAR rules, however, the area of the cottage is deducted from the permitted size of the new house so either the cottage goes, at great loss to the streetscape, or something else has to give. Haverson has proposed that it’s the FAR that should give. In two and four acre zones, he suggests that the already-existing Historic Overlay process be applied, on a case-by-case basis, to review applications for an exception to the FAR rules. I’m simplifying things here but basically, the rule change would create a process whereby the owner of an existing, antique house could apply for relief from the FAR so that a modern house could be built and the original preserved. There would be nothing automatic-the Historical Commission could deny an application, demand that the new house reflect the style of the old, whatever it deemed necessary and appropriate.

I know of three similar situations right off the top of my head and I’m sure there are many more. The houses in question are obsolete as that term is used in real estate and we’ll eventually lose every one of them if some incentive isn’t found to encourage their owners to keep them. It’s not just builders who tear these houses down; new owners do it too because, except for nuts like myself, people don’t want to / can’t live in them. Excluding their area from FAR calculations seems like a sensible way to accomplish this, all without dipping into taxpayers’ pockets for special tax credits, etc. I know Jay Haverson and like his work and I’m absolutely certain that the house he’s building will be a beautiful addition to Round Hill. But how much nicer if, in addition to the new house, the old one could also be preserved. The next hearing on his proposal is scheduled for September. He already has the support of many preservationists in town but if you’re interested in that goal, you might want to attend and learn more.

Further Broker Etiquette Lessons
Turn out the lights, lock the door. It drives me crazy when a client reports that some unthoughtful agent has shown a house and blithely moved on without re-securing the house and shutting off the lights. It’s both unprofessional and rude to be so careless and it gives all of us a black eye.

Whatever happened to Travel by Shank’s Mare?
I happened to be at the Riverside Yacht Club the other morning when a huge crush of cars arrived, almost all SUVs and each bearing children (one car per family, damnit, no carpooling here!). As I left and headed up Club Road I didn’t spy a single kid walking or riding a bicycle to summer camp. I’m not picking on this particular club by the way – I’ve seen the same phenomenon at our local schools around town – but I do wonder what happened to kids getting around on their own. Is it fear of kidnappers? Too many hours in front of Gameboys rendering leg muscles useless? Inquiring minds want to know.

Beach Read
I just finished “The Ethical Assassin” by David Liss. What a hoot. Liss wrote “A Conspiracy of Paper” a few years ago and won an Edgar Award for his efforts. This one is far loonier and tracks its characters as they romp through Florida in all sorts of improbable ways. I loved it but its black humor may not be for you. Try this passage concerning the reflections of a hit man: “Knowing that the body was but a shell and the soul lived on had helped him in his enforcement work in Vegas. It’s not so hard to beat someone to death if you know you’re not doing any permanent damage.” Those two sentences made me put the book down and say, “damn, I wish I’d written that”. Your reaction may differ, naturally. If so, you won’t like my upcoming novel either so you can save your money twice. Is this column useful, or what?

More Statistics
The New York Times ran yet another article declaring a recession in the housing market the other day so I thought I’d see how we’ve been doing in ours. As always, it depends. Overall, we’re off 32% in contract activity for the period I surveyed, June 1 – July 25, 2005 and 2006, 106 units (single family and condos) vs. 154 (all of this year’s numbers are probably skewed a bit towards the downside because there are bound to be properties currently under contract that have not been reported due to outstanding contingencies).Single family homes did better, down 21%. It’s the condos being whacked, selling at just 43% of last year’s pace, 19 vs. 44

It also depends on what neighborhood you look at. For single family homes, Riverside is untouched, 20 now, 20 last year. Old Greenwich is up, 21 vs. 16, Greenwich proper, down, 38 vs. 57 and Cos Cob, down, 8 vs. 17. It’s these latter figures that explain why some of my builder clients only do business in Old Greenwich and Riverside.

Inventory is up substantially. 181 condos now vs. only 89 the same time last year. 526 single family homes available now vs. 444 last year. In case you’re wondering, 261 condos sold in all of 2005 and 738 single families.

Builder’s Profit?
I’ve noticed that a number of tear-downs are coming on the market at a price that allows no profit for a builder. For instance, one I know of is priced at $1,200,000. At that price, when you add another $1,000,000 for building, plus commissions, taxes etc., the resulting house would have to sell for at least $2,500,000 just to break even. All this in a neighborhood of, at best, $2,000,000 homes. I don’t necessarily mind this trend because I’m tired of watching the houses of my childhood friends disappear but if you hope to cash in on the lack of land in town by selling to a builder, remember that he or she is not a non-profit organization. Not deliberately, anyway.

No Clutter
I recently toured two houses at opposite extremes of home decorating. One was a mansion that had exactly one personal photograph, a formal, posed family portrait and nothing else. It struck me as awfully cold and I wondered if the lack of family snapshots indicated a family in trouble or an over-bearing interior decorator. We advise “de-personalizing” a house to make it easier for a potential buyer to imagine themselves as the next owner but banishing all memories of your kids and pets seems excessive. Don’t be bullied. At the other extreme was a very nice house that had dozens of photographs on every level surface. That, plus the presence of too much furniture, made the rooms appear small and cramped when in fact they were not. So listen to your agent, clean out the place, even if temporarily, and go sell your house. But don’t forget you have a family, too.

Minimum Wage
Did you see that Chicago has passed (an undoubtedly unconstitutional)law mandating WalMart to pay its workers a minimum wage of $10 per hour plus $3 per hour in benefits? This kind of whacko economics is always popular with uneducated people which explains why the Democrats are pushing it so hard, but I don’t get it – if raising the minimum wage is the solution to poverty, why stop at ten bucks? Wouldn’t $100 per hour help even more? And if it were raised to $1,000 per hour these folks could buy (modest) homes in Greenwich, all to my own enrichment. Go for it!

9 MacKenzie
Nick Barile, of York Builders, builds a great house. I’ve admired some of his previous projects on Tomac, Hendrie Avenue and Pell Place, and now he’s just finishing up his latest on MacKenzie, off of North Street. A great entrance, graced with a 150-year old newel post (Barile always adds antique touches to his houses, to good effect) and a really nice, curving staircase. Another agent/friend though the rooms to either side of the entrance were too small – not to my eye; I find them perfectly proportioned and large enough to entertain an entire mob of Conyer’s Farm polo swells or whoever else comprises your social circle. Slate roof, built-in desks/bookshelves in the childrens’ rooms, over an acre of land in an R-12 zone (a smart move – this neighborhood has gone upscale and 12,000 ft. lots won’t cut it), great finish work and on and on. $5,595,000 - unlike some other new construction I’ve seen recently, this one’s quality at least gives you the impression that you’re getting what you pay for. Diane and Russ Dutcher, of Coldwell Banker, have the listing.

