More on Starbucks
O.K., that's Ahab drowning, not his pal Starbuck but you get the picture, so to speak. I went onto Starbuck's website this morning to try to lodge a complaint about their discontinuing the sale of Colombian coffee and, so far as I could tell, there's no one out in Seattle who cares to receive any such message. Want information of buying CDs? Locating a frappe java?
Click away. Got a complaint about actual coffee? Screw you. Well, in this blessed system of sort-of-free markets, I have a response to that.

Oil Prices Fall below $100.
How can this possibly happen, when oil speculators are capable of setting the price wherever they want?

Won't somebody please invent an alternative to oil so we can wash our hands of the Middle East?
Orthodox Vigilante Squads Terrorize Citizens

Business websites overloaded
I can't log onto Bloomberg.com or biz.yahoo.com, presumably because they're overloaded with readers. WSJ.com is working and, here's a surprise, they expect an anxious day. Too bad my father isn't still alive - he began working on the Street in 1929 and would no doubt have some perspective to lend on the "sky is falling" crowd.
On the other hand, maybe the sky is falling. Regardless, we're in for an interesting day, or time.

Bottom headline of the day
Obama Blames Wall Street Crisis on Republicans. George Bush and Dick Chaney were also spotted placing bombs around the Dot.com boom back in 2000.
Okay, there are two today:
Lindsay Lohan Lashes out at Palin

Economic Illiteracy
Judging from conversations with my own kids over the years,the basic tenets of capitalism aren't being taught in our schools. Here's part of what George Will writes in today's Newsweek. I wonder whether we can persuade him to come guest lecture at the High School? He'd be useful on a day like today.

But back to Big Box doubling prices after the earthquake. The indignant student, who had first gone to Home Depot for a flashlight, says it "didn't try to rip us off." It was, however, out of flashlights. Ruth suggests that the reason Big Box had flashlights was that its prices were high. If prices were left at regular levels, the people who would have got the flashlights would have been those who got to the store first. With the higher prices, "someone who had candles at home decided to do without the flashlight and left it there for you on the shelf." Neither Home Depot nor the student who was angry at Big Box had benefited from Home Depot's price restraint.

Capitalism, Ruth reminds him, is a profit and loss system.Corfam—Du Pont's fake leather that made awful shoes in the 1960s—and the Edsel quickly vanished. But, Ruth notes, "the post office and ethanol subsidies and agricultural price supports and mediocre public schools live forever." They are insulated from market forces; they are created, in defiance of those forces, by government, which can disregard prices, which means disregarding the rational allocation of resources. To disrupt markets is to tamper with the unseen source of the harmony that is all around us.

Sally O'Brien died last Friday.
I didn't want to intrude on her family's decision when to announce her death but today's Greenwich Time carries her obituary. Sally was one of the great ladies of real estate and a terrific person of integrity. I loved her quirky listings and I thought the world of her.

Before Lehman's collapse eclipses Fannie Mae
The Washington Post today explains how Fannie and Freddie bought Congress. Plenty of blame to toss around, but a good place to start is Dem. Barney Frank

Why do people screw good things up?
Starbucks has stopped selling Columbian beans. The kids behind the counter confirm that it was a huge seller (in fact, I believe Starbucks was the largest purchaser of Columbian coffee in the world, but I could be wrong on that). I don't like what the store does to coffee once they try to brew it themselves but their beans, freshly ground and prepared in a French press, made a very good cup of coffee. And no, I'm not going to buy one of their even pricier blends, I'll just have to find a new source for my morning brew.

Similarly, the idiots who ran the Sitemeter spot which runs on this blog and offered readership statistics to anyone curious to see them have now improved their product to require sign-in, extra clicking and God knows what else. I've always been lazy so "leave well enough alone" has been my life's mantra. Others obviously have more energy.

Does "green" equal $green?
Not as far as I can tell. A number of builders have gone to extraordinary lengths the past few years to incorporate sensible energy-saving features like super insulation, really sophisticated heating and cooling systems, "E-glass" windows and so forth. I think these houses are great so it disappoints me that the home buyers seem unwilling to pay anything extra for such features, even if they'll save a lot of money in the long run. I know, I know, "in the long run we'll all be dead" but this kind of construction makes a house immediately more comfortable to live in and payback should come in just a few years. But I've been informally keeping track of the selling price for these houses and it seems to me that they sell for just about what their less sophisticated brethren sell for. Location, number of bedrooms and all that still rule and buyers just aren't interested in saving on heating and cooling costs. Maybe $4 a gallon fuel oil will educate them. In the meantime, if you are a buyer, keep your eye out for these homes - you can buy them for no more than a regular house so you'll be getting a nice subsidy from the builder.

