No More Cops?
I’ll be sorry to see the patrolmen directing Greenwich Avenue traffic disappear, but the logic of such a move seems compelling. Unlike thirty years ago, when the Avenue rolled up its sidewalks at sunset, the new restaurants there now produce almost as much traffic after dark as they do during they day, yet the patrolmen quit at 5 (or so), and then there’s no control at all. And while it’s true that an occasional crime has been thwarted by one of these men and women, even more have gone unnoticed. Remember the guy who cut the window out of Betteridge’s while working fifty feet from a manned intersection? The robbers of Putnam Trust who, having pulled that heist off and in the face of an all-points bulletin, continued down the Avenue to duplicate their crime at People’s? The police say they’d be more effective walking the sidewalks and Jim Lash says we’d save money. It’s probably time to listen to them, even if we’ll all miss those white gloves.

What Are Our Builders Up To?
When I recently suggested to another agent that, unlike Naples, Florida, whose housing market is collapsing, Greenwich doesn’t have speculators, she reminded me that we do: they’re called builders. Some recent open house tours made me appreciate her insight. These guys are building on ever-more-marginal lots: swampland, back lots and rocky little outcrops and pricing their creations at ever-higher levels. I’m not at all sure that there are buyers out there willing to pay $6,000,000, or more, for a mosquito- infested yard, even if the accompanying house comes complete with all the latest and most expensive French appliances. Of course, if the buyers come from the City, perhaps they won’t know about the relationship between swamps and insects. Sell ‘em in the winter, is my advice. (By the way, speaking of the French, did you see the recent article on “Google bombs”, whereby someone with too much time on his hands creates a Google search result with er, an unexpected answer? “George Bush” yields “miserable failure” or did until Google stepped in, and “French military victories” still comes up with, “no such documents meet your search criteria”. Hoo hoo hoo).

Belle Haven
David Ogilvy has just listed 31 Bush Avenue, a six bedroom, 1890 house on almost an acre, with pool. I toured it after a long day of seeing some of those new monstrosities I write about above and told David that it served as a palate-cleanser, which it does. This is what a house should feel like, in my admittedly idiosyncratic opinion. Great, flowing rooms that can accommodate anyone’s entertaining needs and yet still serve as a wonderful family home. There’s lots of old paneling, human-sized ceiling heights, and it’s nicely renovated throughout. I’m not as enthusiastic about its price of $8,850,000 but that is very much just my opinion, and not fact; besides, if you’ve climbed far enough to afford Belle Haven, surely you’ve acquired some negotiating skills along the way. A very, very nice house.

You’ve Received an Offer – Now What?
In what seems to be a rejuvenated market a number of sellers are receiving and accepting offers almost as soon as their house is listed. It can be an agonizing decision – hold on for something better or seal the deal? There’s no one answer, appropriate for every seller and every house but I think there are more would-be sellers who regret turning down an initial offer than there are those who think they sold too soon. Often, after that first offer is declined, another buyer won’t come along for months and usually at a lower price. Hurts.

But accepting an offer doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop showing your house. I’ve been surprised recently to see several houses, with impressive price tags, stop showings within days of being listed. It may be jealousy speaking (I’d have liked to have had a chance to try to sell them to my own clients) but, in my experience, so many things can go wrong between accepting an offer and entering into a signed, contingent-free contract that it seems foolish to pull your house off the market so quickly. Remember that, until a real estate contract has been fully executed by both parties, all the promises and good faith in the world can’t compel the buyer or seller to perform. It’s good to have a back-up.

29 Stanwich Drive
Renee Gallagher (Round Hill Partners) has just listed this house for $4,450,000. A great old house (1918) with high ceilings and very nicely renovated. It’s close to town but I think its best feature is its setting on 1.24 acres in an R-12 zone. It’s getting harder and harder to find a decent yard these days and, while I acknowledge that most kids are too busy with organized sports and Nintendo to actually play outdoors in their own yard, it’s nice to be able to offer that opportunity. Great house and, in my opinion, good price.

Poisoning our Minds
Did you see the story recently where some hapless homeowner dropped a rectal thermometer and spilled an 1/8 of a tsp of mercury on his floor? More than one hundred emergency workers responded, evacuated the family, donned space suits and cleaned up the mess, presumably using a single Kleenex. My former wife Nancy, a doctor’s daughter used to play with this stuff – rolling it into little balls, running it down inclines, etc., and so did the Fountain boys. Nancy turned out just fine, with no mutations, so the odds are pretty good that the substance is as harmless as most non-alarmists claim (we Fountain boys had other issues). I blame main stream media for collectively instilling an irrational fear in our minds of any number of toxic poisons du jour. Dan Rather, commenting on a teaspoon of dioxin spilling from a train wreck some years back looked solemnly into the camera and proclaimed, “Dioxin, of course, is the deadliest chemical known to man”. It’s the “of course” that slayed me – he was dead wrong, but anyone who disagreed was a no-nothing moron. These same people have taught us to fear urea-formaldehyde insulation, mildew, radon, asbestos, underground oil tanks, child abductions, and on and on. I think it’s time to get a grip.