10 Dairy Road
This house, so suddenly vacated by its previous tenant, is back on the market for rent ($20,000 per month) or for sale ($5,200,000). A touch of psychological impact here, eh?

Broker/Buyer Etiquette
Another agent wrote to me suggesting this for a topic and it’s a good one. Except for vacant/keybox situations, house showings are done by appointment. The seller is notified, she tidies up the house, turns on the lights (if she’s smart) and clears out for an hour. So what happens when the agent and buyer pull into the driveway and the buyer says, “no way, let’s go to the next one”? At the very least, I think the agent should at least enter the house and sign in and preferably, both agent and buyer should view the house. Someone has gone to the effort to prepare for the showing and it’s just plain rude to blow them off. I’ve been fortunate in this regard and have always had clients who share my sense of courtesy but I carry a pistol just in case. I know of instances where the owner has been by the window, waiting for visitors and seen a car pull in, back up and speed off. That’s just mean, so don’t do it.

The More Things Change
From a previous column published in early February, 2005: “At the risk of offending my core clientele, the worst offenders of the “bid to lose” game are Wall Streeters who are convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that the market will soon drop and fear that they’ll look like chumps for paying anything close to the asking price.”

A year-and-a-half later many of those would-be buyers are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the bubble to burst. I hear from them, via Blackberry, every time the Wall Street Journal (or Barrons or whomever) runs another article on the end of the housing world. But if you read these articles carefully, you should be able to find distinguishing features. An over-building in south Florida, where a development of 500 homes is now offering a 10% discount is nothing like Greenwich, which has almost no land left for development and certainly nothing for tract homes. To repeat myself, real estate, like politics, is local. Homes should be considered places to raise a family, not speculative gambles. And, if you buy in Greenwich and stay put for a few years, history says that you’ll do just fine.

Sell That House
The market never slowed down last August but it feels as though this year we’re returning to normal conditions, which means we’re resting before September. But if you have a house to sell you might want to consider doing something to move it now: lower its price, accept a lowish offer that’s been hanging out there, paint the damn thing purple and donate it to charity, whatever. Because, come September a ton of new listings will apprear and your house is going to be at a disadvantage. So move it now or compete in September by pricing it attractively. I have heard that our average house only sells after its third price reduction. I’m not sure that’s accurate but most new listings have an element of wistful thinking in their original price and if that element has been wrung out of yours, you’ll look good in comparison.

Speaking of Wistful Thinking
A new listing in Old Greenwich appeared the other day. Just from its address, I thought that it had to be at least $300,000 over-priced for its neighborhood but I visited it to see if I was missing something. Nope; in fact, I raised my estimate of its missing the mark to $500,000. So one of us is stupid, me or the seller. I think the seller wins that contest because that same day I saw a new house, in a slightly better neighborhood, asking $200,000 less and another, far nicer renovation in what is a far better section of Old Greenwich asking $300,000 less. If an agent hopes to sell either of the latter she’ll show the first, first. “You don’t like this one? Then let me show you something better that costs less.” You won’t even need to read Real Estate for Dummies to make that tactic work.

Mysteries of the Internet
I use Googel’s free Gmail service and it does an excellent job of screening out spam and tossing it into a spam file. Recently about 90% of what lands there is Japanese spam, written in Japanese. I understand that it’s almost cost-free to send this stuff out but, even free, why would anyone bother mailing it to America? Someone has too much time on his hands.

New Homes
I wouldn’t call it a glut, but there are 62 new (built 2005 or 2006) houses currently for sale, 44 of which are priced from $3,500,000 up to $14,500,000. Location, as ever, is the key to a builder’s success so I wouldn’t take a chance on an iffy-street right now. You’ve got a lot of competition out there, and judging from what I see going up around town, more to come.

Where Are We Heading?
An article in last week’s Wall Street Journal reported that New England is losing jobs, population and house sales. It’s a disturbing trend and I don’t think it can all be attributable to the horrendous traffic problems here in the southern tier. The Milken Institute (yes, that Milken, but never mind) ranks Connecicut as the 5th most expensive state to do business in, Massachusetts 3rd and New York 2nd (Hawaii wins 1st place but does anyone really move to Hawaii to conduct business? Aside from growing Maui Wowie?). One little bright spot for Connecticut is that last year we moved from dead last in job creation to 44th. But our Legislature will be back in session soon and I’m sure they’ll find a way to end that.

Are Prices Softening?
Lots of us realtors with buyers for clients can report that there’s a strong reluctance out there to make offers; the buyers are waiting for prices to fall. Because of our Board’s inability to match sales price to original asking price I can give you no definitive statistics but my instinct tells me that prices are still holding. Yes, a house on Riverside Avenue just went off to contract at a price at least 20% lower than first asked a year ago, but the fact that the house sat unsold for all of 2005, a strong market, suggests strongly that it was just mis-priced to begin with. Average sales price this June is 21.7% higher than June ’05 and, year to date, that average is 20.7% higher, so waiting hasn’t proved a winning strategy so far. But this much is definite: justified or not, there is no sense of urgency among buyers. Perhaps there should be.

6 Glen Court
My brother Gideon has the listing for this in-town property but I still like it. Five bedrooms, brand new kitchen and a terrific backyard, unusual for this area. All updated mechanicals, nice slate roof, asking $2,275,000. Seems about right to me.

Artificial Turf, Revisited
I heard from both the owner of the orchard Street house (not a condo, as I supposed) with the artificial lawn and its installer, Ken Gentile of Executive Putting Greens. Turns out, synthetic lawn turf may well be the future. Put it down over a 6” crushed rubber fill and you have a safe playground area that won’t wear out. Build, as Gentile’s company name suggests, a putting green that never needs maintenance. This stuff is completely different from the original Astro-Turf (which went out of business four years ago, I’ve learned). Manufacturers can replicate almost any type of grass, and do, depending on intended use. Las Vegas, to encourage water conservation, even pays homeowners $1.00 a foot to replace their organic stuff with artificial. I’m not necessarily sold on the concept but it is intriguing and if I had small kids or played golf I’d definitely look into it. You can find more information on the Web or call Gentile at (203) 496-0891.

And Speaking of Plastic
One of my clients asked if she should even consider any house with vinyl siding. It’s entirely personal, of course, but I side (pun intended) with Tom Silva of This Old House who says, “I love wood, but I’d rather spend weekends on my boat.” I think the solid panel version looks pretty good and, having spent countless hours scraping, sanding, staining and cleaning up after myself, I’d consider using it. You can’t get away with it on a high end house but I’m not a high end kind of guy, so that solves that. One caveat: don’t slap up vinyl to cover up peeling, blistered siding without first correcting the underlying moisture problem that’s causing your paint to fail. You’ll hide the symptom but rot the house.

