Troubles continue at the soon-to-fail YMCA

Yet another "leader" for the Greenwich YMCA". The new guy's out after just a year on the job and has been replaced by Rebecca Fretty, "a longtime town resident and marketing executive with ties to the Junior League of Greenwich."

All this comes after the Y first imported from California a fellow named John Elkrem who committed, over the vehement objections of older members, to a $36 million reconstruction program that saw the gutting of the building, the eviction of low-income tenants on the third floor ("living on the street promotes hardiness and well being", claimed Elkrem), the loss of the oldest handball court in the country and the selling-off of Calves Island. The pool is done - nothing else, including the gymnasium that some saw as the raison d'etre for the expansion, is. Despite assurances that the new pool would draw new members who in turn would cover the cost of servicing the huge debt incurred in rebuilding and thus fund the completion of the job, Elkrem was shoved out. He left an organization that was now grossly underfunded and mired in debt, and that liability continues to grow. Ashleigh Rowe, the official spokesman for the Y, asserted yesterday that everything was wonderful and that the pool had attracted many new members. Asked how many, Rowe admitted that "she did not have overall membership figures for the YMCA". Now, the lawyer in me interprets that as an admission that she knows damn well how few new members the pool attracted and how many existing members have quit in disgust but I suppose, given the Y's track record in hiring incompetents, Rowe really is as ignorant as she says she is.

But we need not worry about the new Leader. Freety, she with "ties to the Junior League", is said to be "talented, energetic and a good spirit" by none other than Lynn Lavery, who should know - she said essentially the same thing about her friend, Dickie Fuld.

Realogy feeling the squeeze

Firms financed by Junk bondsare getting pinched and Realogy, parent company of Sotheby's and Coldwell Banker, is one of the pinchees. Ow!

This is a relief, a pity, or just another bit of hysteria

British scientist says human evolution is at an end.

I think it's the latter, myself, but I'll wait to hear from the Greens - they'll know.

Go ahead, take your mind off all things economic
Prowling the net just now, I stumbled across this Indian blogger. He seems to reprint other's news stories but he has other links to other Indian bloggers and his own postings appear to present (on an admittedly cursory sampling) an eclectic taste of what's going on over there. I've never visited the country but I'd like to. Until I sell a few more houses, however, this will have to do.

Here's bad news

Always looking for a silver lining, I had blithely assumed that the Wall Street bust had driven OwlGore and his minions under the bedcovers, if only for a few blessed weeks, but no: Googling for news of the fat fraud disclosed that he's still touring the country in his private, solar powered jet, spreading his girth and ignorance around our fifty states. Latest sighting was in Iowa, where the Nobel Prize winner assured his audience that their recent floods and tornadoes were caused by, quell surprise! - global warning!

Sure, his wacko theories were immediately debunked by meteorologists who concluded that the man doesn't understand basic meteorology, much less climate change , but do Gore acolytes listen to or hear scientists? To judge from their behavior, no.

So that's too bad. My own forecast? We're doomed to still more years of this nonsense, stretching on forever; unless, of course we're all swept out to sea by rising tides and tornadoes.

Yelling fire in a crowded theatre?

A supposed financial guru, Jim Kramer, warns investors to pull their money out of stocks. I don't watch TV and this man makes me glad I don't but apparently he's a "respected analyst", whatever that's worth and, because he yelled his warning on the Today Show, I assume people will follow his advice.

I'm not a financial analyst nor, unlike Mr. Kramer, do I play one on TV but this sounds like bad advice to me. I think that, if I had money to risk, I'd be buying, not selling. Taking losses today guarantees what - a 20% loss? I don't see the stock market recovering tomorrow but most companies seem to be in pretty good shape and I'd be tempted to bet with them rather than against them.

Again, what do I know? Except that buying into whatever has the media in a frenzy today (and that panic changes from day to day - the media doesn't care what the hot issue, so long as it can whip its viewers and readers into the right mood) is usually a losing proposition.

Buyers and their agents

I don't have much (any, actually) sympathy for home owners whose house doesn't sell when they set their own price. And I lack much empathy for those sellers' agents who, against their better judgement, took the over-priced listing in the hope they could get the seller to see reason somewhere before the listing expired (especially because I've done the same thing myself but, I hope, no longer). We can all make mistakes in pricing a house but that's what price cuts are for. The owner who stubbornly refuses to hear what the market is telling him deserves what he gets, in my opinion.

But I do feel sorry for those sellers who take the (bad) advice of an agent and continue to do so in the face of marketplace condemnation. I suspect that these folks decide that they have to trust someone and if they trusted their agent to begin with, why abandon him or her now?

Because that trust is misplaced, I suggest. I've seen situations where sellers just wanted out, either because of a job transfer or retirement, yet grossly overpriced their house because their agent told them to do so. That agent, in turn, keeps the price too high, probably through false pride, but who knows? Maybe it's actual malice. Worse still is when the agent persuades the poor saps to put more money into the house that won't sell so that they can not sell it at a still higher price. It's a losing strategy but one I see employed all over town. The result: the newly purchased retirement home sits vacant while the would-be sellers sit in and maintain a house they no longer want. I don't understand this because nobody wins in this game - the sellers remain stuck and the agent remains unpaid. So why is it done? Beats me - I've already guessed it's because of either pride or malice but perhaps I'm missing something here. Feel free to hazard your own guess or impart your knowledge.

Extraordinary delusions and the madness of crowds

I saw a local builder quoted in one of our weekly rags recently, pointing to his unsold new construction in Riverside as evidence of a slow (or dead) market. Usually, he claimed, his houses sold immediately but this one had sat on the market for ten months. Proof, he says, that the market's screwing him.

I like this guy and wish him only the best but the fact is that he over-priced his project originally and even a year and ten months ago, it wouldn't have sold where he wanted it to. I sold two new houses in Riverside this year, each in what I (and the market) felt was a better location and each substantially cheaper than this one (but over $3,000,000, lest you think we're comparing apples to oranges here).

So yes, the market's in the doldrums, but before you leave your house priced where it is and throw your hands up, a victim of impossible circumstances beyond your control, consider the possibility that you muffed up when you set your price.

Dickie Fuld; "Your fault, your fault, nah nah nah!

In his testimony before Congress today, Mr. Fuld revealed a myriad of hitherto-unknown enemies of his company, all of which conspired to bring down the empire. Oh, for shame.