Threat to Greenwich Real Estate Prices?
Okay, probably just a distant threat, but my less-than-favorite Senator, Chuck Schumer, has teamed with my favorite mayor, Michael Bloomberg, to release a report that the U.S.’s position as the world’s financial center is at risk because of the onerous effect of our strict immigration laws (prevents firms from hiring talented experts), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the post-Enron “reforms” that impose huge, costly accounting requirements on all companies) and a securities litigation explosion (no explanation necessary). Just as there is no longer a need for financial firms to be stuck in Wall Street’s canyons, hedge funds IPOs and other consumers of capital are free to roam the world for accommodating places to do business. I’m not advocating eliminating all regulation of our financial industry but the report’s statistics are frightening: in 2002 (these figures are all quoted from the New York Times) London hosted 3 of the largest 50 hedge funds and now has 12. New York dropped from 28 to 18, while Connecticut (Greenwich and Stamford, really) grew from 6 to 8. The U.S. controlled 16% of the global stock-offering volume last year compared to 57% in 2001, while Europe’s share has grown from 33% to 63%. Hong Kong and other Asian markets are seeing similar growth. Between 2002 and 2005, London’s financial work force grew by 4.7% while New York City shrunk by 0.7%. The two cities are now just about equal in financial service jobs: 318,000 in London, 328,000 in NYC.

While it’s true that Wall Street had a great year in 2006 and its profits are higher than ever, much of those profits were earned overseas. Greenwich real estate prices depend heavily on a robust Wall Street and if the combination of harsh national laws and increased Connecticut taxes (which are being touted in Hartford as I write) make it more convenient to do business elsewhere, the capital, and the financial industry, will move. That may please some of my liberal friends who’ll respond, “good riddance”, but it won’t help you sell your house.

Pricing Strategy
Put your house on the market in September for $8,995,000 and it doesn’t sell. Response? Raise its price to $9,995,000. That’ll teach ‘em. I’ve yet to see this tactic work.

Whole Foods is Hiring
And offering ten bucks an hour, plus benefits. We may finally see a drop in the number of licensed Realtors in this town.

Two Nice Houses
Traci Vaccari (Round Hill Partners) has a listing at 94 Valleywood Road that I think is a good deal. Originally priced at $2,100,000, the owners have now finished the basement and dropped the price to $1,850,000, which should do it. Completely renovated in 2004, four bedrooms, 3 baths, good street and a decent, if small backyard. Only in Greenwich could this be considered a starter home but there you have it. Good house for a family with small kids.

And if, in addition to kids, you’ve got a whopping end-of-year bonus just sitting around catching dust, Mary Crist, (David Ogilvy), has listed 39 Doubling Road for $6,250,000. A 1930 Spanish style (says I – Mary claims it’s “English Manor” – go look and decide for yourself) renovated two years ago, this is a really nice place. Five fireplaces, a billiard room, for heaven’s sake, over an acre of land plus an addition acre of conservation land that’s nothing more than a huge, level yard you can use freely, pool, gardens and very close to town. Funny thing – in the early eighties I was in this house as a young lawyer conducting my first foreclosure sale. I haven’t been back until last week but the subsequent owners have obviously retrieved this beauty from its wrecked, awful condition and given it new life. Which is nice because I hate when bad things happen to good houses.

Oops!
Nationally, new housing starts are up for the second month in a row and unemployment continues to seek a new, low level, but pockets of the real estate market continue to suffer. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a condo-glut in Naples, Florida, where speculators are stuck with un-sold units. One lady has seventeen of them – make her an offer. In Washington D.C., according to the New York Times, condo developers have also over-built and are now converting their projects to rentals, for far less profit or even at a loss. Around here, things feel much better. Maria Ruggeberg, of Raveis’s Greenwich office, represents developers of a number of Stamford condo projects and she tells me that the market is hot, with lots of pre-construction contracts, but single-family homes are languishing. Pure guess here is that USB and RBS are bringing in a lot of young, single workers who aren’t interested in settling down yet, but who knows? The Greenwich single family market continues to be robust – statistics shortly – but I’m aware of one house on Stanwich Road that, a year to the day that if sold, went to contract again for $135,000 less. This was a real apples-to-apples case here, in that the house was unchanged in any way that caught my eye, so it serves as a reminder that one can indeed lose money in Greenwich real estate if plans change and you have to get out as soon as you got in.

Star Bucks in Cos Cob
Great place, friendly staff but limited parking unless you park on Strickland Road and take a 10 second stroll through the little park. I am amused at how many drivers eschew such a simple strategy and wait, endlessly, for a parking spot to open up directly in front of the store. I’m usually in and out with my order while these guys are still sitting. Many of these drivers look as though they have at least a passing familiarity with gyms, so what gives? Exhausted from working the treadmill, no doubt.

Manners
Since moving to Raveis’s Old Greenwich office a few months ago, I’ve noticed a most unwelcome change in this end of town’s citizenry: they’ve discovered their car horns. I’m not speaking of the brief toot some people might use to alert the driver ahead that the light has changed but rather the angry, hand on the horn five- second blast, repeated two or three times to drive home the point. What gives? Do we have new, rude people in town or has something made everyone furious? I think that, in the past, people refrained from such aggressive behavior out of fear that they might be blasting their neighbor. That no longer seems to control the louts, so perhaps we should adopt Mayor Koch’s brilliant proposal and make car horns sound inside, as well as outside the car. Cool.

We’re Back
So here we are in January already, looking forward to what we all hope will be a strong spring market. I’m encouraged because there seems to be a large group of lookers out there. All lookers aren’t buyers, of course, but all buyers are lookers (learned that one in my logic class). We shall see.