California Dreaming
Did you see the New York Times article on Hollywood big shots erecting 30,000 sq.ft. mansions on 2-acre lots? All in one (crowded) neighborhood. Since every bad idea California comes up with – Scientology comes to mind – eventually drifts east, I have finally found something good to say about our FAR regulations.

How Not To Price a House
I Toured a recent renovation with clients the other day that has been on the market since the beginning of the year. The clients liked the house but were worried that it hasn’t sold. “What’s wrong with it?” they wanted to know. When representing buyers, Realtors owe no duty to the seller, so I felt free to answer, “there’s nothing wrong with this house except its price.” Which is true, but to explain why the house didn’t merit its asking price, I had to point out all the cheap details that the builder had skimped on. For instance, there’s good vinyl siding: solid panels of shingle-look vinyl, and the cheap stuff: hollow, flimsy plastic. This builder chose the latter. There’s good molding, carefully installed, and cheap molding, slapped on by a butcher. Again, the builder went the meat market route. My clients weren’t deterred by all this and might even place a bid on the place but I was struck by the fact that, had the seller not tried to price his pig’s ear a silk purse, no explanations would have been necessary. “Hollow core doors? That’s what you get at this price.” End of story. So if you’re building with an eye toward resale, consider what price the location will support and build accordingly. And if you’re going for a substantial price, build a substantial house.

Riverside Lane
This street’s seeing an explosion of new construction, all priced near $2,000,000. Astonishing to me, having seen it for years as a nice little neighborhood of affordable capes. There are two houses going up right next to each other that are identical in every detail. I realize that the original veterans’ houses were also identical, so perhaps an argument can be made that the builder is simply respecting the area’s historical character but at these prices, I think he should have invested $40,000 or so and hired an architect to design two houses that didn’t jump out of the same cookie-cutter. You can get away with using a plan book when pumping out $100,000 houses but those days are over in this town, I hope.

Augustin Fund
Here’s the scoop on the fund established for John Augustin, the farmer on King Street who lost his leg last May: The First Church of Round Hill already has a charitable (meaning tax-deductible, if you care) trust established and, in the interest of efficiency, a fund to help Mr. Augistin pay his medical bills has been piggy-backed onto it. You can send checks, payable to Church of Round Hill with a notation, “John Augustin Fund" in the memo section, lower-left corner. Checks should be mailed to: June Marks, 33
Nutmeg Drive, Greenwich CT 06831.

Nice House, Gone
I meant to write about John Cooke’s (Prudential) listing at 4 Kinsman Lane when it came on the market this past February but it went to contract so quickly that I turned to something else. This was a 1910 house right off of Bruce Park. It needed some work (when you see the seller as “Estate of” you should expect that) and it had some road noise from I-95 but the house was well laid out and its location was pretty neat, assuming you like geese. In any event, the MLS reported it as sold last week. Sharon Kinney’s client won it in a bidding war at $1,361,000, a substantial increase over its asking price of $1,295,000. Smart pricing will yield that result.

Summer Doldrums?
Exactly three houses went to contract last week, signifying the start of the summer real estate market which is usually pretty slow. Of course, the week between school letting out and the Fourth of July is historically one of our slowest weeks (Christmas to New Years isn’t any more exciting) so you can relax a bit – the world is not ending. But if your own house is on the market and you’re wondering where the buyers are, here’s the answer: they’re away. But like the swallows of Capistrano, they’ll be back. Hang on.

But a slow market does make writing this column harder – maybe I’ll post the next one from New Mexico. Here are some numbers, though: 203 houses went to contract last quarter (through July 10th). That’s an 18% drop-off from last year, probably due at least in part to buyers being priced out of town (average prices keep climbing). Are we doomed? I think not, but I also wouldn’t count on seeing your house appreciate 25% this year. Which is ultimately a good thing; a dose of reality and common sense injected into the market never hurts.

Stop Him Before He Kills Again!
In the aftermath of a Federal court’s ruling that the SEC lacks jurisdiction over hedge funds our would-be-Senator, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has announced that he’ll seek to regulate them himself. How is this related to real estate? Simple: two-thirds of Greenwich’s commercial real estate is rented to hedge funds or hedge fund service industries, according to the recent Vanity Fair article on our town (surprisingly accurate, by the way), and 10% of all hedge fund capital is based here. I won’t try to guess how much of our residential real estate is owned by hedge fund principals and lower ranks, but it’s a lot. One of those people, a client of mine, explained that the funds moved from New York to Greenwich when New York sought to tax the earnings of non-New York residents. They moved once, they can move again. All that’s needed to trade securities these days is a high-speed internet connection, something that is as readily available in, say, Colorado as it is in Greenwich. I sympathize with Mr. Blumenthal’s desperate desire to move up in the political world, but destroying Greenwich’s economic base seems too steep a price for us to indulge his ambitions.

Insulated Concrete Forms
A reader brought to my attention a new house that’s being constructed on Bramble Lane in Riverside with what I now know are ICFs – Styrofoam molds filled with reinforced concrete. I was curious and looked the subject up on the net. While that hardly makes me an expert, this type of construction seems to hold promise. It is incredibly energy efficient and, because there’s no wood framing, the resulting house is impervious to termites and other pests. But I found enough horror stories out there to make it clear that you do not want to be the first house a builder tries this out on – there seems to be a bit of a learning curve. A Bramble Lane resident, also a builder, happened to be outside when I stopped by to see the project and he expressed skepticism while allowing that, in a place like Hawaii, where man-eating termites go through houses in a few years, it might make sense. And certainly in a place exposed to hurricanes, a house made from reinforced concrete sounds a lot more secure than a stick-built home. I’ll keep my eye on this one and tell you how it comes out.

Inventory
The single family home inventory continues to decline and is now just 9% higher than this time last year (533 vs. 488). That places us 18% higher than 2004 but, I’ll repeat, 2004 was the best year for sales in town history. I keep hearing of buyers who are “waiting for prices to fall”. They haven’t yet (we’re way above last year for both average and median prices) but buyers’ borrowing power has dropped 15% since last year due to interest hikes. So keep waiting – you’ll get less house for the same monthly payment but, by God, you won’t overpay for that muffler!

Still More Numbers
Sales this year, to date (and I dislike using sales statistics because they’re a lagging indicator) are 294 compared to 344 (all figures as of June 29) last year, or a 15% drop. Houses that went to contract between January one and now, 363 vs. 407, for a 10% decline. These are not scary drop offs, in my opinion. Price your house right, and it will sell. The only exception to all this non-alarming news might be the condominium inventory which is 78% higher than last year (160 now vs. 90 then) and sales/contracts are down 30%. There’s been a lot of new construction going on, and now might be a fine time to cut a deal with a builder.