Update:
Here's a thoughtful article asking whether "green" houses have to be ugly. The author is too kind to post actual photos of what she considers ugly brutes (a softness I don't share) but she's on to something. I like the looks of the green projects I've seen here in town, mostly, but ugliness is not going to help these things sell. I'll go look for examples with which to embarrass some people.

More good news!
According to some of my peers quoted in the Stamford Advocate, the federal bailout of Fannie Mae
will return sweetness and light to the housing market. I disagree, but never have I so wanted to be wrong.
Update:
Here's someone in Arizona who's being fed the same line and is similarly unimpressed.

Sign of the times?
Greenwich doesn't permit broker "for sale" signs but our Board of Realtors has just added a new category for listings: short sales, which are tedious, cumbersome proceedings that may permit a seller to sell his house for less than he owes. The new category serves as a heads up to buyers' reps that this isn't going to be an easy sale. For details on just how involved this is, see
this article from the Hartford Current.

Bargains?
I checked out
Realtec.com this morning and its site claims that there are 29 properties in Greenwich in "pre-foreclosure" mode. Now this just means that a notice of intent to foreclose has been filed on the land records, which is mostly an attempt to cut off more creditors from getting ahead of the lender. It does not necessarily mean that the property will be foreclosed and, historically, few Greenwich properties go so far. But these may be new times and some of the addresses: Perkins Road, Stanwich, Taconic, Buckfield Lane and the like could all offer some value. Depends on either the seller's willingness to get out early or the bank's desire to unload once they take title.

A ray of hope?
Maybe, but don't hold your breath. I've heard of several sellers who have accepted offers in the past few weeks but have not reported their houses as "under contract" because mortgage contingencies are taking longer to be met. So it's possible that last week's dismal performance (3 contracts all week, compared to 8-10 a day this time of year) can be explained and that we'll see the traditional surge of sales a few weeks later this year.
My personal feeling is that, while there are indeed buyers out there, they've been offering much less than the sellers are looking for and, so far, the sellers aren't bending. If the financial world collapses tomorrow, as seems possible given the seeming lack of progress resolving the Lehman mess, these sellers may regret their intransigence.

No good news here
A friend with reliable sources has given me very bad news concerning Sally O'Brien. I won't pass it along in the hope it's false but her friends might want to make inquiries.

A Home Run?
Local real estate columnists seem to think that the federal salvage of Fannie Mae is going to save our industry. I disagree. Look, people will always need housing and Greenwich will, at least until the School Board finishes destroying our educational system, continue to be an attractive place to live, so we're not going to see Fargo, North Dakota prices here in town - I hope. But the Fed's action is a huge admission that the mortgage business is in deep, deep trouble. One reader of this blog has commented (and if you're not reading the comments, you're missing much more wisdom than you'll find in these primary postings) that we have $11 trillion in mortgage liability outstanding and something like $600 BILLION (corrected by reader) backing it up. That's not encouraging. We'll all survive, and I continue to believe that buying a house now at the right price will prove a great investment a few years from now, but federal intervention in the lending market is a sign of desperate times, not a ray of sunshine; in my opinion.

By the way - it's been a while since I ticked off Franklin Bloomer, head of our Land Use Commission and chief of silliness for the Floor Area Ratio regulations. He wasn't pleased when I reported that he'd torn down his house in Riverside and replaced it with a Westy's self-storage center as reparation for denying Greenwich residents the use of their attics, and I just realized that he's still wrong, and still in office. So here's my vote for his well-deserved retirement. Perhaps he can start a hedge fund.

Hedge fund envy
This article is on the Times' most emailed list today so I suspect that there's a fair bit of schadenfreude floating around concerning the fate of hedge funders. I suppose the most truthful, and painful aspect of all this is that "hedgers" were supposed to be able to churn out profits regardless of market conditions because they were so much smarter than the rest of us and knew how to hedge their bets. Turns out, many of them were just Bozos on the bus, just like the rest of us. Phew! I can go back to being proud of my philosophy degree.