Charge of the Light Brigade
Someone's got to be daring!
There's a new listing today on Thornhill Road (north of the Post Road, between Riverside Lane and Sheephill: $850,000 for 0.23 acre, which yields a maximum FAR size of about 3,600 sq.ft., if you dared build a house that big on this street and, the listing promises, "endless possibilities".

Well okay then, if there are endless possibilities, let's go for it. Applying the traditional rule of thumb of 3X land cost, you'd want to get $2,550,000 for your new project but, because the highest sale on this street is only $1.2 million, in a good year, you might want to reduce that ratio a bit. Tossing in carrying costs and overhead, figure that you'll spend $900,000 building this house. Add in the $850,000 cost of land and you'll break even at $1,750,000, if you pay the real estate commissions and taxes yourself. You don't want to do that, better price this thing at $1,850,000. You want to be compensated for your time and effort, you ungrateful wretch? Okay, take an extra $150,000 and sell it for $2,000,000. If you can accomplish that, you're a friggin' genius and should be snapping up all those failing projects on Round Hill rather than wasting your time here in bungalow land.

Is it unfair to point out that a Stamford broker priced this house?

Slappy says, "let's be happy!"
Okay sure, the stock market's a little gloomy today, and there's a world-wide collapse of stock and credit markets going on, but have you stopped to consider the good things in your life? Slappy has. For instance, the price of gas is going down! Of course, now that real estate agents don't have to drive all around town showing houses that's not quite the blessing it might have been this Spring, but its still a darn good thing, you betcha!

The builders of all those empty spec houses are happy, too - can you imagine what it must cost to heat 25,000 square feet of empty home during the winter, all winter? Lower fuel prices must be a real blessing for them.

Cross-word editors are happy because real estate lawyers and title searchers now have the time to idle away just hours and hours filling in the little squares. Imagine how proficient that extra experience will make them! Slappy sees a demand for entirely new crossword puzzles that are much more demanding than today's.

Bar tenders are happy counting tips from all their new customers who come off the train and head for the counter, rather than home; divorce counselors must be doing well and our churches will soon be over-flowing.

Those are just a few of the improvements to our life Slappy sees. Surely, if you'll look deep inside, you'll find many, many more. Ta ta for now.

11 Lindsay Drive
I'm not picking on anyone here. This a lovely looking house in a convenient and desirable neighborhood, but it's been around at least since April '07, when its asking price was $12.950 million (and perhaps longer - there's a notation on the listing that shows the original listing price as $13.750 million but if that's accurate, someone's expunged the original listing from our records). Regardless of its pricing history, it's still for sale and still well above the $12 million mark; its latest price is $12.750 million. I'd love to see it go, as that might embolden buyers in lesser price ranges, but will it? Not today, probably.

A readers asks,

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

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

Squirrel Snaring
My son just called me from Portland Maine and he's worried: his peers (the 25ish crowd) are sending around emails urging each other to buy survival gear and stockpile food for the coming Armageddon; should he listen?

I assured him he was okay and reminded him of what one of his heroes, Bob Dylan had to say on the subject: "when you ain't got nothing, you ain't got nothin' to lose." No one's coming to repossess John's guitar. Besides, I assured him, I could buy some ammunition for my hunting rifles and we'd go squirrel hunting or, if unsuccessful in that endeavor, we'd pick off a few of the hysterics in his neighborhood and dine on them - tastes like rabbit.

But it can't be helpful to our economy if they media has scared even the 18-25 year-old set. If these kids are worried, what's happening with older people who are watching their pensions and IRA's melt? Are they likely to decide that today's a great time to buy a house? I think not.

As I reminded John, however, there's no useful purpose served by worrying about things we can't control and, unless he knew some trick I didn't, the two of us going down to Wall Street and yelling "stop" would be a waste of subway fare. But he should keep his powder dry.

Slim Pickens Waves Good Bye
Well this should be exciting: Dow down over 500 [update: 570 and falling], slips below 10,000

Sitting on the sidelines

Where have all the flowers gone?
A reader asks, "where are the buyers?" I believe the picture to the left neatly sums up my answer but if not, here's another picture depicting what everyone is either expecting or fearing:
October 29, 1929
I just tried logging on to Bloomberg to grab a snapshot of today's market activity but the site wouldn't load. In the past few weeks, I've noticed the same phenomenon on days when the market news is particularly bad and I assume that's the same story today. Bloomberg could probably use a new, more robust server, but can it afford one?

Well, it's a start
Coldwell Banker initiates nationwide, 10% cut in all listing prices in the hope of jump-starting sales. I doubt 10% is sufficient. Coldwell says that these cuts will only last for a "ten day sales event" but what are they going to do on the eleventh day, rest? Raise the prices back up? Neither seems particularly useful.

And here's a quote from one disappointed homeowner who could easily be (but isn't)speaking from Greenwich:

This is the first time we're lowering it, and we really didn't want to do that because we listed it to sell," she said. "We knew things were tough, but the home is a really desirable unit in a neighborhood that rarely has anything come open so we didn't think it would have any problems selling.

None so blind as those who will not see, I suppose.

Expulsion From the Garden of Eden
The Times runs an article today on Lehman's Fall. Other than a sobering tale of Dickie Fuld's last days as he frantically sought to find a savior for his company I'm not sure what to take away from the story. But here's what struck me: the article concludes with an interview with a Riverside resident who fell when his employer did. I looked up the man's address and, though I have no interest in disturbing his privacy I'm comfortable saying that he lives in a nice neighborhood but nothing at all like Fuld's. The poor guy, still shell shocked, learned last week that Lehman was immediately cancelling his severance pay and health benefits, no doubt so that Fuld could continue to pay his landscaping fees. "This is wrong, and I can't stand for it," he fumed. "They need to just do the right thing."

Livvy Floren weeps. Having witnessed how Merrill Lynch treated my own father when it took over White, Weld & Co., I (a) shed no tears at its demise and (b) would caution this Lehman ex-employee not to hold his breath while waiting for Fuld et als to do the right thing.

209 Bedford Road
If the GMLS records are accurate, the current owners of this place bought it, newly renovated, in 1998 for $1.525. Nine years later, in May, 2007, they put it back on the market and asked $3.495 million. I thought that was aggressive - renovations new in 1997 don't read as new, in this market, ten years later - but regardless of my view, the market wasn't impressed and the house didn't sell, despite a long series of price cuts. Today it was marked down to $2.5 million, or about 70% of its original asking price. Maybe it should have started there 1 1/2 years ago; now, it may be too late to get that price.

Auf Wiedersehen?