752 North Street
When the purchasers of the beautiful 1839 home located at this address tore it down many of us were horrified. I, at least, was a bit mollified when a new, tasteful, modestly-sized house replaced it. When I toured it the other day, I learned for the first time of the ultimately futile struggle to save the original building. Sadly, the house was beyond repair and as walls were opened, new, ever more horrifying discoveries were made, necessitating still more modifications and demo work until nothing was left. But the new house is very nice and perhaps it will be as admired 160 years from now as the house it replaced. Barbara Zaccagnini listing, $4,995,000.

Birds of Prey
When John Augustin, proprietor of Augustin Farm up on King Street, lost his leg in a tractor accident this spring he received a lot of support from friends and customers. What he probably didn’t need was a barrage of calls from Greenwich real estate agents, all seeking to buy his land for their developer clients. “They’re like a bunch of buzzards flying around a dead carcass” he told Greenwich Time, and I share his disgust. It’s this kind of behavior that’s earned Realtors a reputation right down in the sewer with politicians and lawyers (well okay, I considered laminating my lawyer business cards so I could scatter them around accident scenes, but I didn’t do it). Mr. Augustin doesn’t want to sell; he would like some assistance in paying his huge medical bills. A committee is being established to accomplish just that and, when it’s up and running, I intend to contribute. Perhaps some of those ghoulish callers might do the same.

Selling It
I see that, after two years on the market a certain house finally sold this week for $2,500,000 less than its original asking price. I’m sure the unhappy seller is convinced that this is proof that the housing bubble has burst but I remember touring it back in July 2004 and, while I like the house, I thought that it was at least $1,500,000 and perhaps as much as $2,000,000 too high. In a super-hot market, comparable prices might have risen during those two years to catch up with the owner’s desired price but that market doesn’t exist today (and it would never have caught up with the 50% premium this one asked) so the seller had to come down to catch it. I don’t see the final sales price as evidence of anything except what has always been true: if you over-price your house it won’t sell and, eventually, you’ll pay a penalty for being exposed to the market for so long.

On a related matter, the listing for a renovated house in Cos Cob has expired and the house remains unsold. I heard through the grapevine that its builder could have had a deal but refused to correct some open construction items which violated our building code. This is not the market to play hardball, especially if you’re quibbling over details that, under law, you’ll have to fix anyway.

“Nervous about the Market”
Many agents tell me that their buyers use this phrase to explain why they are unwilling to bid on houses. If you’re among that crowd I think you’re missing an opportunity. The market is not dead, nor are prices falling. Your braver competitors (and when you’re looking for a house, you have competitors) are picking up some very nice houses at reasonable prices while you sit on the sidelines. Are there over-priced houses out there? Sure, but you and your agent can sort those from the good buys and proceed. I realize that Wall Street is determined to see everyone pull their money from real estate and invest it with them but I hunted stock brokers for a long time and watched their shenanigans and pure stupidity (best example, the fellow who pitched Winstar Communications as “that GM company that puts call buttons in cars”. SmartMoney.com called WinStar "a prime example of the tightrope financing, shameless stock promotion and blind faith in the future that ran rampant across Wall Street over the past few years."). In short, these are the same folks who brought us Enron, Pets.com and chains that (briefly) sold fifty varieties of popcorn. I don’t trust their financial advice and I certainly don’t trust their supposed knowledge of the current Greenwich real estate market. If you do, you may end up like the plumber I met who was still renting an apartment because, when he had a chance to buy a house for $15,000, was told by his father to “wait for prices to fall”. He is still waiting.

To update some statistics from two weeks ago, 177 houses have gone to contract since April 1, in all price ranges. We’re on track to equal last year’s volume and last year was the second best year (surpassed only by 2004) in Greenwich real estate history. And, finally, I’ll repeat that houses are not “investments” – they’re a place to raise your family. It’s just a nice bonus that, over the years, Greenwich homes have returned a sizeable premium for money spent.

Do As I Say …
Saw a cop using a hand-held cellphone the other day as he cruised the Post Road. Do you suppose that he turned himself in when he reached Headquarters? Neither do I.

Dig This!
Last week I turned over the soil in my vegetable garden in preparation for planting. Just as I was finishing I looked down at my feet and spotted what I took to be a large, perfect arrow head. Thanks to Greenwich native Tod Hinlicky and his friend, Professor Ernie Weigand of Norwalk Community College, I learned that I had discovered a prehistoric spear head from the Late Archaic Period, 2,500 B.C. to 1,700 B.C. I’ve been looking for this sort of thing since I was a young boy and I choose to find it - er, encouraging that one turned up after 4,000 years just two days after I finished my book on Siwanoy Indians. Or it’s just a matter of frost heaves – I prefer the former. There are some interesting reflections here, aside from the nature of the universe. One is how slowly technology changed back then – these stone points were made in the same, identical fashion for 2,000 years before someone dreamed up something better. Another is the ephemeral nature of real estate “ownership”. I wonder who’ll be on this piece of land, and whether the land will even be above water (water level fluctuates - when the point was made, the sea level was 20 feet lower than today) 4,000 years from now. Neato, says I.

How to Sell your House
The owners of 11 Old Wagon Road (disclosure: my listing, but it’s an apt illustration) did everything right to prepare their house for sale. First, they maintained it during their years of ownership – nothing fancy, but they kept it in good shape and repair, moved a few walls to open up the floor plan, etc. Then just before listing it they power washed the siding, fixed a dented downspout, trimmed the shrubs and so forth; all those little things that make a first impression positive or negative. They redid the master bath and, finally, priced it right: $1,035,000, fitting it nicely in between the few Old Greenwich houses it would compete with. Has it sold? Tune in next week but as of this writing, two days after it hit the market, it’s being shown constantly and I predict good things. So that’s about it: maintain your house while you own it, get it looking as appealing as possible before hitting the market (I’m not talking “staging” just putting away clutter and such) and price it so that it will look better than its competition. It will sell, and sell quickly.

No Mow Grass
Awhile ago I mentioned that Scotts is working on a genetically-engineered grass that requires minimal mowing and maintenance. There’s a condominium complex on the corner of Orchard and Valley in Cos Cob that’s gone Scotts one step better: plastic. They’ve swathed the entire yard in Astro-Turf and, actually, it looks okay. Whether it will look odd in winter when everything around it is brown, we shall see but no one’s spending a dime on lawn care right now and that must help the budget. Wave of the future? I hope not.