What happens to this project?
The Antares UST project is supposed to be fully leased and ahead of schedule, according to this press release. I wonder, though, whether the events of the past few weeks and events yet to come will cause some of those tenants to disappear. Regardless, this portion of the press release seems almost quaint, now:

"One Hundred West Putnam is another major victory in an already
distinguished Antares track record for creating massive real estate value in
their projects," said Bruce Mosler, Chairman and CEO of Cushman & Wakefield.
"C&W is excited to be working with Antares to bring more global leading
companies into their groundbreaking office development at Harbor Point on the
Stamford waterfront as C&W knows we can count on Antares to provide Class A +
buildings on schedule and on budget."

19 Dingletown
I haven't seen this listing that just came on today but it's on an acre of land, has a slate roof and looks pretty nice. It's priced at $2.495 million and was purchased 10 years ago for $1.6 million. That seems like a reasonable rate of appreciation - I hope I'm right. In any event, I congratulate the seller and the listing broker (Round Hill Partners) for acknowledging that this is not the market to shoot the moon.

Of this and that
The Google map feature I was playing with does seem to be slowing up the page loading, as several readers have observed. Plus, coincidentally or not, my iPhone has started crashing on the site since I added maps, so they'll be gone. You can always go to "Googlemaps.com" and type in the address yourself.

The posting about 77 Sheephill Road did not get disappeared - it just got bumped over to last week's postings, found to the right.

And how's this for a straight-forward warning from our government regarding Hurricane Ike?

LIFE THREATENING INUNDATION LIKELY! ALL NEIGHBORHOODS…AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES…WILL BE INUNDATED DURING HIGH TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH.

Yesterday, after this warning, The New York Times found a 46-year-old Galveston woman perched on a milk crate and sipping brandy. "It's just gonna be a lot of wind and rain" said she. Last words?

Hmmm
No one seems very cheery about Lehman's prospects. I'm taking no particular joy in their demise because I have friends who work for them or did until today and, friendship aside, these people and their peers in the financial industry have been driving the Greenwich real estate market. It's all very well for commentators to celebrate their demise but for those of us who wanted to sell houses to them, it's a bummer.

Along that line, did you know that only three single family homes went to contract this week? One, 7 Ginko Lane, priced at $1.150 million, went via bidding war. of the other two one was under a million and the other not much more.

Perhaps reflecting this, Mark Mariani has reduced his 11,000 sq. ft. spec house on Sabine Lane by 25% and it can now be yours for just $8.950 million. If your Shearson stock lost $2.8 million this week you can still buy this house and be right where you were.

Can we now, at last, close this case?
Rosenberg really was spy - his co-conspirator finally admits it.

Lehman's woes
I doubt that this firm's difficulties all stem from their commercial lending arm but whoever worked in that area certainly didn't help the parent stay strong. Case in point is Lehman's loan to Antares to buy those aging apartments in Byram. The purchase price worked out to something like $800,000 per unit which any real estate agent, if asked, would have said was crazy. So far as I know, they never asked.

My brother Gideon tells an illustrative story of receiving a late-night phone call from an investment bank client almost 20 years ago. The bank was considering buying a failed condo project in town and wanted Gideon's opinion on what they might sell for in a worst-case scenario. Gideon opined, the bank passed and someone else stepped in and lost their shirt. The bank that thought to ask Gideon (and presumably a few other Realtors) is still in business and doing well. So the lesson is, if you don't know what you're doing, ask someone who does.

What part of "restructuring" don't sellers understand?
I have been seeing some reasonably priced listings recently but I'm still struck on open house days how many sellers (or their agents) haven't noticed that we're undergoing a restructuring, downward, of prices. I won't list specific addresses here (it tends to upset owners) but there are a lot of houses out there that will still be for sale in the Spring unless they drop their price substantially. A good indication that you've over-priced your house? 12 showings and no offers. If that happens, take out your meat axe.

10 Cat Rock
So-so picture but terrific house
New listing at the entrance to Cat Rock Road (I realize that there are people who love that street but I personally prefer houses on it that are close to either end). This was built a year ago and it's beautifully done. Three floors, decent yard backing up to conservation land and lots of Count Rumford fireplaces (which are large and shallow and throw heat into a room, rather than sucking it out. Designed by Count Rumford who, because he was a Tory, had to flee to England where he made a living fixing smokey fireplaces). I think Ann Simpson has priced it well at $2.995 million but these days, who knows? It would certainly have sold at that price a year ago and I think it should today but I am not the market.

$13,000 to power 19 lightbulbs?
But the symbolism is priceless.