Or "so long, it's been good to know you". A couple of real estate firms in town have been pushing their "international connections", hinting (or promising) that they had a steady flow of European and other foreign buyers eager and willing to buy Greenwich properties. I was always dubious about those claims because, year after year, the average buyer in town was already in town and just moving up or down the food chain. But customers loved to believe it: "sure, my house may be a little over-priced for a Greenwich buyer, but what's that to someone paying in Euros or pounds? One of them will come by and pull my fat from the fire - just wait." Well, they waited and they lost. I don't have any statistics yet but it seems to me that, with European banks in a free fall, Russia's stock exchange shut down and the Middle East suffering from a huge decline in oil prices and the usual corruption that the merry-go-round may soon stop if it hasn't stopped already. Who will these firms promote as the next batch of unsophisticated buyers willing to pay more than a house is worth?

Ramussen: Poll of voters on what to do with the House and Senate

59% of American voters would throw the bums out and start anew.

So what's the matter with the other 41% ?

Rats!

Well gosh darn it, every time I want to respect the political and environmental opinions of our Hollywood stars, I keep coming across stories like this: Sharon Stone overreacted to son's foot odor. And mom?


No stinky feet here, thanks to their exposure to lots of clean, California air.

Time for contrarian thinking?
I try to be as objective as I can when it comes to real estate and business and I don't think much of current market conditions nor the chances of those conditions improving in the immediate future. But I keep reading articles like this one in today's New York Times that proclaim that our doom has arrived and nothing will ever be the same again. In my limited experience, the more our media espouse common wisdom, the more we hear, "everybody knows", the less likely it is to be true. So if "everyone knows" that Wall Street's goose is cooked, that real estate is falling off a cliff and that we're in for a spiritual revival where the greedy, ambitious folks who brought the region such great wealth are going to retire to monasteries and contemplate their sins, the more a suspicion grows in me that perhaps the contrary will happen: greed won't disappear, the appetite for showy ostentatious houses won't diminish and Greenwich will continue on, unslowed. I don't believe this, mind you, but I'm beginning to wonder.

Ain't it a shame? Dubai feels our pain. Things are getting rocky for our Arab friends and Dubai, with $500 billion of real estate development cooking is headed for shoaling waters. Tough, says I.

Boy Scout Statue, Washington, D.C.
Hmmm.
The Boy Scout looks chipper enough, but why is the Scout Master on the left coming out of the woods with his clothes under his arm? Just wondering.

Sleeping in

Greenwich Time today exposes the dirty little secret of Connecticut's judicial system there's no penalty for ignoring a jury duty summons. Those summons include a harsh warning that a fine will be imposed for failure to comply but don't believe it. Years ago, one guy (a Greenwich resident, surely) simply sent a check to the court, explaining that he didn't have time to serve. The check was passed around the court, then up to Hartford and eventually returned to its maker - there is no one in the state authorized to receive or process such penalties.

Don't get me wrong: the day may come, and I hope it doesn't, that you'll be involved in a law suit and you will almost certainly then wish for a jury capable of intelligently evaluating your lawyer's arguments (of course, there are matters where we attorneys pray for a fat, dumb jury that can be swayed by emotion, not facts, but generally ....) so civic duty and self-interest should persuade you to show up with your college degree and apply your brains. But you don't have to.

"Cold Cash Jefferson"finishes first in Louisiana primary. Well why not; doesn't New Orleans deserve the very best? Worked for Washington, D.C. and Marion Barry.

Banks are considering refusing to participate in the bailout and continuing instead to try to muddle through. I'd be hugely impressed by their dedication to the principles of free enterprise were it not for this:

But Wall Street analysts, believe the addition of so many terms to the bill might deter potential participants.

One of the least attractive elements is a section designed to curb executive pay at banks that participate in the bail-out package. These include limiting stock-related pay and banning 'golden parachutes' for executives.

'I think this hodge-podge of regulations and rules will be enough to put many [chief executives] off participating,' Caldwell said.

General Hammerstein-Equord

Wisdom from 1933 (or thereabouts)

In the comments below (the "Golden Girls" posting) a reader asked about agents who call about her expired listing and ask for an appointment to show the place to a client. I warned her that many of these calls come from new agents who have no clients but lots of time and that they mine the expired listings to try to con their way into a house and into a new listing. She wrote back to express her surprise that agents had enough time on their hands to track her down. Time on our hands? Slow market? Ha! How do you think I can post here so frequently?

Thanks to the wonder of computers, the GMLS data can be sliced, diced and sorted in a myriad of ways including status. Active, contract, sold and, for present purposes, expired and withdrawn. The calls start right after that sorting. Some of these agents are fresh from sales classes that teach them to make 10 - 20 cold calls a day and to concentrate on "FISBOs" - for sale by owner and expired listings. I won't say such classes are beneath my dignity but I've never attended one; I must have forgotten. Dealing with these callers can be vexing because many of them are completely clueless. We had to fire one new agent because, among other sins, she cold called people without bothering to even determine the address she was calling. When an owner asked what, specifically she liked about the house she didn't have the wit to bluff her way through and instead would ask, "and what part of town is your house in?" I complained to higher-ups that this creature was ruining our name but the final straw came when one fine day with time on her hands, she pored over the obituary pages and mailed each of the grieving relatives her sales pitch. I assume she's now practicing personal injury law somewhere, but she is no longer with us.

But I'm grateful to the lady for one thing: she reminded me of one of my father's favorite quotes, spoken by General Hammerstein - Equord, last leader of the Reichswehr before Hitler's ascension:

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!

The Bellamy Brothers
He's an Old Hippie

He turned thirty-five last Sunday
In his hair he found some gray
But he still ain't changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the back yard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don't make no sense

He gets off on country music
Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
But he's just too friggin' old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock and the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy and the silence made him cry
Yeah he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why

He's an old hippie and he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie...his new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

Who Knew?
I ruminated below about the 119 spec mansions sitting unsold in town and suggested, partly-tongue-in-cheek, that older Greenwich residents might want to unload their own mansions (at a reduced price, in today's market) pick up one of the big ones at the next foreclosure auction and have their own commune. Turns out, others are already doing this. See, eg, Elder Communes or this AARP article, Rethinking Communes. Hey, something has to happen to all these "Bad Manors", as Bernie Yudain calls them. Why not put them to fun use?