The Beach, Revisited
Just in time for free publicity for my book, another law suit has been filed concerning access to Tod’s by non-resident pedestrians and bicyclists. I don’t understand why we as a town are fighting so hard over this. The main concern over limiting admission, so far as I know, is over-crowding and lack of parking. Bicyclists and joggers seem to loop around the Point’s road network and then go home; at least, I’ve never seen one toting coolers and blankets. Besides, as a bicyclist myself, I find it annoying to have to remember to transfer my beach card from my wallet to my sock and than back again. I love the beach and consider it one of the town’s finest assets – I just don’t see an open admissions policy for pedestrians to be a threat. Now, fireworks every night . . . .

Going, Going Gone
Twenty-two houses went to contract last week, including several in bidding wars. There’s still plenty of inventory and I’d prefer to be a buyer than a seller right now but if you are a buyer, don’t delude yourself and think that a well-priced house is only attractive to you. I did see that one house that went to contract did so after five years on the market. I ran the history and see that it was originally listed at exactly it’s last asking price way back in 2001. It came on and off the market since then with, first, an ever-increasing asking price and then a steady decline until it returned where it started. Burst bubble? I think not; rather, a seller with an unrealistic opinion of his house’s value. It’s a very nice house but I never showed it over those years because I didn’t think it was worth what was asked. Once it was, it sold.

The State of the Market

A real estate column (not this one, thank goodness) recently opined that “a pattern has emerged in the real estate market in lower Fairfield County ….[S] ingle family home sales have spiraled down or remained stable. Prices continued their upward run in Norwalk, Westport and Darien….Condo sales may be up, or down, but prices are still on the increase.”

So there’s your pattern: we’re either in a death spiral or soaring or staying level – okay?

The market is a bit confusing right now, but, despite what Barron’s says, there’s no death spiral here. I heard another agent say that our market is down 56% from last year. That’s absolute nonsense and, since rumors and nonsense can (sometimes) be defeated by facts, I looked some up. Turns out, prices are actually up, not down. Inventory has grown, but well-priced houses continue to sell. Here are the numbers for single family homes, 1st quarter: 2006: 156 sold, $2.8 million average, $2.1 median; 2005: 166 sold, $2.37 avg., $1.675 median; 2004 (best year ever): 173 sold, $2,21 average, $1.550 median; 2003: 136 sold, $1.757 average, $1.175 median.

There are at this writing (June 9) 151 single family houses under contract in town, most of which, presumably, went to contract after January. I can’t dig up the number under contract for the same period in 2005 but I do find that 85 houses sold in July of that year and 107 in August (192, total). As a rough rule of thumb the majority of contracts close within 90 days, especially when school starts in September, so I think most of these can fairly be traced back to May and June contracts. If we average 4 contracts per day (a modest expectation) between now and the end of the month, we’ll have 215 houses in contract. “The bubble has burst! The bubble has burst!”

Inventory as of June 1st, 2006: 542; 2005: 468; 2004: 425. Our inventory is 14% higher than at this time in 2005, but that’s an improvement from January, when we were 34% higher. Houses are being picked off.

In summary, like politics, real estate is local. Stocks are traded worldwide, and what happens in Urkistan may very well effect a hedge fund in Greenwich. But before you believe that condo gluts in Florida or layoffs in Flint mean the value of your house in Greenwich is collapsing, check things out around town. How’s your hedge fund doing? Anyone lost her job at your firm? Nice bonus last year? Chances are, you and your peers are doing just fine. If so, guess who’s ready, able, willing to buy a house in this town?

On Top of Old Smokey

Well, on top of Round Hill, anyway, David Ogilvy has just listed a fantastic old house that is one of the last of “The Great Estates”. The house is very nice, with all its original (1939) charm including beautiful moldings and carved woodwork but forget that, what sets this house apart from anything else I’ve seen are its views. To reach the house, you climb a long, winding red gravel driveway and arrive in a courtyard that has views of Long Island and Long Island Sound – I swore a felt a sea breeze, in fact. From the house, and its beautiful lawns, those same views are present, as well as the Manhattan skyline. I’m told that, when the leaves are down, the Berkshires can be seen. All those views are protected because the top of the hill is 570’ and the adjoining properties are at least 60’ below. Until we rezone for high-rises in the Back Country, no one’s going to spoil your day. Twenty-two acres of gardens, lawns, meadows and woods, a pool, tennis court. And all the usual accoutrements you’d expect at this price which, by the way, is $38,000,000. I’m a little short this week but if your year’s going well, there’s not another property in town with this nice a location. It’s a real estate cliché to describe a property as “truly unique” but in this case, it’s true.

Memorial Day Parade
I don’t want to sound ungrateful to its organizers, but this year’s Memorial Day parade in Old Greenwich was the most disorganized, skimpiest creation ever. I understand some of the difficulties, including, from what I’ve read, the recent practice of various marching bands to demand an appearance fee which has drastically cut their numbers from our little march. But when I participated in the parade, both as a kid and later as a parent, there was an organizer back at the starting point who ensured that everyone stepped off at the right time. Judging from the half-hour delayed start and the straggly gaps between Little Leaguers and gardeners this year, that person must have retired. I’ve always enjoyed the parade and liked the fact that anyone who wanted to could join in. Nothing against Brownies and kids on bicycles, but I miss the soldiers (we did have one, Christopher MacDonald, back from a year’s duty in Iraq- thank you, Mr. MacDonald) and the marching bands. And send more bagpipes!

Computer Wizaard
I've been a Mac guy all of my computer life (that would be since 1988), so I never had to learn anything about the machines – just plug them in and off you go. That innocent life changed recently when I bought a new Mac that also runs Windows so that I can access the MLS from home. It took me twelve hours to get the Microsoft side up and running- sheesh.

So when I wanted to install a wireless network I didn’t try to do it myself but instead Alex Lahuerta here in Greenwich. What a smart move. Alex is a 2001 GHS grad, a former engineering student at UCONN now working as a consultant to earn the rest of his way through college. When he sat down at my computer and started keying in like mad it was obvious that he's a pro, completely at home with computers and multi-tasking. He simultaneously dealt with getting his dog home to his native Norway via Icelandic Airlines, SBC's DSL voicemail hell for obtaining system configurations and explaining to me what was going on and what he was doing. Fabulous effort, fabulous results. And he charged all of $45 per hour (he tried to discount his time to an actual elapsed time of 45 minutes, but, having recently paid $120 for an hour of completely ineffective “repair” service, I wouldn't hear of it). Bottom line is that I'm now cruising the Internet effortlessly and speedily, all thanks to this young man. Alex will tutor, install, repair and consult on all things computer. He's gracious, polite, smart as a whip and, although he doesn't realize it, dirt cheap. You can exploit all this (and help him finish school) by calling him at (203) 940-1403 or emailing him at solutions@AlexLahuerta.com. If you run a small business or just want help with a home computer, I can't recommend him more strongly. Go for it.