Lehman Tumbles
This is not good for Greenwich real estate, I fear.Watch it fall in real time here

Price reduction on Indian Head
I thought this house was priced well when it came on two weeks ago at $3.895 but the market being what it is, it's already dropped $300K. For its Indian Head Road location, that's pretty good. Disclosure: it is my brother Gideon's listing, and I can't say mean things about it or our Sunday family dinners will be awkward, but I really do like the house. As an aside, know that I will always disclose any personal interest I might have in a listing I discuss, so if I make no such mention, you can be certain that none exists. 23 Byram Terrace, for instance,mentioned below, is listed by Diane Dutcher, who is with Coldwell Banker in Old Greenwich.

23 Byram Terrace
Here's a nice house
At $1.495 million, this new house built by Dave Tilly is an excellent value. I hope that the address will support this price level because, if it does, it will encourage more builders to build like this. The house is super-insulated with soy-based foam, has a computerized HVAC system that should save the owner a pile of money in heating and cooling bills and is, all in all, a very attractive project. You can check out more photos here.

The fix is in?
It's not sexy and I suspect no one really cares,especially on this dismal anniversary of 9/11, but this Wall Street Journal editorial complains that certain investors are getting a free ride on the Fannie Mae bailout, courtesy, as usual, of us taxpayers.

With the weekend bailout, however, those investors can buy another vacation home, or three. On Monday, yield spread premiums on Fannie Mae subordinated debt maturing in 2011 plunged by three full percentage points to a bid of 3.50 points. Investing rarely gets better than this: Buy paper you know carries a higher risk but also a higher return, and then have Uncle Sugar eliminate that risk so you also make a windfall profit.

44 Riverside Avenue
This is a very nice house but you can reach out the back window and pat the roofs of trucks wizzing past on I-95. It last sold for $890 in 2005 (after initially asking $1.249) so the new sellers aren't asking for the moon here ($1.075) but, unless the highway has shifted north since they bought it, the problem remains.

Going for broke?
The same builder who brought new price records to East Elm Street for condominiums has listed a single family home at 110 E. Elm at $8.5 million. I'm dubious but if I had his business acumen I wouldn't be working at my advanced old age, so I wish him well and good luck.

10 Andrews Road
A reader inquired about the status of this listing and despite my vow to engage in nothing but happy talk for the next few days, I looked it up. Ooops! It came on asking $6.495 last year and sold this year for $4.850. Even at that, I think the builder was lucky, given the lack of yard and the odd layout of the place. But as I've said before, a lot of these drastic price reductions are not a reflection of a bad market but instead, a voice of reason answering ridiculously optimistic sellers' dreams.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Someone just posted the following comment regarding the house on Sheephill Road:

Terrible location/neighborhood? Are you kidding? Convenient an close to everything, and quite a few houses around the corner on Riverside Lane were listed and/or have sold in this very same price range.

In five years, the whole street and neighborhood will look just like this house. Why beat up the owner for being first and smartest for having the vision to tear down an obsolete house?

I don't disagree, nor do I think that the Havemeyer Lane house I mentioned is a terrible buy. But the historical fact is that houses north of the Post Road in Riverside and Old Greenwich have never sold for what their neighbors to the south have. "Pioneers get arrows" one builder told me when he refused to buy property on the then-undeveloped Dialstone Lane. He saved his money but lost a great deal because the guy I did sell it to renovated and sold the first property on the street to exceed $1 million.

But if you're going to go where no one else dares to tread, be prepared to wait awhile before your judgment is confirmed.

Why are these men laughing?
Guess who took in the most money from Fannie Mae?
Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

Name
Office
Party/State
Total

1. Dodd, Christopher J
S
D-CT
$133,900

2. Kerry, John
S
D-MA
$111,000

3. Obama, Barack
S
D-IL
$105,849

4. Clinton, Hillary
S
D-NY
$75,550

According to our daily paper,
town lobstermen will be targeting terrorists. Great idea, if it gives the guys a place to moor their boats under the Mianus bridge but I seem to recall that the last time that bridge fell it was due to home-grown terrorists: a negligent state government and slip-shod inspection techniques.

Ignoring 100 years of fulsome editorials,
the NY Times fires 550 unionized workers

Because I think higher taxes will hurt the Greenwich real estate market
I'm reposting this from James Taranto's "Best of the Web column.

He'll Wreck the Economy Later

"Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy," the Associated Press reports:

So he's saying he wants to wait for any recession to pass, and then he'll hurt the economy?