Real Estate Returns to WGCH
Several years ago the new owners of our only radio station in town dumped most of the local content, including my brother Gideon’s show, in favor of out of town business news. I never listened after that but now Russ Pruner and Rick Loh, both of Shore & Country, are coming on air. Knowing Russ, I expected the show would discuss window treatments and flower arrangements but no – they’re going to discuss Greenwich real estate something that Rick, at least, knows a lot about. Friday mornings, from 10:00 – 11:00, the “LiveInGreenwich Real Estate Hour”. Brad Hvolbeck likes to make crank phone calls to shows like this (which is why I write, rather than broadcast this column) so tune in – should be good.

Reverse Mortgages
A while back I investigated a reverse mortgage for an older family friend. We ultimately concluded that the program didn’t make sense for her but I was impressed by the safeguards built into these programs to protect elderly people from getting ripped off. You’re probably familiar with the concept: someone living in a valuable house but with limited cash can take out a mortgage that pays a fixed amount each month. Upon death or sale of the house, the loan is repaid. The borrower cannot be forced from her house, even if she uses up her equity, and the heirs aren’t stuck with owing more than the house is worth. Federal regulations require financial counseling before anything is signed and, as I noted, there are a lot of sensible protections written in. But beware: there are plenty of charlatans out there, ready to fleece you. If you’re interested in the program, check with your banker or financial advisor (that’s the guy who used to be called a stockbroker, but never mind) and, if you have a child in the financial services industry, run it by them.

459 Field Point Road
This beautiful 1888 carriage house was renovated by David Ogilvy to be his new home but a change in plans has put it back on the market. As you’d expect from anything Mr. Ogilvy puts his hand to, the renovation is terrific. Beautifully landscaped outside, with deeded winter water views, everything inside has been redone at the highest level of quality. The only thing I might change is the master bedroom. The current bedroom is fine as is but there’s FAR room to create a new master suite that would have even better views and, of course, free up another bedroom (there are already five, so you could also choose to save your money). Asking $4,350,000 which, for the Belle Haven neighborhood and the condition of this house, sounds fair.

Splash
For years, my greatest fear as a real estate agent was that a client would ask to be driven around in my car. No one should be subjected to that horror but fortunately most folks today insist on driving themselves, either because they have kids strapped in car seats or, thanks to the internet, they know a property’s location and prefer to meet their agent on site. Still, no lucky streak lasts forever so it was a great relief to receive for Christmas a gift certificate for a detailing at Splash (thanks, Nancy). I told the manager that I didn’t expect miracles after four years of spilling coffee, riding my poor Honda hard and putting it away wet but he smiled and said, “I think you’ll be surprised.” Wow. It’s as close to new as an old car can get. It’s an expensive, four + hour procedure but what a result. Every nook and cranny is spotless - they even take the seats out so they can clean the grunge out of the runners. The seats are clean, the carpet shampooed, etc. I don’t expect its new, pristine condition to last through the winter (if winter ever comes) so if you ever wanted to tour the town with me, now’s the time to call.

Not All Bleak News
Back in May, Francine Colby listed 50 Dingletown, a beautiful old house on six acres, for $9,850,000. It sat through the spring and summer markets but in October a bidding war broke out and it sold last week for $10,250,000. Odd how that happens but this phenomenon of no one wanting a house and then two or more buyers appearing simultaneously occurs in all price ranges. Joan Crossman’s listing at 11 Center Road in Old Greenwich sat for three month this fall before three different buyers appeared at once. Nice for sellers when that happens, of course, but it’s a lesson for buyers: if you’re seriously attracted to a house, make the bid – you never know how much time you have, regardless of how long a house has languished.

Wall Street Follies?
Far be it from me to criticize Wall Street, the source of so many of my buyers, but the recent announcement that Reology (formerly Cendant’s real estate division) is going private in a leveraged buyout has me scratching my head. Reology holds under its umbrella several of the country’s largest real estate firms, including Century 21, Coldwell Banker and Soetheby’s. It was created just last August (?) when Cendant spun off its real estate business and now its President has suddenly discovered that the publicly traded marketplace doesn’t like cyclical businesses. Shouldn’t he have noticed this during the years when Cendant owned them? Realogy shareholders will receive a nice premium but both Moody’s and Standard & Poors are knocking Realogy’s credit rating to junk status while Realogy’s President is walking away with $135,000,000. To this non-expert, the deal seems to more about bankers’ fees and cashing in on stock options than about business, but I guess we’ll see. My guess: look for them to go public again in a couple of years, thereby generating another round of fees.

Cos Cob
There’s a nice house in Cos Cob that sold two years ago for $2,312,500. Its owners returned it to the market this spring at $2,675,000 and now, two expirations (and three brokers) later, it’s still unsold, asking $2,449,000. Even if it sells for anything close to that the owners will not stand to gain much after taxes and commissions are deducted. I don’t know if there’s a lesson here, other than it can be tough to buy at the height of the market and have to sell when it’s down (they did teach you in school that real estate is very much not a liquid investment, didn’t they), but the house’s travails caught my eye. I know that the Cos Cob market has been particularly slow this year – the same house in Riverside or Old Greenwich would almost certainly have appreciated – but still a surprising predicament for Greenwich. Oh – there is at least one more lesson here: if your house isn’t selling, you’re better off lowering its price rather than firing your broker. All the marketing in the world won’t move your house if it’s over-priced.