Isn't this duckie?
Here's one person's estimate of what Pelosi and her gang have wrought:$1.8 trillion of pork

Bailout type Cost to taxpayers (Source: Reuters)
Financial bailout package approved this week up to or more than $700 billion
Bear Stearns financing $29 billion
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalization $200 billion
AIG loan and nationalization $85 billion
Federal Housing Administration housing rescue bill $300 billion
Mortgage community grants $4 billion
JPMorgan Chase repayments $87 billion
Loans to banks via Fed's Term Auction Facility $200 billion+
Loans from Depression-era Exchange Stabilization Fund $50 billion
Purchases of mortgage securities by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac $144 billion
POSSIBLE TOTAL $1.8 trillion+
NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS PER U.S. CENSUS 105,480,101
POSSIBLE COST PER HOUSEHOLD $17,064+

"We will not Christmas Tree this bill", our protector Chuck Schumer vowed last week. "Everyone wants something but they'll have to wait. This matter is too urgent."

Thank God for Senator Schumer. Our wallets would have been emptied by his peers otherwise.

Good news for The Golden Girls
Not everything is bleak. This auctioneer is offering a Lakeside Chateau in New Canaan. It's a 6 bedroom, 7 bath place, has parking for 9 cars, pool, guesthouse and of course, that "Lake" they mention, which is no doubt a pond. Appraised at $9.5 million, starting bid is set at $3 million. New construction (of course).

This may present a solution for older folks who don't want to live alone in a big old mansion. If six couples snapped this up for $3 million, they could sell off their own unwanted digs, move in here and enjoy all those amenities like a brand new kitchen and that pool (oh - and an elevator and tennis court, too) etc. for far less than they'd pay at Edgehill (is that a play on "Edge of Death"?).
We'll leave Edgehill alone. With this latest idea, I may have just discovered a new marketing niche.

Update: Ya know, I've already received one comment from a reader who'd been discussing just this approach with her friends. Maybe it would work. Any interest? I'll find the mansion, you find your friends and won't that be fun. I'd want an invitation to the first party, though.

The center will not hold
From Instapundit.com

ROGER KIMBALL: Data points from the Windy City. Including this one: "The Illinois State pension fund is $44 billion in debt. That’s the worst in the country."
The problem of underfunded public pensions will make Fannie and Freddie look like small potatoes.

Here's a bit of a downer
This Englishman thinks we're in for a spot of trouble. Wish I could refute his pessimism, especially his concluding paragraphs, but right now, ....

At the end of that spiral there are two futures. One is Götterdämmerung, a financial catastrophe that does indeed bear comparison with the aftermath of 1929 – and please, disregard anyone who claims we are there, or anywhere near there, yet.

The other is a sadder, shabbier world perhaps more comparable to Britain in the 1950s, where luxuries were just that, mostly inaccessible, a step up the housing ladder meant years of penury ahead and credit was almost unheard of. Worry if you work in finance, estate agency, retail or other vulnerable areas, or if you are unable to trade out of your debts on your existing salary.

Among the survivors, of course, like cockroaches in a nuclear winter, will be many of Gordon Brown’s 600,000 or more workers taken on to the public payroll over the past decade, along with their copper-bottomed pensions. A world inherited by diversity inspectors and wheelie bin snoops. Dear God.

Have a nice weekend

If you think someone would have to be crazy to buy Greenwich real estate right now, here's hope
Loonies investing in U.S. properties!

I'm not saying this, he is.
Here's a long letter I just received from a mortgage broker. I suppose I don't disagree with everything in it - he got my email address right, for instance - but there isn't much common ground between us. I post it here as sort of a curiosity piece, so that you can, if interested, see what one portion of the industry is saying (the Raveis Mortgage rep I mentioned earlier today shares my sentiments, by the way, so this letter in no way reflects the entire globe of mortgage brokers thinking).

[sender's name omitted to protect the guilty]

Dear Valued Partner,

The Chinese have a proverb: "May you live in interesting times." And we are living through interesting times indeed.

Whatever the political posturing regarding the rescue plan, a plan needed to be passed. Credit markets are frozen and banks are going bust every day. This is not totally because of "toxic" mortgages. This has a lot to do with FASB 157, also known as "mark to market".

Each day, lenders must mark their assets to the marketplace. It's like you having to appraise your home everyday and, if your neighbor was under duress because she got very ill, divorced, lost her job and was forced to sell her home quickly, she may have sold it super cheap. Now, does that mean your house is worth that super cheap price, too? Clearly not. Why? Because you are not under duress. You have the time to sell your home and get a more normal price, which more accurately reflects true market conditions. But "mark to market" does not allow for this, which creates a vicious cycle.

Why is this so bad? Because, as lenders mark down their assets the amount that they have previously loaned becomes much riskier in relation to their assets. For example, say a bank has $1 million in assets and say they have $15 million in loans outstanding. Their ratio is an acceptable 15 to 1. But should they take a paper write down of $500 thousand due to "mark to market" requirements, their ratio suddenly changes to 30 to 1. This is because their assets are now only $500 thousand after taking the paper loss, while their loans outstanding are still $15 million. And at 30 to 1 this bank is viewed as a risky investment. So the stock price starts to get hit, it becomes harder to borrow, and most importantly harder to make money. The bank is then forced to sell some of its loans to reduce its ratio...at cheap prices. And this makes the vicious cycle continue.

And a quick look at the holdings of these loans show that 95% are problem free. Additionally, the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) that are used with the pools of mortgages are relatively safe. But this requires a bit of understanding. You see, when a pool of mortgage loans is put together it isn't just A paper or B paper etc. it's everything. It's got some A paper, B paper, C paper...and even what looks like toilet paper. An "A" investor buys the whole pool but because they are an "A" investor their safety is greater because they can avoid the first 20% (an example) of defaults. So they own the whole pool but are sheltered from the first batch of defaults, and for this they get the lowest rate of return. As you can figure from here the more risk investors want to take, the higher the return. So the investments are relatively safe, but the accounting rules currently place undue pressure on the banking institutions.

Now add to all this, the opportunistic "shorting" done on the financial stocks, much of it illegal because those shorts did not legitimately borrow shares (called naked shorting), and you exacerbate this whole problem. Thank goodness for the recent temporary ban on shorting in the financial sector. As for the plan, the government is the only one who can step in to do this. And they have to do this. And they will do this. The nauseating political posturing from both sides is just part of the process.

This is not easy to understand for the general public. In fact most politicians don't get this either. That's why it is a difficult yet critical bill for them to vote on.

Once this is done, it will take some time but the markets will stabilize. As for the real estate and mortgage industries, it will take a bit of time but we will make it through this. Rates will remain attractive and the influx of credit availability will help the housing market gradually improve. This ultimately will be the medicine needed to improve the situation overall.