Mea Culpa
A few years back I described Cary Road in Riverside as the worst street in town. Not surprisingly, I heard from a number of the street’s residents who disagreed with my opinion. I said somethng snarky about the rusted chain link fences on the road and let it drop. But I recently sold a small house in the area to a young family and, in the course of repeated viewings, inspections etc. had the opportunity to meet some of the neighbors. They’re absolutely great. Friendly, unpretentious, generous and welcoming. And I wasn’t tarred and feathered. So I was completely wrong, and I apologize. If you’d like to join the fun you have an opportunity via Lynne Stewart’s new listing at 10 Cary. Small bungalow right on the Mianus, asking $779,000. I’d suggest that it’s a teardown but then I’ll probably re-offend a new crop of people, so I’ll just say the setting will support a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood.

19 Shannon Lane
At $1,225,000, this house seems to be priced way below market value. Looks rather boring from outside and it's a split level (horrors!), but absolutely pristine inside, with a very nice layout. With what you'll save on this house's price you can afford a decent architect to redesign the exterior and you will have a real bargain. Ellen Mosher’s listing.

Unidentified Location
I just toured a very expensive new house and was disappointed to see that its builder took every opportunity to skimp on finishes. It shows, and shows badly. Unfortunately, most buyers couldn’t care less about how a house is built: sophisticated drainage systems, quality of framing, efficient furnaces, etc. What they notice, and what they will pay for, are finishes. So load up on the marble and expensive trim work if you want to receive top dollar.

Venting
I’ve noticed that builders of many of the new, hugely expensive houses popping up like mushrooms spend a fortune on the exterior: cedar roofs, copper gutters, etc. and then ruin the effect by venting fireplaces and dryers with cheap aluminum pipes stuck through the side. It looks like hell, so I checked with Old Greenwich’s Jan Ivarsson, my source of knowledge for everything involving high-end houses to see if there are alternatives. He assures me that there are, including more attractive and expensive vents, and designing a chimney ahead of time to incorporate a pocket to shelter (and hide) the now mandatory outside air source. Jan points out that appliances are usually the last things to arrive at a new house and the vents are often an after-thought, which explains why so many end up protruding at eye level, right next to the front door. Dumb. A good architect and a good builder will think things through before ever starting construction.

Bidding Wars
They’re still going on, despite what you read in the New York Times. And houses continue to sell: in Old Greenwich alone, four houses in the $3,500,000 - $4,000,000 range went to contract recently. Many buyers are certain that, these days, they’re the only ones interested in a house and they refuse to feel any sense of urgency. That’s fine, and entirely justified when dealing with an overpriced property. But, priced well, houses are attracting multiple bids, so listen to your Realtor. And if you don’t trust her advice, what are you doing with her?

Inventory
On the other hand, our housing inventory continues to build. Single family homes are up 14% from this time a year ago, condominiums 54% (both numbers courtesy of Bob Fossum, Shore & Country). What this tells me and should tell you is that this is not the time to try for a record price. There are plenty of choices for buyers out there and if your house isn’t offering good value for the dollar, those buyers will go elsewhere.

Overlooked on Oval?
When Rick Loh first listed 22 Oval Avenue in Riverside for $2,195,000 I thought it was a good price for a great house and said so in this column. My powers of persuasion aren’t much, obviously, because the house is still available and is now priced at $1,895,000. This is a funny business - some houses that we agents love can sit, ignored, while dreadful, overpriced (in our opinion) monstrosities get snapped up instantly. The marketplace dictates what happens out there rather than any one agent’s opinion, but here’s my recommendation again. This is a wonderful house, built in 1926 and renovated in 1999. Nine-foot ceilings, very nice back yard, on a great street within easy walking distance to the train, Eastern and Riverside School. I don’t know of anything as nice in its price range.

Risk Aversion
I see that our Selectmen have repealed the 1957 ordinance that offered a $1.00 fine for parking tickets paid within 24 hours. It was fun while it lasted, but I suppose the repeal makes sense. I noticed that when doing a quick risk/benefit analysis at parking meters last week the reduction of the possible penalty from fifteen dollars to a measly buck resulted in my quarter remaining stuck in my pocket. That’s no way to run a railroad.

Not In My Name
(Readers who become infuriated when I diverge from real estate should skip this paragraph) Richard Blumenthal seems to think that the best way to become Senator is to oppose every attempt to bring energy to this region. As the official legal representative of this state he has blocked, repeatedly, cross-Sound electrical cables, a LNG terminal and a natural gas pipeline. His latest effort, an injunction against the natural gas pipeline, was denied by a federal judge two weeks ago. Coincidentally, on that same day Connecticut’s National Public Radio station aired a story about impending blackouts this summer. I sail, fish and even swim in Long Island Sound, and support any reasonable plan to clean it up and keep it clean; I also live and work in this state and want to see it prosper. I don’t see an incompatibility in those goals but our Attorney General does. We’ll see what happens, but Connecticut already has one of the lowest growth rates among the fifty states, one of the highest costs to do business in and some of the most expensive energy. A proponent of those policies doesn’t seem like a good candidate for higher office, to me.

Popping Bubbles?
There are probably more price reductions being filed with the Board these days than there are new listings. Evidence of the great bubble burst? I think not; rather, we’re just seeing prices adjust to where they should have been all along. Jean Ruggiero, for instance, just took over a Lake Avenue listing that had been previously priced at $5,700,000. Jean dropped its price to $3,150,000 and had it under contract within ten days. We’re not witnessing a $2,550,000 drop in value – the house was never worth $5,700,000. Another example: a builder bought some land a couple of weeks ago for $2,500,000 and re-listed it the next day for $3,500,000. When it eventually sells for something much closer to its original price, will we have seen a bursting bubble or just a market place intervention that separated the builder from whatever he was smoking and returned him gently to earth? The latter, in my opinion.