Starting Over
If you’re planning to sell this year, now’s the time (well okay, enjoy New Year’s Eve) to start getting it ready. Historically, the third week of January sees the start of the spring market and there will be a new crowd of buyers (we all hope) getting out and about, seeing what’s available. Your house will certainly show better when its gardens are in bloom but by then you’ll have missed a lot of buyers. Betty Moger, who ran Cleveland, Duble & Arnold forever used to preach, “if you wait for the dogwoods to bloom, you’re too late.” What was true for her long career still holds, in my opinion.

What if your house sat unsold for the fall market (or since Spring, like that Cos Cobber)? Now’s an excellent time to sit down with your agent to discuss what you can change. Price is always a good place to start, but is the master bath a wreck? Kitchen obsolete? I’m not suggesting you sink a ton of money into a sinking ship, but $10,000, say, in improvements might be more effective than dropping the price that amount.

See You Next Year
So that wraps up 2006. Not a terrible year for real estate – some of us had our best year ever – but it certainly saw a significant drop from 2004, the all-time high. Don’t panic and remember, as Realogy’s President just discovered, real estate’s a cyclical business. Happy New Year.

Do Your Homework
Senator John Kerry and that lovable Congressman Charley Rangel both
claim that if you don't do your homework you'll flunk out of school
and have to join the Army with all the other losers (I'd love to see
either one of them personally present that theory to Old Greenwich's
Stephanie Whittle, who turned down Harvard in favor of West Point and
is now flying helicopters with her fellow losers. She'd whup Kerry's
and Rangel's flabby butts). But the idea of spending time on
unpleasant tasks does have merit, especially when you're thinking
about selling your house. Finishing those partial renovations and
sprucing up the yard are always good things to do, but one that's
rarely done, and can create the most value, is determining whether you
can carve an extra lot from your yard. I hate seeing properties split
up as much as any Greenwich resident but if you're a homeowner you're
certainly entitled to do with your land whatever the town's zoning
laws permit. I think it's unwise, therefore, to bring a property on
the market with a description, "includes possible extra lot". If you
have an over-sized yard that could possibly spin off an extra building
lot, you'd be well served by paying for the legal and surveying fees
and finding out. No one likes uncertainty and you'll gain just about
nothing for a "possible" extra-lot. An officially approved second lot,
however, can be worth millions.

Pricing Strategy?
A fellow puts his house on the market in December last year for
$2,125,000. It doesn't sell so in March of '06 he lowers the price to
$1,995,000. Smart move, but it still doesn't move and so, presumably
to punish the stupid buyers who didn't recognize its value he raises
the price in May to $2,145,000, more than its original price. Well
that didn't work either – can't imagine why not - and last week he
jacked it up again, to $2,195,000. If he keeps this going, we'll soon
have the first $10,000,000 house in downtown Greenwich. He probably
thinks that the way to end poverty is to raise the minimum wage to
$1,000 per hour, too.

12 Lockwood Road
I'd place this hose in the "mystery" category of great houses that
haven't sold. Grace McCarty(Prudential) has it listed at $2,495,000
which seems right to me: it's on a half acre, has a great location,
and yet it's been on since June, with no takers. Someone's missing a
bargain here.

And on the Western Side of Town
David Ogilvy has listed 111 Duncan Drive for $2,300,000. The challenge
in selling this house is to get your buyer out of the car – the
Merritt is next door, and, in winter, you can see cars rushing past
not too far away. But forget that, and go inside. The entranceway
opens to a fantastic view of a pond and a great back yard. The house
itself is quiet and of impeccable quality. Everything is completely
up-to-date and, all in all, the house works perfectly. Duncan Drive is
part of the Baliwick community which means you get a swim/tennis club
with the package. Good value, nice house.

Buy This Book!
You're all invited to a book signing party at Arcadia Coffee House in
Old Greenwich next Monday, December 11th, from 7- 9:00 ish. "My book,
"Greenwich Mean Time", tells the story of a sorry bunch of
faux-Indians who try passing themselves off as Golden Hill Indians in
Bridgeport and do badly at it until a certain Stamford lawyer rescues
them from obscurity by transforming them into Siwanoys and bringing
them to Tod's Point so that they can claim the place for their own and
establish a casino. Everyone's favorite Realtors are here: Prunella
Russell, Davinia Mather Barbie Hopkins and my pal, Martha Kelly (you
get a free book, Martha – sorry to have abused your name). How, you
ask, did I navigate that fine line between satire and offending
Native-American sensitivities? With a Caterpillar DC-10, of course.
The story is an equal opportunity offender, making it a perfect
Christmas gift for almost anyone.

Will those two stalwarts of Greenwich Time, Bernie Yudain and Jerry
Dumas be there? Probably not: I told each of them that the reporter
"Jerry Yudain" was based on the other guy, so their noses are probably
out of joint. But the offer of free wine and food might just lure them
out, who knows? Anyway, come yourself, and have fun.

Maher Avenue – Barbarians at the Doors
Some years ago a local real estate columnist wrote about what a wonderful place the Mahr Avenue neighborhood (next to Brunswick) was for trick-or-treating. He unleashed a monster. Today, it seems, every Back Country and Westchester County resident loads her kids into the SUV and drops them off to pillage the area. My brother Gideon and his significant other, Suzie, simply shut off their lights and flee; those who stayed behind did not fare well. One neighbor reported that she served 1,100 (I kid you not) bandits. Bad enough were the parents carrying infants and toting adult “gift bags”; the worst were kids who, surveying what this beleaguered homeowner offered, demanded, “what else you got?” This situation will cure itself, of course, as more and more homeowners follow Gideon and Suzie’s example and thus diminish the attractiveness of this area as a source for looting, but what a shame; what had been a great neighborhood tradition has descended into a mire of greed and bad manners.