Signs of life?
Not really - we're still woefully short on properties going to contract. yet there are some good buys out there. I've mentioned 26 Summit Road, at $2.195, and, now that it's come down $1.1 million (to $3.3), 74 Zaccheus Mead Lane is very attractive. One property that did go to contract today was 18 Orchard Hill Lane, for what I assume (because it went so quickly) was close to or at its asking price of $1.895. This was no doubt a land sale, with 2.75 acres in a 2 acre zone with a good location off Mayfair Lane, but it's nice to see any builder still active. Most are huddling on the sidelines, waiting to see what happens. Tomorrow, I'll try to post on more bargains. They really do exist and two years from now, you'll thank me for pointing them out.

View Larger Map

Fraud at Fannie Mae - who'd a thunk it?
Try this for a good discussion of what's going on at our newly acquired lending institution. It all reminds me of the Savings and Loan collapse. A friend of mine was hired by the government to examine the loan files of several failed banks. He found literally file cabinets full of fraudulent loans but was basically told, "forget it - prosecuting these guys is so yesterday". Our regulators just wanted to close things up and move on and that's what they did. The rotten bankers probably moved on to Fannie Mae.

39 Boulder Brook
What's a house worth?
You can't tell from this listing.It was priced at $8.595 million when first listed in April 2008 and today was reduced to $5.298. This kind of thing does not instill confidence in buyers, in either Realtors' acumen or the stability of the market.
As an aside, some other new construction on the same street, #33, was priced at $6.875 when it came on this past February and still sits unsold today at $6.575. At least someone's sticking to his guns but 33's failure to sell kind of hints at what I and the marketplace think of #39's original price.

So I was in a lovely house today and in one of the boy's bedrooms I saw this:

and this

and this:



I'm hardly the model for perfect parenthood but I'll bet that if this kid's parents had dumped the TV from his room and placed some books in that bookcase his SAT preparations would be easier. Just a suggestion.

Google Maps
How cool is this? I searched for 'adding Google maps to my blog" and got this:

Can I embed Google Maps into my website or blog?


Absolutely. You can embed a simple map, a set of driving directions, a local search, or maps created by other users. Here's how:

1. Ensure that the map you'd like to embed appears in the current map display.
2. Click "Link to this page" in the top-right corner of the map.
3. In the box that pops up, copy the HTML under "Paste HTML to embed in website," and paste it into the source code of your website or blog.

If you'd like to adjust the size of the map before you embed it, just click "Customize and preview embedded map," select your preferred size, and take a look at the preview map. Once you're happy with what you see, copy the HTML that appears in the box at the bottom of the window.

Once I figure out what "the source code of your blog" means, I'll try it.

View Larger Map

Well it works, sort of, except I lost the marker indicating 44 Locust Road and the size has to be smaller. Still, progress is being made.
Here's Grahampton/Meadowcroft. Let's see if this works.

View Larger Map

Sell your house
17 Mark's Road in Riverside was bought for $2.495 million in July '06. The new owner attempted to resell it this year and, I think wisely, kept the price right around where he'd come in and in fact had reduced it below that point, to $2.45 million when the listing expired at the end of August. Now it's back, asking $2.495, exactly where he bought it. My guess is that he is going to discover that the market has dropped. It's a very nice, somewhat quirky house on the same tidal creek I live on so naturally, I like the place. And as a neighbor, I naturally hope he'll get everything he's asking, and more. But ...

173 Stanwich has also seen some price reduction, dropping in the past 18 months from $3.595 all the way to $2.495 today. The mistake here, if I may be so bold as to offer my opinion, is that the owner tarted the place up with all sorts of high-tech wizardry and thought that would justify a wacky price. It obviously didn't.

And finally, there's 48 Locust, way up in our Northwest corner (a reader has suggested I link to Google maps, which is an excellent idea - I'll see what I can do right after posting this). The seller bought it for $2.398 back in October 2005 and re-listed it for $2.950 in March 2007. No improvements that I'm aware of. He dropped the price to $2.750 a month later and has stuck at that price ever since. If he really wants to sell it, I think the market has a message for him. Just saying ....

440 Round Hill
Marc Weill's house finally sold yesterday for $11 million. That's a big chunk of change but quite a comedown from its original asking price (5 years ago)of $21.5 million. I don't interpret this sale as evidence that the market is collapsing; the original price was just dumb.