They call it one-stop shopping, others call it fraud
A group of independent title insurance agents in Ohio is suing real estate brokers for steering customers to those firms' own title companies. Here in the Nutmeg State we don't have that exact problem - the lawyers beat us agents to the punch bowl and they select the title company and keep 60% of the commission - but we do have similar things going on, all under the rubric of one-stop shopping: buy a house and use the selling broker's inspection company, lawyer, mortgage company and whatever else these guys dream up (like, in California, where else? - Natural Hazard Disclosure Reports.

Home warranties? Check out this article and this quote from it:

Today, about 90% of the houses have home warranties, and Century 21 and all the Realogy companies now exclusively recommend AHS products, which are branded to each division. And we recommend every agent should advise their clients to obtain a home warranty through our exclusive provider-whether they are buying or selling-AHS is always reporting back to us about how they are taking care of our clients, and I am impressed with how client-oriented they are.

I'm not picking on any one company here - my own firm, Raveis, offers the same services and I'm sure they'd be pleased if I steered business their way. For sure, there are sometimes benefits to using a brokerage firm's other affiliates. I just sent a family member to Raveis Mortgage this week because it has (its own) money to lend, the rates were the best around and from personal experience I know that Mark Hawkins, Raevis Mortgage's Greenwich rep, does fine work. But I always recommend at least three real estate lawyers to buyer-clients and none has any business relationship with Raveis. Nothing against whomever my firm has selected but, after two decades of law practice, I have personal relationships with these guys - I know who the not-so-good lawyers are and I know that the three (or 5, or 10 - it's a pretty big pool) will do an excellent job. Same thing for house inspections, movers, insurance agents, etc.

So my advice to buyers, if any still exist, is to do your own investigation and don't blindly accept being steered to a brokerage's controlled or affiliated service firms. You'll probably get a good product with those companies, and you should certainly compare their charges to those of others, but do look around.

25 Keofferam

Troubled times call for bold action
That's my opinion; this builder obviously disagrees. This perfectly nice house on a great street in Old Greenwich hasn't sold at $5,995,000 so yesterday it was reduced 3.3% ($200,000) to $5,795,000. I'm friends with this builder and he builds a good house, but baby steps toward the new market reality will only, I fear, prolong the day of reckoning.

Around the corner, at 403 Sound Beach Avenue, the same builder has applied the same approach and reduced another project 3%, from $3,765,000 to $3,665,000. Who knows? Perhaps he has information the rest of us don't. I hope so.

487 North Street

Gone with the wind?
This beautiful property (across from Dingletown and just up on your left (or down - who remembers these things?) has a 1906 house on it, "renovated" in 1950. Okay, that probably means you'll want to do a little work, but it's a terrific house and it sits on 14 acres of spectacular lawn/meadow that, sadly, has been approved for a 5-lot subdivision. Originally offered at $23,500,000, it was reduced about 21% yesterday to $18,500,000. In better times that would surely generate a builder's interest, but I don't know of any builders in town who are actively searching for a project this size. Perhaps there are; I certainly don't pretend to know all the big builders in town, but speaking as a resident who has always admired the grace of the existing house and the beautiful sweep of the lawns surrounding it, I hope that some Russian fleeing from Putin and looking for a safe place to stash some of his cash picks this place up and keeps it just as it is.

Uh, oh, if Slappy the Happy Clown's posted, it must be bad news!
That's right, boys and girls, Slappy's stopped by our studios to give you the week end round up on our real estate market. Four single homes went to contract this week and three of those were under $2 million. The exception was 11 Cob Island Road which after initially asking $5.750 million, finally dropped its price to $4.95 and found a buyer. Slappy is very sorry to say that that modest number of contracts is half of last year's, and last year made Slappy unhappy. Oh well, don't forget to drink your Cocoa Marsh
and then it's time for most of you to go to bed!

Update: Slappy has noticed that the Greenwich Post's real estate section, which used to have a column called "On and Off the Market" and featured homes newly listed and homes newly sold has been rechristened. Now it's just called "On the Market" - the sales are gone. Slappy doesn't blame the Post for this - the poor paper just ran out of material for the "Off the Market" portion. It's a sign of the Times, not of the Post.

Luddites at Play

Environmentalists to solar power: Drop Dead!
I have long argued that the Greens desire to destroy modern civilization and bring back the green gardens of Eden for a select few members of the human race: them. I've been called an alarmist, an idiot and even a real estate agent but you tell me: if they don't want coal, oil, nuclear energy, solar power or wind power (if generated inside wilderness areas or within view of their homes or from their car windows), what will they support? Nothing? Then how will we survive? The Greens like to say, "by using new, wonderful technologies that would have been invented long ago if they hadn't been squashed by Dick Chaney and his oil companies and that will be, once the messiah is inaugurated" but juicy conspiracy theories have not and will not power anything. Until we learn to harness hot air.

What do we do next?
Well, the House has passed the bailout bill and the DJI, which had been up 300 points earlier today, is now up just 60, and still falling. California can't find anyone to lend it money, which is worth pondering; California's economy is larger than that of France's, yet no lender in the world seems to think it's capable of paying back its debts. Things are about to get really interesting, really fast.

Bringing order from disorder
From John Tierney. I only saw one - life must be good (explanation in link)

45 Byram Shore Road
A reader asked about this house and here's what the records show. In 1999 it was a nice, if un-renovated 1896 mansion ( a mansion by 1896 standards - it's 5,000 sq. ft.) with deep water access - good for tying up your yacht, don't you know. It sold for $5.375 that year and just a year later, the buyer resold it to its present owners for $6.473, untouched. The market used to be like that, once - remember? Anyway, now it's been completely restored (still the same size, however) and put up for sale at $13.250. That's not at all a crazy price for this street and in better conditions I'd expect it to go fairly quickly. Today? I just don't know. There are certainly buyers out there who still have money and this is a beautiful piece of property so, ... maybe. Like everything else these days, we'll just have to wait and see.

Mark to Market as explained by a dummy.
I've been having a good conversation via the comments section with a couple of financial experts about the merits of the SEC's proposal to let banks escape the accounting requirement that they "mark to market" their portfolios of toxic loans. Marking to market means adjusting a firm's books to reflect the actual market value of an asset. If the market price goes up, the asset's value is adjusted accordingly. If it drops, however, well it's quite the other way around.