14 Buena Vista Drive
After writing about multi-million dollar homes, it’s always refreshing to discover a starter home under a million (okay, that’s ridiculous, but …) that’s worth mentioning. Pete Fina, Weichert, has listed a Dutch Colonial on Buena Vista Drive for $839,000 that I think is well priced and, in fact, a bargain. Buena Vista’s a really nice street in Glenville; quiet and filled with kids. This house has four bedrooms, two baths and is already rough-plumbed to accommodate a master bathroom, which I’d do, as a new owner. Not much of a yard, given its 0.11 acreage, but what are you going to do? It is, as they say, what it is, and I liked it.

Greenwich Shellfish Commission
When I was a very young kid I used to dig for steamers at the Riverside Yacht Club beach. That ended around 1963 when the health Department got around to sampling our local waters and was apparently horrified at what it found. Ooops; no wonder I turned out the way I did. But time, and pollution control marches on and in 1986 Lucy Jineshian, Dan Barrett, Bill Crane and Scott Wakeman (and Sue Baker, soon after), began a long campaign to reopen our waters for shell fishing. This band of volunteers spent more than five years procuring water samples and delivering them to the state health authorities before finally achieving their goal. The Shell Fish Commission recently hosted a twenty-year anniversary celebrating those efforts at, fittingly enough, The Riverside Yacht Club. A grand time was had by all but I’m writing this to remind, or inform you all that clams, mussels and oysters are waiting for your taking at Tod’s and other locations around town. You need a permit ($15, at Town Hall or Sportsmen’s Den) and implement of destruction like a rake or fork, a bucket, a size ring so you don’t grab under-sized clams and probably a pair of rubber boots. That’s it. It’s a great way to get outside on otherwise dreary winter days and it’s something kids especially seem to enjoy doing with their parents. Beats standing on the sideline of a soccer field, in my opinion.

What to be a volunteer warden? Call the Commission at 622-7777 (or check out greenwichct.org/shellfish/shellfish.asp (hey, I didn’t come up with such an awkward address) for additional information, including clamming locations, tide charts (you’ll want to do this at low tide, duh) etc. I can’t vouch for the payment wardens receive but you do get a nifty hat, much improved over the original, and it offers other benefits. I was speeding through Damarascotta, Maine late one night when I was pulled over by a trooper. I couldn’t immediately locate my driver’s license so I proffered my clam warden’s card instead. “Clam Warden, eh?” he said, “well slow down!” Yessir. I can’t guarantee this trick will work in an inland location but heck – better than nothing.

And Speaking of Waterfront
Anne Simpson just listed a fantastic piece of it at 20 Shoreham Club Drive in Old Greenwich for $6,900,000. Great house but even better views so my guess is that (a) it will sell quickly and (b) it’ll be torn down and replaced by some 10,000 sq.ft. eye sore. Well, what do you expect to happen to a house built as long ago as 1984? The thing’s obsolete!

Book Party!
I’ll be signing copies of “Greenwich Meantime" at Arcadia Coffee House Monday, December 11, 7:30 – 9:00. Food, wine, fun, I hope.

Landscaping
When I recently revisited 160 Bedford Road (which I wrote about last week) I initially thought that I’d pulled into the wrong driveway. What I remembered as a wooded property, albeit with a great lawn in front, was now wide open with great, sweeping vistas over all its eight acres. Because there’s nothing worse than barging unexpectedly and uninvited into a stranger’s home, I snuck around back to make sure that the distinctive pool and pool house were still there. They were so, emboldened, I entered the house and met its listing agent Jane Gosden. “So what happened?” says I, and Jane explained that last summer’s tornado swept away sixty-five mature trees and a similar number from the neighboring property. “Mother Nature’s vacuum cleaner” was how Jane described the process, and she was absolutely right. It cost the poor homeowner close to $100,000 to clean up the wreckage (home owner’s insurance pays for damage caused by trees that hit your house; otherwise, you’re on your on own here) but the salutary effect was probably well worth it. My point is, if you’re cleaning up your house to prepare it for sale, take a look at your grounds. Trees have a habit of growing ever larger and, if you’ve owned your house for a long time, they may have crowded close and now block your views. I’m not suggesting a clear-cutting operation but there are very few homes in town that wouldn’t benefit from a session with a chainsaw-wielding tree-cutter.

26 Mayfair Lane
Carolyn Sarsen (David Ogilvy & Associates) has just listed this beautiful old home for $8,350,000, which is a tad out of my price range but perhaps not for you Wall Street bonus babies. It was built in 1936 and last renovated in 1971 which means it’s due for more, but what a house. Set on five acres off of Pecksland Road, it reminds me of some of the houses of my (rich) friends that I used to visit growing up. Beautiful grounds, a nice pool and terrace it is, as the owner described it, “just a good house to live in.” It certainly is; today’s buyer will probably want to expand it, needlessly, in my opinion, but there’s plenty of room to do that, should you wish.