Insurance
The other week I mentioned a beautiful old house on Cliffdale Road that, while in the process of being restored, burned down. Chubb Insurance paid to have it rebuilt exactly as it was, even down to antique floorboards and moldings. The telling of that story reminded me that it might be time to once again discuss the various types of coverage out there, so I called Raveis’s Insurance guru and fellow Greenwich resident, Mary Dowd to discuss it (no, I get no kick-back for mentioning Mary – that would be immoral, illegal and fattening – but I try to find knowledgeable people in this business and exploit them mercilessly). Mary says there are three basic types of insurance: market value, which banks care about, just protects the bank’s interest, reconstruction and guaranteed replacement value. You’ve probably got more invested in your house than just the amount of the mortgage and, since part of that mortgage reflects the value of the land, you’ll want better protection than market value. Replacement cost insurance is okay (I have it) but beware of caps – many firms limit payouts to 125% - 150% of the face value of the policy. This caused a lot of heartache in California when homeowners lost their houses to wildfires and discovered they didn’t have enough coverage to re-build (same thing happened after Katrina). The most expensive type of policy, guaranteed replacement value, means just what it says: they’ll rebuild your house, regardless of cost. So if you have a very special house, with a lot of exotic custom features, you might want to have your policy reviewed by an expert to see what coverage you actually have. Your current agent can do this for you, and I’d recommend scheduling a checkup. Or call Mary at (203) 767-9049. She can interpret your current policy and tell you about others, all, I understand, without pressuring you or moving permanently into your home.

24 Rocky Point Lane
This is a great listing of Bill Schoonmaker’s that should have flown off the market but, a month after it was listed, it’s still available. The original 1932 house was raised above the high waters that occasionally afflict this section of Old Greenwich and completely renovated. There are fabulous water views from almost every room, a huge (for OG) backyard and a purchase on this street moves you to the head of the waiting list for the Rocky Point Club. As a sailor, I never liked Rocky’s unprotected mooring field but it’s a wonderful neighborhood beach/swim club filled with very nice, unpretentious people; something that can’t necessarily be said about some other “neighborhood” clubs which seem to have strayed from their origins. $2,995,000. Buy it.

Zillow.com
Have you tried this site yet? It purports to tell you what your house is worth but it’s not yet ready for prime time. Example: it claims a five year 125% appreciation rate for one street, based on one address and zero appreciation for the same street if you plug in an address on the opposite side. Another example: it gives a price range for another house $1,987,260 (sounds so precise, doesn’t it?) to $2,958,810. “Official” price, $2,200,000. I valued the house at $3,250,000 while the agent who listed it says $3,650,000. I think I’m closer to the mark than the listing agent but both our estimates are a long way from $2,200,000. Zillow’s a work in progress but, so far, it’s not much of a threat to my industry.

Painter Follow Up
Charlie Ford’s phone number is (203) 536-9106. Good guy.

Ah, Entitlement!
From the New York Times comes this story of the working poor: an agent was showing a couple $3,000,000 weekend homes out on Long Island. The wife didn’t like the selection and, turning to her husband snapped, “If you had a good job, we wouldn’t have to live like this!”

Days On Market. Sale to List Price Ratios
I’ve mentioned these two worthless statistics before but it won’t hurt to bring them up again. At first blush one would think that these are two numbers of vital interest to buyers and sellers; they would be, if they weren’t so often manipulated. The Board claims to be doing something about days on market but so far, a remedy has eluded it. So here’s how the process currently works: A house come on the market in, say, January ’05 at $10,600,000. It sits unsold through numerous price reductions before its listing is deleted or expires and it’s immediately re-listed at yet a still lower price. It finally sells in April of this year for $8,500,000. Time on market would appear to be, to a rational person, 16 months, and the sales to list price ratio would be 80%. Ah, but you aren’t a professional Realtor – if you were, your logic would tell you that days on market only began at the time it was re-listed and you’d calculate the sales ratio based on the house’s last asking price of $8,995,000, giving you 48 days and 95%, respectively. I am not picking on this house, by the way; this is done all the time. I use its example only to illustrate that, until our Realtor Association’s data collection methods are revised, you should be highly skeptical of numbers that show the average days on market is 118 and the average sales to list price ratio is 96%. It ain’t necessarily so.

Takikomi in Cos Cob
Because I’ve never detected any evidence of use of those ten-burner professional stoves and million dollar kitchens that are now standard in town, I assume that Greenwich does takeout. If so, here’s a great opportunity to expand your taste horizons. Takikomi is a hole in the wall at 395 East Putnam Avenue, just beyond (heading east) Dunkin Donuts in the Minute Man dry cleaners mall. It specializes in absolutely delicious Japanese foods and, while it holds two tiny tables, it’s really a takeout and catering operation (free delivery on orders over $25). I’ve driven by the place every day for three years and only just discovered its existence. I’ve been eating my way through their menu ever since. Lots of fish, but also many cooked items: Karaage (chicken), pork cutlets, teriyaki, hibachi, etc. Everything is served in large, divided trays – easy dining, easy clean up, and everything is good. Inexpensive– complete meals run from $7.50 to $10.95 and nice, pleasant sales help. There’s a separate menu for corporate and private party catering. (203) 422-0448 or you can order online at takikomi.com

21 Hendrie Lane
Mary Louise Morgan has just listed this Riverside house for $2,295,000 and it seems well worth its price. Its present owners completely renovated it three years ago and it shows nicely. Four bedrooms, huge eat-in kitchen (see above) and a reasonable backyard, for Riverside. I still miss my family’s acre+ on Gilliam Lane but, like the pick-up baseball games we held there, those days are long gone.

Summer Jobs for Kids
Just as no modern, responsible parent would let their child engage in any unsupervised sport activity, every summer job for the little darlings must somehow nurture their future as investment bankers, or so it seems. I ran into Charlie Ford the other day and we discussed just this issue (as well as the crummy, disposable houses being built these days, but that’s another article). Charlie’s father taught me how to paint houses years ago and after he retired his son took over the business (he’s great, but I can’t find his number. Check back next week). Although Charlie is flooded with job offers he can only accept about half – not enough good workers in town and during the summer, the busiest time for exterior painting, no college kids. “Greenwich kids don’t do painting” he says, and I’m sure he’s right. Most seem to be off in the corporate world serving as unpaid interns. I think the children and their parents are missing something here. By working for Charlie’s dad, I learned all sorts of things: showing up on time, customer relations, time management and, once our crew was experienced enough to work unsupervised, responsibility and decision making. We made good money, too. Did the experience pad our resume? Probably not as much as an internship at Goldman Sachs, but I never worried about that. I still don’t.

Listing Your Home
Two agents I know recently lost the chance to list a home because they each told the owner that her house was worth something like $2,350,000. Who got the listing? A third agent, who gave her price opinion as $3,350,000. The hopeful seller obviously believed that the third agent was a kindred soul who saw value where lesser agents couldn’t. In fact, the seller has probably done herself no favor and is in for a long, long period of showing her house to non-buyers. A case in point is a house in Greenwich that sold last week for $3,725,000. An impressive sum, but this house sat on the market since September, 2002, when it was priced at $5,500,000. That’s an awfully long time to keep your house in showroom condition. If you want to sell your house, price it competitively. If you just want to annoy yourself and give house tours to strangers, then stick a ridiculous price on it, buy yourself an open house sign and stick it on your front yard on Sundays. You don’t need a Realtor for that.