Right now, banks don't like the rule because the market value of those toxic loans is zilch - no one wants them. "But there really is value there," the banks complain. "If we carry them at zero our capital requirements will rise and since we don't have any more money, we'll be forced into bankruptcy!" The government has listened and now wants to permit the banks to assign a value to these assets at some level, as-yet-undefined, above zero. I, in my ignorance, opined that this made sense because, down the road, there would be value realized in these loans and why put still more banks out of business while we all awaited a recovery? I was quickly set straight by a couple of readers. Once you abandon the mark to market rule, they warned, you abandon the last vestige of accounting discipline and open the floodgates to "creative accounting". This is what brought us the Savings and Loan disaster and it will happen again, if we permit it. (The only remaining section of the New York Times that I will read is its Business section and here's a good article on this topic by Floyd Norris, "Mistakes of the Past Live Again" ). By the way, Warren Buffett thinks the idea stinks, too - hearing him say so during his interview with Charlie Rose the other night sealed the deal for me.

Why is all this in a quasi-real estate column, aside from Wall Street's collapse affecting our property values? Because, in my opinion, many home sellers are acting like those banks. They "know" that their house is worth more than its current market value and they refuse to mark its price down. Home values will rise again, they reason, so why admit that, today, their house is worth 20% less than it was last year? That's fine, if you don't need or want to sell your house right now. No accounting rule will force you to make the adjustment (unless you go to refinance your house) and you can just sit and hope, fingers crossed, until prices start climbing again - maybe in 2014, maybe sooner, maybe later than that; your guess is no worse than mine. And there's a comfortable feeling believing that your house is still worth what it once was - I do it myself; I see no need to acknowledge that my own $2 million dumpster duck isn't worth that anymore and I like the reassuring feeling of wealth it givs me.

But I'm not trying to sell my house right now so I don't have to admit reality. Neither do you, unless you are ready to sell. If you are then, SEC laxness or not, you'll have to get real.

172 Milbank Avenue
Here we go again
Yesterday you could have bought this beautiful house for just $3.999 million. Today, because you dawdled, its builder demands $4.250 - ok, I'm sorry - won't you please let me have it at its original price?
The listing agent is a good friend of mine and a real expert in real estate so her decision to move the price up during a week when everything else seems to be falling apart strikes me as ...odd. I'll have to ask her about her reasoning next time I see her.

Point Counter-Point
Whither the real estate market? We link, you decide.

Real Estate market driving you crazy?
Don't worry. Thanks to the hard work of our Senators who spent the week saving the financial world, you'll soon have cheap mental care available. Of course, there are those who think that this onerous requirement will do to health care what the Community Reinvestment Act did to the mortgage industry, but don't worry, be happy! ("Here: take this pill")

We helped bankrupt the banks. Now we're doing the same thing for health care! What does "mental health parity" legislation, which has now been incorporated into the big "rescue" bill passed by the Dem-controlled Senate, have to do with the nation's financial crisis? ... P.S.: Actually, the thinking behind the push for "parity" and the now-questionable decades-long push to extend mortgages to "underserved" groups seems eerily parallel: 1) Stodgy/greedy old bankers say they can't afford to lend to minorities who don't meet traditional mortgage criteria. But we have a noble social goal to fulfill and we know they're wrong! ... 2) Stodgy/greedy old health plan administrators say they can't afford to cover hard-to-diagnose mental problems (e.g., anxiety) and substance abuse to the same extent that they cover easy-to-diagnose physical problems. But we have a noble social goal and ....

Update: How much pork did these public servants stuff into their maws? How about $112 billion? Remember, it's a "crisis".

Uh oh
Leveraged buy outs next to go down? This reporter thinks so

Take Realogy, formerly Cendant, the world's largest real estate franchisor, whose businesses include Century 21, Coldwell Banker and Sotheby's International Realty. Its debt trades at about 75 cents (U.S.) on the dollar, a level that implies a fairly high chance of default.

This is bad news for Leon Black's Apollo Management, one of the world's biggest private equity firms. Its purchase of Realogy, completed in the spring of 2007, when the buyout frenzy was at its height, valued the company at $8.5-billion. It's safe to assume Realogy is worth considerably less today as real estate values go into the tank.

Say good riddance to Bear Sterns
I previously mentioned that Bear Sterns facilitated penny stock firms by providing them clearing and financing services, thereby enabling those boiler rooms to rip off unsophisticated dupes; the article linked above gives another reason we should be glad to be shed of this firm. It was 1997, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which opened the gates to sub-prime mortgages, undocumented loans and the whole panoply of dubious lending practices was just getting going, and guess who stepped through first?

The first public securitization of CRA loans started in 1997 by Bear Stearns. The number of CRA mortgage loans increased by 39 percent between 1993 and 1998, while other loans increased by only 17 percent.

I realize that Bear Sterns was followed through those gates by every Wall Streeter who could afford a calculator (Warren Buffet said last night that there were three types of people on Wall Street: innovators, imitators and idiots) but if the market's going to start somewhere weeding out these schnooks, why not employ the FIFO method? Bye bye, Bear Sterns.

So who's lying, the Democrat Majority Leader or his spokesman?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pressed for passage, with the alarming news that one of the country's premier insurance companies was about to go bankrupt if the crisis was not quickly resolved.

"We don't have a lot of leeway on time," Reid told reporters in the Capitol. "One of the individuals in the caucus today talked about a major insurance company -- a major insurance company -- one with a name that everyone knows that's on the verge of going bankrupt. That's what this is all about."

He did not identify the insurance company, and later in the day Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the senator was speaking broadly and not referring to anything specific.

"Senator Reid is not personally aware of any particular company being on the verge of bankruptcy," Manley wrote in an e-mail to ABCNews.com. "Rather, his comments were meant to refer to the conditions in the financial sector generally. He regrets any confusion his comments may have caused."

Regardless of which man lied, the comments of this fine senator sent insurance stocks plummeting. Call me a cynic, but it occurs to me that these Dem's have a vested interest in a ruined economy for the election and are doing their damndest to achieve it.

Shocker!
New York Film Festival screens movie on Che Guevera depicting his executions of political prisoners, homosexuals and anyone who got in his way! Well no, in fact the movie omits that sort of filthy propaganda and instead glorifies the sadistic blood-sucking piece of scum. Gets glowing reviews, though from the usual useful idiots. But I wonder - did the headline surprise you? If so, does that tell you something about Hollywood and its reptilian denizens?

Update: for another view of this hagiography, try this.

This probably won't be the last dumb assumption I make today but it was the first
"CEA" whose comments on marking to market, real estate and other matters I have praised, has no wife, she is a wife. If you'd like to see a picture of the idiot in command of this keyboard, look to your right.