1 Meadowcroft
Got the grand tour on 37 Grahampton/ 1 Meadowcroft today. Understand that I'm not a fan of houses this size so my comments are not purely objective. It's certainly big, and there's a huge cellar filled with all the wine racks, media rooms and toys that today's adults seem to want. Large kitchen with some kind of granite thing going on - it's too high to be a food preparation surface, and too wide to reach even to its middle, so I'm uncertain what purpose it serves. I asked the agent, "what's this?" and was told, "granite". That I already knew.
Lots of big bedrooms, thick doors, big baths, everything you'd expect, I suppose. Mariani builds a nice house and this one is no exception. I would quibble with its approach, however. You can't tell from the artist's rendering posted here but it's a very short jog from the street to the house; turn off Meadowcroft and bang! There's the house. If I had an ego large enough to accommodate buying this house I'd want a long winding drive so that my visitors would think, "wow, this guy's made it!". You'll have to find other ways to impress them. Nice flat back yard, if anyone still uses them. And a pool.
Are there buyers out there for this size house? We'll see.

Put on your tinfoil hats!
Okay, they're tired of dumb f***s like us who don't believe in global warming so now they're going to
use more persuasive methods.

Armed with new research into what makes some people environmentally conscious and others less so, the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet.

“We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do,” says Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, association president. “We know what messages will work and what will not.”

17 Meadowcroft
Old vs new?
A reader points out that this beautiful place on 8 acres didn't sell when priced at $16.8 million for the past two years and thus wonders whether Mr. Mariani's new venture will fare better. Good question and one only time will answer but there are definitely two different markets for huge houses: old and new, so this one's failure does not necessarily portend the same fate for #1.
But then again ....

74 Zaccheus Mead
Under "new listings" comes this reduction (albeit with a new broker). It didn't sell last year at $4.395 million so now it's back with a fresh new price of $3.3 million. Zaccheus is a good location and a $1.1 million dollar price chop isn't so bad, either.

Location, location
This house on Havemeyer tried breaking the $2 million price barrier ($2.1 million, in fact). It didn't and now is at $1.795. Getting there, but Havemeyer remains a busy road and the new development across the street won't help.

Master Baths
So far, most readers responding to the poll (that's over to your right, see it?) consider a tub in the master bedroom to be either "essential" or at least "nice to have". Builders take notice.

This might work
RealEstate.com is teaming up with AT&T so buyers can search for properties on their cellphones. A decent idea, but perhaps AT&T picked the wrong partner. I've never used the site but I just checked it now and it tells me that there are no properties for sale in Greenwich for $15 million or above. Mr. Mariani will be disappointed to learn that.

I wonder if we can get the Greenwich Board of Realtors to try this for our town?
In this slow real estate market, we need all the buyers we can get. If this Alabama group's offer of hard cash works Group offers Jews $50,000 to move to town we could try the same thing for lots of ethnic groups - French Huguenots, for instance (just in case, I'll be reverting back to "de la Fontaine" - it was the British who made us change it, anyway).

Barbarians at the Gates
I just tried emailing my friend David Ayres at Sotheby's and was informed that I'd been blocked by that firm's spam-buster. Should I take this personally? Must I stop saying mean things about Sotheby's parent, Realogy? Inquiring minds want to know.
(By the way, the image above was lifted from a good article on libertarianism - if you're tired of reading about Sarah Palin's eyeglasses,
try this.)

Hurricane Ike Slams into Cuba Dr. Jeff Masters reports:

Cuba is taking a terrible beating from Hurricane Ike, which crashed ashore in eastern Cuba last night as a Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph winds. Ike's winds have since weakened to Category 2 strength--100 mph--but are still strong enough to destroy the Cuba's electrical system and heavily damage the cities it encounters along the heavily populated east-central portion of the country. Damage will be heavy in Camaguey, which reported sustained winds of 49 mph at 8am EDT as Ike passed 20 miles to the south. Baracoa, on the coast to the southeast of where Ike made landfall, suffered a significant storm surge, topped by high battering waves, that damaged or destroyed 1,000 buildings. Ike's winds and rains of 6-12 inches will cause additional heavy losses to Cuban agriculture, and the storm should easily rank as one of the top-five most damaging storms in Cuban history. Ike is expected to track over Havana Tuesday morning, and the city's 2.2 million people can expect significant damage to the many poorly-built structures in the capital city. It will take Cuba a long time to recover from Ike.

Cuba, like Burma, doesn't want our help which is probably okay - Ike has now crossed Cuba and is again over (warm) water,picking up strength and headed for Texas, so we'll need the money.