Fools Rush In?
An interesting Old Greenwich property showed up on the market last week and I alerted four different builders to its possibilities. All four, all experienced builders, passed – they have other projects going and didn’t want to over-extend themselves in this uncertain market. I can’t say for sure, but I think that, a year ago, at least one of them would have stepped up and grabbed it. Despite my own clients’ lack of interest, the property still sold, at a premium, in a bidding war, so there are still some bold builders out there. To paraphrase the old saw, there are old builders and bold builders but no old, bold builders.

As evidence of the above, two properties went to contract last December and between then and early April, when they actually sold, the buyer combined and reconfigured the lots and then designed and got town approval for two new 10,000 sq. ft. houses. The lots are back on the market, asking a $1,250,000 premium for those approvals and plans. It seems obvious that someone has developed cold feet and, if I were a spec builder of a $10,000,000 house, I’d be donning wooly socks too.

And the Reason for the Above?
Borrowing power has dropped. A year ago, a 5.75%, $500,000 30 year jumbo fixed cost $2,917 a month to service. Today, that same loan is at 6.75% - to keep the same $2,917 monthly payment, the buyer must borrow 10% less: $449,740. $1,000,000 in borrowing power last year? So sellers, adjust accordingly and buyers, get off the dime, because next year, things may well be worse.

Great Houses
Taste in housing is an entirely subjective thing, but I think Patte Nusbaum’s listing at 6 Jofran Lane, $2,950,000 and Diddle Mcallister’s at 230 Round Hill Road, $5,450,000, are two of the nicest, most interesting houses I’ve been in in a long time. Both are (gasp) contemporaries, which means they’re open, airy and filled with light. Taking nothing away from another listing on Jofran, a traditional colonial with low ceilings and lots of walls, if I were trying to sell No. 6 I would first show the colonial and, if a sense of claustrophobia set in, move the client next door to see and experience what $450,000 less can buy. They’d be blown away, if they shared my taste. That said, I bet the colonial sells first.

Classics
Don’t like contemporaries? Then check out David Ogilvy’s 1925 house at 40 Park Place ($3,995,000) or Dianne Carnegie’s 1917 house at 31 sawmill Lane ($9,850,000). Both houses have been completely renovated and restored and are absolutely beautiful. Park is one of my favorite central-Greenwich streets and demands and deserves a premium, so $4 million seems like a fair, intelligent price. The Sawmill Lane listing is far more expensive but it’s probably twice as large as the other, sits on its own three acres vs. 0.85 on Park, and abuts an additional sixteen acres of conservation land. Obviously, two different houses for two different buyers, but both are splendid.

Riverside Run Saturday May 13
When my kids were younger they’d make me put down my cigarettes, tug on my tennis shoes and pant through the entire three mile loop of this race. Lots of fun seeing my neighbors and their kids, some walking, but I was always amused at the sight of a few guys so desperate to win something, anything, that they’d come from out of town and sprint around the course, outpacing five year olds and family pets to claim a cheap trophy. That’s a pathetic cry for help, if you ask me.

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.

Poll Numbers
According to Gallop, 7 out of 10 consumers think the housing bubble is soon to burst, but only 4 out of 10 believe that their own neighborhood will decline. Why the discrepancy? Probably because more people actually know something about their own area and ignore scary news stories about “national” conditions, whatever they are. This seems similar to that other recent poll which found that we all think that 90% of the population is fat but only 40% think that we ourselves are.

Zoning and Walls
For years, Paul Pugliese, architect, and principal of Greenwich Land Co., has been a one man band at our P&Z hearings, criticizing their proposals but, far more important, offering solutions to the problems the P&Z (dreams up and) seeks to address. They routinely ignored him so now the Board of Realtors has created a committee, headed by Paul and Sabine Schoenberg, that will, we hope, bring a multitude of voices to join Paul at hearings. Will it work? Who knows, but here’s one of the P&Z’s proposed regulations that ought to stir up some interest: all walls, fences (including split rail and picket) or plantings over three-feet tall must be set back 10’ from any public highway. Now, there are certainly safety issues involved here, and no one should be forced to proceed blindly onto a public highway, but, enforced on neighborhoods like Riverside, Cos Cob, Byram or Old Greenwich, this regulation would, at the least, bifurcate front and side yards, leaving 10’ strips of (taxable) yards outside the province of the owners and yielding 5’-10’ yards inside the fence. That’s a crummy idea that doesn’t even begin to address the perceived problem of sight lines. Some lots should not have fences or hedges on their perimeters – other lots can block out traffic noise with no effect on public safety- so what’s called for here is, I suggest, a lot-by-lot approach, not a sledgehammer rule that hits every front and side yard in town. If you happen to live in a neighborhood of smallish lots – Old Greenwich, Riverside, Cos Cob or Byram, say, take a stroll outside and see how much (or how little) of your front yard will be left if this regulation passes. Then call up the P&Z and register your comments. Or wait for a petition we Realtors have ginned up to come your way, and sign it. We’ll try to take it from there.

New Houses
I drove up Riverside Lane the other day, took note of the many new houses being built and realized that like New Orleans, Greenwich is seeing the complete replacement of its housing stock, albeit piece-by-piece here, compared to the post-Katrina construction wave down there. This isn’t necessarily good or bad, I suppose, but the implications are (a) the town will continue to get more expensive to live in and (b) there are a lot of houses here that are rapidly approaching only their land value. The latter doesn’t necessarily mean your house’s value will depreciate but any increase in value will be limited to whatever rate land appreciates. I’m painting with a hugely overbroad brush here, but, as a generality, I think it works.

And More on New Houses
We have seventy-one new single-family houses on the market right now, fifty-one of which are priced at $3,000,000 or above. Many builders I know are shuffling their feet nervously, wondering whether to proceed with new projects, but I don’t think that statistic is as daunting as it appears. Sixty-six new houses in that price range sold or have gone to contract in the past twelve months and thirty of those went this year. One thing that does give me pause is seeing so much new construction going up that, so far as I know, is not yet on the market. Unless these are all custom jobs, which I doubt, there will be a large new influx of inventory in the next few months, which will render the reassuring statistics cited above, moot..

A Sight I Never Thought to See
I toured a beautiful new house the other day, priced at the top of the price range and was struck by my feeling that the woman’s closet was too small. Not too small for normal people and normal houses – this one could accommodate the belongings of a family of five – but, at this price level, the lady’s closet/dressing area is usually the size of a small house (the guy’s remains tiny, regardless of the size of the house). I believe I’ve been in this business too long if I, an oblivious male, can walk into what is essentially an airplane hangar and think, “gee, this feels a little cramped”.