Moving Down the Food Chain
Alice Duff (Soetheby’s) has listed 27 Doverton Drive, off of Sabine Road, for $3,985,000. A terrific contemporary that was completely rehabilitated by its present owners-fellow agents who remembered it in its previous condition were astonished when we attended its open house. Big, wide open spaces, a nice 2 ½ acre lot and an excellent location. Good deal.

Will Morton’s Rotisserie
Some time back, traveling to New Mexico to research a book, I left the interstate somewhere in western Arkansas and drove for miles searching for my favorite food, barbeque. I finally found what I wanted at a run-down spot, with a screen door that slammed behind me, and filled with locals, all in their Sunday best, chowing down. Ambrosia. I’ve never found its equal around here until a friend, Wilson Alling recommended Will Morton’s new restaurant at 280 Railroad Avenue. Will’s a Greenwich native and graduate of France’s Cordon Bleu who for some reason decided to combine French rotisserie cooking with southern barbeque, and has produced a felicitous marriage of both. His pulled pork is the best I’ve had, ever, and his ribs and chicken are just as good. The restaurant is easily overlooked, as it’s located in that small building complex next to Pet Pantry, but it’s convenient to the movies and the Avenue. As an eat-in destination, I’d describe the place as somewhere between bleak and cozy (bleak’s too harsh; perhaps “utilitarian”), but there’s take-out available and delivery for just $1.50. If you eat in you’ll gain the presence of Will himself who’s always there, cooking. Very nice guy. There’s a very tasty sandwich menu and, for Thanksgiving, he’s offering an incredible range of dishes that obviously take advantage of his training and which go far beyond “mere” rotisserie foods: Turkeys, roasted or uncooked, a huge variety of side dishes and deserts, soups, salads and so on. I smoke cigarettes precisely because it frees me from worrying about such lesser hazards but health-nuts will be relieved to know that everything served is free-range, all natural, pesticide free, etc. Call 661-0100 or hit willmortonsrotisserie.com to order or view the menu. You’ll thank me for this, just as I did Wilson.

Statistics
The third quarter sales statistics are out and they provide some interesting reading (if you lead a very dull life, that is). Sales are down ( -17.8%) for the year (481 vs. 585) and (- 44.6%) this September vs. September 2005 (31 vs.56). Average price is up 11% for the year ($2,716,737 vs. $2,447, 408) and 18% this September. Days on Market were 73 September 2005, 112 September 2006. So, there’s been a significant slowdown, but notice: prices aren’t collapsing nor will they, in my opinion. Many buyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for what they expect will be bargain basement prices – I think they’ll be disappointed.

Buy a House?
If you’re still awake after reading all those statistics, here are a few more: there are 555 single family homes for sale as of this writing, compared to 488 the same week last year. That’s a 14% increase in inventory but this past August we were facing an inventory 26% greater than the year before so the trend seems to be improving. Those 555 houses range in price, by the way, from $575,000 (123 Henry Street, Byram) to $39,500,000 (65 Meadow Wood Drive, Belle Haven). You should be able to find something you like somewhere between them.

Price it Right
The sales book also revealed an example of the importance of pricing. Two nearly identical houses on Florence Road were sold last quarter. Each was built in 1963 and renovated in 2001, each had 2,202 sq. ft. One was priced at $875,000 and sold 14 days later for $880,000. The other was originally priced at $925,000 and sold 132 days later for $870,000. The lesson here is that stretching to get that last dollar on a sale will make your house look less attractive than its competition and may cause it to sit lifeless on the market. That’s bad, so don’t do it. Look at the statistics above, recognize that we’re in a slow market and price your house accordingly.

If You Want to Get the Big Bucks
You have to put in big bucks. I toured a $5,500,000 house the other day and remembered another builder’s cutting remark: “he built a nice $3,000,000 house but priced it at $5 ½.” I think that’s not quite accurate but certainly there are details that should be in a house this expensive that were not there: custom closets, for instance, instead of pegboard California ones. Trim molding inside those same closets: don’t know what good it does but the top builders do it. Routered trim panels, instead of window frame build ups. This was a perfectly nice house and it sits on a great piece of land but if I were a buyer at that price level, I’d demand more.

160 Bedford Road
I love this house and the eight acres it sits on but it remains unsold. I assume the house’s age (1932) deters buyers but I visited it with an architect and he came up with several great ideas for building new and incorporating the old. With eight acres in the four acre zone, you could finally build that 45,000 sq. ft. house Bitsy and the two kids have needed for the proper development of their souls.

I thought this was well priced at $5 million. At its current price of $3,495,000, it's a bargain. It's jane Gosden's listing.

Overheard on the Golf Course
No, I don’t play golf but my brother Gideon does (why?)and says that he heard a builder complain, “you just can’t make a profit in Greenwich if you buy a property from off the Multi List – you’ve got to buy direct.”

Now that’s not true, and I can point out many, many profitable land transactions that Realtors were involved in but here’s my point: what the builder was complaining about was he couldn’t get as good a deal if other people knew about the land and competed with him for it. But what’s bad for a builder/buyer is good for an owner/seller so, when a builder knocks on your door you might want to at least consider exposing your home to the full market, rather than accept the builder’s promise that he’s offering you the best possible price. Sometimes they don't, you know.

Real Estate Advertising
Having tried my hand at it myself, I’ll vouch for the difficulty of writing ad copy for houses. One of the best in our business recently ran an ad boasting that “A River Runs Through It”. I think I get the point but it just doesn’t seem like a selling point, unless you want to go trout fishing in your basement.