You want a bargain? Here's a bargain.
I think so,anyway. 26 Summit Road in Riverside. New construction originally asking $2.495, which didn't seem at all a stupid price, is now down to $2.195 million. Decent house, decent yard and, for those who buy their houses like they buy their groceries, $510 per square foot.

If at first you don't succeed...
15 Sidney Lanier Lane first went on the market in May 2006 asking $7.8 million. It didn't sell even though it was eventually reduced to $6.2 million and was taken off the market a year later. Now it's back, asking $6.595. Good luck.

Testing the waters
Mark Mariani has just listed new construction at 37 Grahampton Lane for $15 million dollars. It's a good looking house (I'll post a picture tomorrow) and Mariani is a quality contractor so if anything should go in that price range, this one should. But what's the market for 15,000 sq. ft homes these days? I guess we'll see. I would never dare question this very successful builder's business sense but by my count this makes three spec houses he has on the market, each over $10 million. He obviously has nerves of steel.

Picture lifted w/o permission (because I don't know how to contact the photographer) from the very talented "Blonde Excuse"

Speaking of Business....
I was struck the other day by the sight of a shopper exiting the Old Greenwich Food Mart with a full cart of groceries. Not so long ago this was common,of course, so the fact that I thought it unusual seems evidence, to me, that more and more folks are using the new ShopRite for their main shopping and using Food Mart as a fill-in. I certainly have done no research to verify this but if my own experience is typical, we might look for a new tenant on Arcadia Road in the not-so-distant future. I hope not - small towns need places like this, or they used to.

It may be the future, but whose future?Zillow.com and 300 newspapers have joined forces to sell real estate advertising. I see the upside for Zillow here, but to this non-businessman, it seems as though the newspapers will be selling access to their last revenue base for 50 cents on the dollar.

Dress for Success
I've been criticized for my informal dress at broker open houses - I'm even told that someone wanted to bar (male) agents from wearing flip flops on hot summer days, but that was before Obama made flip flops so fashionable - so I've decided to change my image. Here, from last week's NY Fashion Show, is the new look that I and no doubt many other agents will be sporting:
Pretty cool, eh?

Bonobos in Paradise
My friends at
Greenwich Roundup have been attacking our Board of Education for being a crowd of incompetent bunglers but that's missing the point: the Board of Ed's budget last year was $125,000,000 or $13,929 for each student. As test scores fall and our Board fumbles, we're seeing an increasing outflow of students to private schools, any private school. So let's keep the Board as it is, or even expand it; at $14,000 a pop, we can ditch our students and get our budget under control in no time.

Fannie Mae's new digs
We all have to work somewhere but as we taxpayers nationalize 70% of the mortgage market, perhaps we should examine the hubris and greed that produced buildings like this.

And then we can focus on the Department of Education whose 2007 budget was $54.4 billion. No waste there, I'm sure, but still...

Sally O'Brien
One of my favorite people, Sally O'Brien was seriously injured in a fall Saturday night when she lost her electrical power and went down to her basement to investigate. To this layman, her prognosis seems dire. Sally was an indomitable spirit who loved quirky old houses as much, if not more, than I do, and she championed them, fetching prices that justified their continued existence in this tear-down town. I'm praying for her.

Ok, this is pathetic
After reading so much about OwlGore's energy-hogging mansion it occurred to me to look it up. That's it on top. Sheesh, it would barely pass muster in our fair Greenwich. This is a mansion? I sure hope there's a lot more house hidden around back because otherwise, the guy's practically living in a hovel - pretty discouraging for someone who's making millions on his latest racket. And, if this is considered a mansion, what is the rest of America living in? I've got to get out more.
On the other hand, the house on the bottom is, I kid you not, our current President's Texas ranch. I have no idea what it says about anything, but I do note that it's heated geothermically and uses far, far less energy than the Whopper's home, at least according to
this report
Update: "A random internet looker-upper" said...
There is more hidden around the back, for what it's worth (linked below). Apparently it's 10,000 square feet, which is probably a Tier II mansion in Greenwich (versus the elite monstrosities in the 15,000-35,000 range).

Here it is; enjoy.

Another reader poll
The cost of new construction poll is done; average cost seems to be between $300 and $400 sq.ft., which is also the range quoted me by my builder client who also cautioned that the proper answer is, "how much does a dress cost?" Depending on what you want, the costs can go anywhere.
But here's another: I occasionally see master bathrooms with great showers but no bathtub. I don't remember taking a bath in 40 years so I'm not concerned by the lack of one personally, but I have a sense that no tub would be a turn-off for those who like to soak. Is it?