What fun is this?
Credit crisis spreads a pall over Silicon Valley

This should be interesting
A reader brought to my attention this monster on Round Hill Road which has been on the market since May at $25 million. The land it sits on has a history. It was originally offered for sale in 2003 as 9.9 acres at $9.5 million. It sold for $8.1 million (so much for $9.5, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach and all that)in August 2005 and 4.3 acres were split off and sold that year to this builder for $7.25 million. He must have had second thoughts because in November 2006 he tried to resell it for $7.45 million but finding no takers, he proceeded to build this 22,185 sq. foot mansion. He finished in May, put it on the market, and there it sits.

I hold no malice toward this builder. To the contrary, he's built a succession of beautiful, extremely well crafted houses over the years and sold each of them in the $6 million range. I don't know what possessed him to pay $7.25 for a parcel of land, however, because at that price he either has to sell the house he built on it for over $20 million or lose his shirt. So I hope, for his sake, he finds a buyer, quickly. But in this market, I also hope he has a second shirt.

Update!
My brother Gideon points out that the Helmsley price reduction of $30 million now holds the record for the largest price reduction in Greenwich real estate history. I declined a reader's request to identify the "King of Over Pricing" earlier this week but it's now a matter of public record that David Ogilvy can claim the title of "King of Price Cuts". Imagine that client meeting. "We're going to require a price cut." "Okay,sure - how much? 100 thousand?" "Er, no, a little more than that; let's say, .... 30 million?"

Time out?
One of the most successful builders in town, Jordan Saper, bought 29 Calhoun Drive this past for July for $2.375. Even though the market was declining then, the property, listed at $2.495, moved in just 13 days. But July '08 is not October '08 and today Saper returned the place to the market, asking $2.450. I doubt he'll get that, but here's my point: if a builder like Saper has developed cold feet on proceeding with a project, what does that say about the prospects for other land deals? Nothing good, I suspect.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!
The Helmsley estate has been dropped from $125 million to $95 million, a saving of a full $30 million. If you've been waiting, now's your chance. I once hazarded a guess, when the Queen of Bedford Hills Women's Prison was still alive, that the place might be worth $45-$50 million. The listing broker was obviously far more optimistic than I and remains so even today - but that optimism is dipping.

Oh, come on!
Greenwich Post reports today yet another assault on our coffers: a "Victim" sues town for sewer back-up . Look - I certainly regret that this poor lady had raw sewage sloshed around her basement and that foul odors permeated her home but without more - an allegation as to how, exactly, the town was negligent, I don't want her reaching into my pocket. Sewers back up for all sorts of reasons but most of those: tree roots invading lines, too much stuff entering through the toilet, you name it; are the responsibility of the homeowner, not her fellow citizens. "Emotional harm? "Punitive damages?" 'Attorney's fees?". Somebody hand this lady a bucket of bleach and a mop and tell her to get over it.

I may be being unfair here and the lack of specificity may be due to lousy reporting by the Greenwich Post rather than lousy lawyering (on the subject of reporting, it adds nothing to learn that the litigant's a single mother and unemployed - irrelevant!) I'm not reassured however, by this quote from our former First Selectman, Roger Peterson, who represents the woman and who is demanding that his former constituents pay his fees:

“What happened to her is extraordinarily egregious that the town has not stepped in to remedy this situation and to compensate her for the damages she has suffered."

"What happened to her is extraordinarily egregious that the town"? Did Roger screw up the English language like this when he was in government? All I remember of the guy was him running around Greenwich in his (town-supplied) car, trying to arrest people by showing them his phony Police Commissioner badge.

Will the bailout work?
Assuming it passes the House, which I think it will. But I tried emailing my Congressman Chris Shays last night to urge him to vote against the damn thing (fat chance) and received a message that "the mailbox is full". The alternative contact site took about 4 minutes to load so I guess the man was hearing from (lots) of constituents. I assume Shay's no different than other members of Congress in this regard, and I also assume constituents don't want to see the bailout pass, so today should be interesting.
The wife of reader "CEA" (hey - this is a family blog, silhouettes of strippers notwithstanding, and her email proves it) has sent me a link to this article that predicts the bailout won't work. Good points made, but I'm pretty sure we're going to find out, beginning today. If so, let's pray that Warren Buffet's sceptical optimism is justified.

When did they move from Nigeria to South Africa?
Received the following from a Mr. Francis Khoumommo - I can't take advantage of this opportunity now but if you're feeling flush from the recent surge in Greenwich real estate values, perhaps you'll be interested. Call me if so - we'll do lunch.

ATTENTION, Mr Christ

financial consultant in South Africa and believe that this finds you and your family well as I would like to work together with you if you deem it necessary and rewarding to assist my client realize his personal investment plan.

My client, Dr. Irvin Khoza, the Vice President of South African Football Association and also the Chairperson Local Organizing Committee for the 2010 world cup tournament in South Africa.

I am consulting you on his instruction for his personal investment plan which I would like to discuss with you and know the possibility of how we can co-operate and work together to carry it out, which I believe will benefit both parties if handled with honesty.

A Rush to judgment?
Yale researchers have taken a closer look at those energy saving light bulbs our Congress has mandated. Their conclusion?
Mercury pollution will increase in many states and countries.

"Compact fluorescent lighting is an area where we're really pushing this alternative and all these policies are being enacted, but we're not looking at the potential unintended consequences of what we're doing," said study author Julie Beth Zimmerman, an assistant professor in Yale's Department of Chemical Engineering and its School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

I know I annoy my Green friends when I disparage efforts to save our planet tomorrow but we're seeing so much of this foolishness - Congress, desperate to appear to be doing something about whatever crisis of the day has captured the media's attention, scurries around, comes up with a cosmetic solution, adds a whole bunch of unrelated pork barrel projects if the public frenzy permits that subterfuge and presto! Problem solved, let's move on to something else. A little deep breathing and a pause for reflection would only improve this process.

OK, I'm a naive chump
Earlier this week I commented on the bailout bill having swelled from 3 to 107 pages and asked, "how large will it grow before final passage?" I predicted 350 pages and I'll say right here, I'm a fool. The present bill the Senate's having fun with is already 400 pages long and growing fatter by the minute. And oh, the presents they're piling under the Christmas tree! Ya want mental health care free from insurance companies? You got it - they've screwed consumers long enough. No tariff on wooden arrows so Oregonian kids parents can afford toys? Hey, that's what we're here for. A bridge - ya wanna bridge? Go ahead, take one.