Mainstream Media
I don’t watch much television but I’m told one of the nightly news shows has been running a week-long set of stories depicting the horrors of our current real estate market. Young couples facing ruinous mortgage payments and foreclosure, sellers unable to sell their houses, give-backs by builders and on and on. I realize that it’s an election year and the traditional media wants very badly for the electorate to believe that the economy has gone to Hell but mortgage rates are low, unemployment is just about non-existent and Wall Street continues to roll in profits. Even Greenwich’s real estate market has succumbed to this media pressure so our inventory has increased 16% - I don’t think that’s the end of the world. Well priced houses still sell quickly: Ginnie Ridenour’s listing at 48 Carrigleah Drive,a waterfront acre in Riverside, came on at $4,995,000 and went to contract (via John Cooke) almost immediately. In the past two weeks, thirty-five houses went to contract, at (asking) prices ranging from $10,000,000 on down. Some of these were dogs that had lingered on the market for years and finally moved only after their owners dropped their prices by huge fractions but, if you couldn’t sell an over-priced house in 2004, your finally selling it for less money in 2006 is evidence that it wasn’t priced properly to begin with. That’s not evidence of a collapsing market: it’s market forces at work.


10 Audubon Lane
Another agent told me that I had to be certain to view this house because it was so awful. As you might imagine it’s much more fun to write about bad houses than it is good so I scurried over to Bedford Road with gleeful malice in my heart. Imagine my disappointment when I pulled up the driveway and found myself admitting, “not bad”. Things only got worse for me when I entered the house: it’s well built, well laid out and bright and airy. All in all, a very nice house indeed. The only thing that could be held against it, I suppose, is that it’s not a traditional “Colonial” (gasp!) but it’s close enough to that design to be confused for one. Set back off Bedford on a private four acres, asking $4,795,000. Claudia Hirsch of Preferred Properties has the listing.

Real Estate Signs
The Greenwich Board of Realtors is about to crack down on open house signs. It’s early days but the plan may include Realtors paying for the services of a sign confiscator who’d travel around town confiscating signs that violate the law. It’s a start and, with the election about to fade away and with it all the political signs, some improvement is coming. By the way, Bernie Yudain recently posed the same question that’s been plaguing me: has anyone in the history of the world ever switched candidates because of a road sign? I think it’s just a harmless way for parties to put their dumbest, most enthusiastic supporters to work while keeping them from underfoot. It’d be more useful if they prowled Probate Court, looking for dead residents to solicit votes from.

Cookie Cutters
I don’t have many customers in the $10,000,000 range (okay, I don’t have any customers in that range) so I asked a friend who does why every new house on Round Hill and its environs looks identical. Simple: it seems that no trophy wife with a trophy home wants to be shown up, so each must have exactly what her peers have. The builders of these monstrosities know that and build accordingly. Mystery solved. And, just so you’ll know what’s coming, a New Canaan mommy recently told me that the new house I was showing her was inadequate (at 5,400 sq.ft.) because it lacked a second floor playroom for her (only) child. “All the new houses in New Canaan have them”, she informed me and I’m sure she’s right. Look for them in your neighborhood soon.

Sidewalks
For decades, Riverside residents pressed for a sidewalk on Lockwood
Road and, as a member of the Riverside Association once upon a time, I
added my voice to that effort. It took twenty years but we finally
have a very nice sidewalk protecting school kids and commuters. I was
astonished, however, as I watched the process unfold over the past
year, how much work was involved: new storm drains had to be
installed, utility poles and wires moved, stone walls torn down and
replaced, etc. I now understand why we had to wait so long.

But having said that, it would be nice if the town could find it in
its budget to build a sidewalk on that section of Riverside Avenue
between Mark's Road and the top of Ross Bottom Hill, a distance of
perhaps 200 yards. This stretch is a blind curve and, while we
negotiated it safely when we were kids and I haven't hit anyone on it
lately, that's due to the fact that I know what to expect: the other
day I came around the curve and encountered three boys in the road- if
I hadn't been traveling at 15 mph, ….

6 Jofran
This was a fabulous contemporary I wrote about some months ago. I
loved the house and said so at the time but expressed doubt that it
would sell quickly. It depends on how you define quickly but I was
pleased to see that it's gone to contract. I don't know its selling
price yet but the asking price was $2,950,000.

207 Farms Road
This column is usually restricted to Greenwich matters but Terry
Beaurline (Coldwell Banker) has just listed "The Block House" a
fantastic house built in 1721 and well worth notice here, even though
its location in "Stanwich Parish" has been subsumed by Stamford.
History? You bet. Revolutionary War soldiers, fleeing from a defeat in
White Plains, hid in a stone barn behind the house for weeks. In 1858,
in that same building, Simon Ingersoll built the first automobile, a
steam vehicle, and drove it eight miles to Stamford (where the sheriff
promptly ordered him to return home and stay there). The original
two-foot-thick granite-walled house, with all its beauty of
wide-planked-floors, beamed ceilings and great fireplaces, has been
embellished with an addition designed by a Yale-trained architect.
Mention of "Yale School of Architecture" brings to mind the
(misattributed) quote of Herman Goering: "When I hear the word
Kulture, I reach for my revolver!" But in this instance, the fellow
must have slept through class, because the new blends marvelously with
the old. A great house, on wonderful land (2 acres, with pool), asking
about $3,500,000. You couldn't come close to such a house and property
in Greenwich.