Let them eat cake?
But not any fish served by Robert De Niro
Or we could all relax and heed the wisdom of Northern Ireland's Environmental Minister, who calls the whole man-made global fuss an hysterical pseudo-religion. I like that guy.

How to get rich in real estate
Become a Senator. According to this story, it worked for Joe Biden. Nice work if you can get it but as an author, I'm just as impressed to learn in the same article that Fighting Joe received $225,000 in advances for his autobiography last year. I'm sure it was a best seller, especially if it carried a jacket blurb by Neil Kinnock

Uh oh!
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were cooking their books
. Of course, with so many friends in Washington, I'm sure the chief thieves will be allowed to keep their millions and leave town, no doubt to be rehired somewhere else in the banking industry.

Answer: "Hey Y'all, watch this!"
Question is, what are a redneck's last words?



2007 - Antares expands into luxury residential housing

Vixen!
Won't Somebody Stop Her?
Damn - Palin didn't have an affair with her husband's ex-business partner. It's back to the blogs for my liberal friends.

(Great Grandfather Caldwell decides to leave for America)
Bloomberg reports that
Foreclosures are up. There's some encouraging news buried way down in the article: foreclosed houses are beginning to sell, indicating that the glut's being reduced (a local real estate columnist reports the increase in existing house sales in July as great news but declines to mention that 1/3 of those sales were bank-owned properties; you'd think he was being paid to be cheerful or something).

Hanna a bust?
In terms of high winds, probably so. Check out this great blog, Weather Nerd and all his links for a good picture of Hanna and, more worrisome for residents of the Florida Keys and the Gulf states, Hurricane Ike.
Rambling through the Internet, guys (for some reason, storm tracking seems to be a guy thing) blogging from the center of Hanna report a lot of rain but not much else and because of the storm's speed, even the rain is ending quickly. Of course, even 4" of rain could cause a mess up here - we'll find out tonight. In the meantime, keep your powder dry.

New York Times to condense paper

77 Sheephill
This house was listed back in January '07 for $1.995 million and still hasn't sold, despite a steady series of price cuts. It's now down to $1.695, perhaps where it should have started to begin with, but in this market, who knows what will happen?It's a good house, so its future will give a pretty good snapshot of this area of town's market. But regardless of how much the seller put into renovating this house, and it looks to be a substantial sum, he'll probably make out okay - he paid only $435,000 for it in 2001.

Freedom of the Press
Imagine that you had once worked as a real editor of a real newspaper, or that your father had founded a real newspaper and handed its reins over to you. Now imagine that you've ended your editing career with, or transformed your inheritance into, a light-weight vehicle for advertising and nothing more. Bummer, no?
With that in mind, I'm happy to announce that my former paper, The Greenwich Post, has bravely faced down the scorn and ire of its advertisers and will, beginning September 18th, begin running Susie Costaregni's gossip column, "The Dish", every week! The public be damned, we're going to print what must be told. Right on, guys.

Here's a taste of what the hard-hitting Dish will be serving up:

Greenwich residents Frank Gifford, the former NFL star and sports commentator, and Olympic gold medal swimmer Donna de Varona were seen having lunch at Valbella restaurant in Old Greenwich this past week; Regis Philbin and friends were spotted dining there Saturday, Jan. 20; and actor Jesse Bradford of "Swimfan" and "Flags of Our Fathers" fame ate there last week. And . . . at Valbella New York on West 13th Street, recent Golden Globe-winning actress and producer Salma Hayek of the popular sitcom "Ugly Betty" was seen having dinner.

And this:

Among the 300 friends, colleagues and dignitaries, including her favorite security guard, at the party were Randy Jones of the Village People; celebrity photographer James Edstrom; Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl and attorney Michael Sherman; MSNBC anchors Contessa Brewer, Alison Stewart and Chris Jansing; NBC anchor Carl Quintanilla; Lisa Bloom and Diane Dimond of Court TV; and actor Bobby Abid. Boyfriend and singer/songwriter Tomaczek Bednarek wrote a song for the occasion, "You Make the News."

Cosby isn't taking a break. This week, she hosted a two-hour radio show on Sirius satellite radio. She heads to her
alma mater, the University of South Carolina, next week to teach for a day. Then she travels to the Middle East,
where she will speak at a conference.

No need to worry about the future of this paper now, that's for sure.