If these charlatans won't act like there's a crisis why on earth should we believe that one exists? I've been leaning in this direction and now I'm sure: we should stop this bill in its tracks and pray to God that Congress will finally recess and go home, where they can do less harm.

You will not steal this house!

I keep hearing tales from my colleagues about sellers who, upon receiving offers, acknowledge that in the present market they should probably accept it but decide they'll "hold out until the market recovers". This is a wonderful strategy if you have the resources and time to employ it but what none of us know is when the market will recover. Some of us think that we've just seen a market correction of 20% and think that the correction is not over and in fact probably has still more to go. If so, then we're in a new world where houses will not be worth what they were worth last year any time soon. Like, for the next 5 years. Others are more optimistic and predict a full recovery by this coming summer.
So you have a choice: accept the fact that the market has just shifted downward and plans to stay there for a long time or hang on and wait 9 months. If we come roaring back, lucky you. If prices keep dropping, you won't be happy.

Update: The Black Knight flinches
Our Somali pirates' ransom demand has dropped from $30M to $20M to, today, $5 million. When they resolve their difficulties over there, maybe they should come to Greenwich and advise certain spec builders on house pricing strategies.

How'd we get into this mortgage mess? Hell if I know.
Received today from "Jasmine Krnjetin | Mortgage Consultant":

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This product is really picking up interest so don't miss out on the next hot marketing opportunity
My process is simple - just email or call me

More thoughts on strippers and real estate pricing
(Thought that might get your attention.) As I've noted, the real estate firm trying to peddle its condos on Milbank is not providing a stripper but rather a new age therapist who will inspire and move us (Ed: how is that different from a stripper?]. But what's the reasoning here? Is it possible that we agents are unaware of the presence of two vacant condo units that have sat on the market since January 2007, or that their price, to everyone's great hilarity, was raised in July '07 from $5.4 million to $5.9 million, each? I don't think so; I think the builder has a pricing, not an awareness problem. It's possible that, over time, marketplace tastes will change and buyers will clamor for a unit where, with the help of a 12' scaling ladder, they can scramble up to Whole Foods and do their shopping. For 21 months now, however, the market's spoken rather eloquently: it doesn't like the price or the location. You can't change the location, and bringing on therapists or strippers or changing the description, as this one did, from "English Manor" to Euro-Style" will accomplish nothing. Drop the price a couple of million and maybe something will happen.

Marking to Market, Redux
I innocently opined yesterday that this seemed like a good idea and was promptly straightened out by two well reasoned comments from "CEA", who clearly is up on the subject (all while providing a neat, accurate comparison to real estate pricing in Greenwich). Now someone in the Wall Street Journal says, who knows what will happen - let's try it and find out. So now I'm thoroughly confused. Thoughts, CEA?

It's always something!
Okay, we got the carbon thing under control by shutting down our coal plants (too bad China's building something like 1,200 of the pesky things a week, but hey, we tried. Now it turns out that a worse pollutant, methane, is rushing out from the ocean floor. What do I have to do to save this planet, give up my freaking boat, for Crissake? Sheesh!

If you blame this spate of non-real estate posts on a dearth of real estate news, you'd be right.
Reviewing the hot sheet, no new listings of note, a handful of mediocre price reductions (odd that cutting $500,000 from a listing price could be described as mediocre but if you start high enough, it is) and no contracts. I'll be glad when Congress either does or does not pass the bailout bill because we might see people moving off the fence, one way or the other. Sellers might panic and cut their prices low enough to bestir buyers or buyers might gain confidence that it's safe to come out of the bedroom. I'll be cooling my heels until then - I just may have to send Amanda out on another mission (Oh no! Aaaaaaggghhh! - get over it).

This is sad, if expected news
We all knew that explorer/dare devil Steve Fossett was dead but now they've found his personal effects in the desert. While it's possible it's all a ruse designed to hide his escape to Cuba with Hank Paulson and the $700 billion, I think not. Too bad, because I always admired the guy. He did crazy stunts but at his expense, and was inspiring to this armchair wannabe.

Resurgence of the Luddites
They're coming to destroy civilization but we're not paying attention. Here's a nice round up of what these wackos are up to.

Why hide your light under a bushel?
I'm told that certain Sotheby's agents deny they're any part of Realogy Corp, wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Management. While I can understand that no proper Greenwich agent would willingly admit association with the polyester, mustard-garbed horde at Century 21,the fact is, they're peas in the same corporate pod , as this press release states:

Sotheby's International Realty, Inc. (www.siroffices.com) is part of NRT Incorporated, the nation's largest residential real estate brokerage company. NRT, a subsidiary of Realogy Corporation (NYSE: H), operates Realogy's company-owned real estate brokerage offices.

That's a little snobbish, isn't it? And what about Sotheby's other sibling, Coldwell-Banker? Do Coldwell agents also get the cold shoulder? Harsh bud, dude.

Update: This article says that we can expect still more market consolidation as the real estate market tanks. GMAC Home Services, one of the largest brokerage firms in the U.S. was just taken over by a Canadian company and the deal lost one potential player:"Realogy was mentioned among the possible buyers of GMAC, but it has been saddled with debt in [its own] heavily leveraged buyout deal."

Sotheby's is doing just fine; if its Greenwich agents are lucky, maybe Realogy will sell off Century 21 and the Sotheby's folks can ditch their shame.

Good bye, New York Sun
I was never one of this start-up paper's subscribers and, living outside New York, rarely felt the need to see what it was saying about local politics. But the little I did read I liked and, as The New York Times used to say, you don't have to read it all but it's nice to know it's there. That's no longer true about the Times, of course, and now the Sun's gone too. An obituary of the paper, written by a Manhattan resident, is linked here.

News Flash! Political corruption nothing new
My pal Bernie Yudain has an interesting column in Greenwich Time today on the building of the Merritt Parkway. Bernie touches on the corruption in Hartford that had the Governor and his cronies leaking information on the proposed route to their co-conspirators who then went and bought what was essentially worthless farmland and sold it to the state for a fortune. What Bernie doesn't mention but what I think I recall from an oral history of this subject in Greenwich Library is that the pols weren't content with a one-off deal: they kept buying cheap and selling dear as many as three times, changing the route so as to make it all possible. People finally got tired of no highway and lots of graft and the pols had to settle on one route, thus ending the show.
Bernie, because he's a gentleman, also doesn't mention the name of the "tycoon" who bribed his way to getting the Merritt designers to throw a huge, curving bend around his property. I'm under no such handicap so here's a hint: the locals didn't name that deadly detour "Rockefeller's Loop" for nothing.