Another one Bites the Dust
In the movie "Shawshank Redemption", Tim Robbins demands of the prison
warden, "how can you be so obtuse?". He's rewarded by a lengthy stay
in isolation because the warden is corrupt and interested only in
protecting his position of power. I don't think our Planning and
Zoning Committee is corrupt, but "obtuse" came to mind when I attended
a hearing this week on a proposal to save a historic house. The
question presented to the committee was blunt: do you want to preserve
historic houses or do you want to adhere to our floor area ratio
rules? The answer was, essentially, that FAR is sacred and houses be
damned.
Too bad – most of Greenwich's few remaining old houses are stranded on
odd, under-sized lots carved out of their original farms. The P&Z
says, "well, just build a small (3,000 sq. ft., in last week's
example)". This is so stupid, so ignorant of market realities that,
despite my disclaimer above, I wonder if our P&Z isn't as corrupt as
the Shawshank Prison warden. Could anyone possibly be this obtuse
without a wad of bills suppressing their brain? Wellyes, of course he could and our commission proves it. Its members aren't crooks, they just suffer from a fanatical devotion to the flawed concept of the FAR. As I write, a Cat 10
bulldozer is pushing the house in question into yet another dumpster.

Gift to GHS
Despite attending high school with me, my friend Michael Horton
akshually learned to reed – he points out that the $1,000,000 donation
I recently wrote about went to the donor's college, Colgate, rather
than to the high school. Still a very impressive gift but if someone
else has a wallet itching with good intentions, I'd urge that high
school kids need such a program even more than older students; to
conquer demons, you must start early.

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

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

I've Moved!
The column is, as of two days ago, now being printed in the Greenwich Post on the front page of its real estate section. Since, like the Citizen, the Post is free, you can continue to get exactly what you pay for.

Buyer Representative Agreements
A colleague of mine recently encountered a house-hunting couple she knew at an open house. They liked the house and they wanted her to represent her but, they confessed ruefully, they had signed a buyer’s representative agreement with agent that locked them in, for the entire state of Connecticut, for a year. They couldn’t stand the guy, had no intention of ever getting in a car with him again so they’d resorted to limiting their search to public open houses on Sundays. That’s ridiculous and it cost them the house because, by the time they freed themselves from the first agent’s tentacles the house was gone.

I’ve written about these buyer rep agreements before but it’s worth doing again. Our legislature mandated these be signed by buyers at the first face-to-face meeting with an agent. It was supposed to be a consumer protection aid, allowing us agents, in a departure from traditional agency law, to represent the buyer instead of the seller (before, buying and selling agents were considered to owe complete loyalty to the seller.) But the document was hijacked by my industry group and studded with provisions that favor us and hurt you. If you’ve worked with an agent before and are comfortable with that individual there’s certainly no harm in agreeing to work with them exclusively for, say, six months. But if you’ve never met the person before, why on earth would you lock yourself into a long-term relationship? Or agree to half the stuff in this contract? I drafted a simple agreement that contained no offensive terms and submitted it to the Connecticut Association of Realtor’s legal department for approval but was shot down, so we’re all stuck with the current form. But, by law, these things are negotiable so my advice is to, if you don’t know the agent you’re dealing with is to (a) realize that you’re being asked to sign a binding contract and not some meaningless form, (b) limit its duration to one day and one town and (c) cross out all the bad stuff. It’s your right.

Listen to Your Realtor
I saw a very nice house recently, which I intend to write about in a later column but there’s an object lesson worth pointing out now: the house and its grounds are immaculate and I was bowled over by the place. Until I headed for the master bedroom and noticed a worn, frayed runner. If the rest of the place had been in the same sorry condition I wouldn’t have picked up on this defect but, as it was, the owners might just as well have painted the thing Day-Glo orange. And, having been conditioned by that sight, I noticed that the master bath was a bit dated. Again, something I wouldn’t have cared about had the mood not been set by the worn carpet. The listing agent is one of the smartest, most experienced agents in town and I am absolutely certain she must have mentioned this to her clients. For whatever reason, they obviously declined to spend- what, a $1,000?- on a replacement runner. I think this was unwise. If your house is a wreck, don’t sweat it; price the thing as a dump and move on. But if everything about your house is bandbox perfect except for one or two glaring defects, fix them. You’ll more than make up the cost in the eventual sales price.

Lucky Me
When Greenwich Time ran an article about my finding a prehistoric spear head in Riverside photographer Bob Luckey was assigned to take my picture. He produced the first image of me that my kids were willing to admit being related to so, when I needed some new publicity shots I hired him. Amazing results. If you’re an ugly Greenwich native like myself or, more likely, one of the beautiful people, this is the guy to take your picture. And Realtors take note: Bob will photograph houses, too. If he can take this sow’s ear and come close to producing a silk purse, imagine what he can do for that crummy listing you’ve been trying to unload. Reach him at (203) 940-5593.

Good Read
Just finished “The Looming Tower – Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright. Horrifyingly fascinating and brilliantly written, it’s received rave reviews from the entire political spectrum (heck, even Dan Rather liked it), which is a tribute to the author’s objectivity. He has no axe to grind here and contents himself with presenting a thorough history of Islamic terrorism from 1905 to date. Read it if you want an in-depth, fast-paced explanation of what we’re facing. When you finish, may I suggest a light- hearted digestive like my “Greenwich Mean Time”? Available at Just Books!

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.