Blue skies, nothing but blue skies ...

I'll bet you think I make this stuff up:
World Wildlife Fund to tour the world and save it from global warming via private luxury jet

Join us on a remarkable 25-day journey by luxury private jet,” invites the WWF in a brochure for its voyage to “some of the most astonishing places on the planet to see top wildlife, including gorillas, orangutans, rhinos, lemurs and toucans.”

For a price tag that starts at $64,950 per person, travelers will meet at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Fla. on April 6, 2009 and then fly to “remote corners” of the world on a “specially outfitted jet that carries just 88 passengers in business-class comfort.”

You're probably wondering: "are these the same people who've been telling us not to fly jets?" Sure they are, but then they were instructing the Little People. You'll see that, from its price, this tour will include Barbara Streisand (if she can be persuaded to disembark from her own jet) and very much does not include you. But here's their parting advice:

Tips for Saving Energy
Almost everything we do impacts the planet. Simple changes in our everyday lives can make a big difference and help stop global warming. Here’s what YOU can do: ....
Reduce your air travel.
Although air travel can be very convenient, the emissions from planes contribute significantly to climate change. When possible, use another form of transportation such as the train or bus.

Aren't you glad you know? Maybe they'll bring you back a T-Shirt. Organic cotton, of course.

Apparently there is serious thought of
shutting down the world's markets and reconstituting them under "global rules". I haven't been all that concerned with the panic until today, but I now fear that the collectivists, for so long shut out of power, are going to use this crisis to seize complete domination. I think I'll go home now and watch Oprah.

Update: a Socialist Tsunami's in the Works

(Not married to one another, but isn't it a cute picture?)

Connecticut Supremes Approve Gay Marriage, 4-3.

Whatever - I'm not planning on marrying anyone right now, of either sex, so I don't care. But I will say this: certain liberals, including unionized labor and teachers, are terrified of the constitutional amendment on the ballot that would, if approved, call for a constitutional convention (and voter referendums, if I haven't conflated two different ballot issues). When appointed officials overturn existing state law and put their thumbs in the eyes of citizens, the chances of something like a re-opening and re-drafting of our constitution become more likely.

49 Cutler Road
Pssst! Wanna buy some land?
Over the past few years this property in our NW corner has been offered for sale in a variety of permutations and at a variety of prices, all unsuccessful. Over that time you could have bought it as land at $1,495,000, $1,995,000, $1,750,000, or with a new house at $4,000,000 + (never built) and now as land again at $1,499,000. I can't say for certain, but my guess is that no one is buying land right now, at any price, so go ahead and drop the price: won't do any harm and who knows? Someone might bite.

Lose you desk on Maiden Lane?Have you considered a career change, like fishing? I understand it can be quite restful. Pay sucks, but hey - let's just say you'll be working on a different scale.

Putnam Hill
Downtown Condo's, updated.
This isn't my all time favorite project in town (I don't like co-ops, generally and this and its neighbor, Putnam Park, are co-ops). But the price is attractive: a 2 bedroom, probably in need of some updating (ok, the listing makes no mention of it ever having been touched since it was built in 1956 or so) asking $399,000. Last year, that might have been considered cheap and this year it's still not a whole lot of money, for Greenwich. Next year? Who knows!

Fun at the opening bell with Djbouti and the Gang

What, me worry?
You may have noticed, or perhaps heard, that the stock market's been doing a bit of gyrating lately. If so, you sure didn't get that news from the NYSE's web page which, every day, runs a charming photograph of yet another happy group ringing the opening bell. That makes me feel better; how about you?

Update: A spokesman for the NYSE informs me that they had considered posting something a bit more reflective of the times, like this, but decided against it.

Wall Street 1929

Okay, they laughed when his critics called Obama the Mesiah
How about Louis Farrakhan?

"You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn't care anything about. That's a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking."

Good enough for me - I just changed my vote.

17 Hendrie, Old Greenwich
Here's a disappointment
This house is just across from my family's two and I would have been delighted to see it sell for April's asking price of $7,750,000. It didn't happen, alas, and today it was knocked down to about 83% of that, or $6,450,000. I guess I won't retire this year. As an aside, it strikes me that, in most cases, when you post a picture of the view, not the house, you're probably in a bit of trouble. But speaking as a creek resident, it is all about the water, so ....

The sounds of silence
Candidates agree to wear lie detectors during debate!. Well that will be a quiet evening. Imagine if they tried this stunt at a lawyer's convention.

Well, here's a tired old voice from the past
Of all people, James Earl Carter has weighed in on the global panic. And surprise! It's all Bush's fault. I remember being the beneficiary of this dotard's wisdom back in the 80's when the inflation rate was 18% and I paid 14.5% on my mortgage. Since being driven from office the man has convincingly claimed the title as worst ex-President in history, wandering the world condemning America and Israel, cozying up to Castro, lauding Hugo Chavez and generally just spewing spittle-laced invective across the globe. And in my book, he'll go down as our worst sitting president, too. I'll admit that the current occupant of that office may end up edging him out for top position but regardless, I can think of no man I'm least interested in hearing from on any subject,especially on how to run an economy.

Modular Homes
A reader asked about these and I'll have more to say on them later (I like them, if they're made well, customized and erected by a good, experienced builder). In the meantime, here's an older column from my archived newspaper column (which is supposed to be linked to the current post and, for some reason, is not -I'll work on that, too):
May 14, 2004

A New House
A builder named Dave Tilly is building a new house on Irvine Street in Old Greenwich that’s worthy of mention for a number of reasons. First is its design. While I mourn the loss of so many small cottages in town, buyers today want larger houses, and builders, if they expect to stay in business, must comply. That said, this house, to my eye, fits into the streetscape very nicely, neither dwarfing the cottage next door nor crowding its own lot. Tilly speaks of ratios and proportions like an old Greek architect, and he’s achieved it here. Second is quality. The poured foundation is set on a foot of gravel, with an air system underneath the concrete floor that creates a negative airflow, sucking out any damp air. The furnace is a new German design so efficient (97%, compared to the usual 85%) that its exhaust gets blown out via a fan – it is too cool to rise on its own. That’s just the basement. Upstairs, the sheathing is plywood, not oriented strandboard, the shingles are hand dipped, Alaskan yellow cedar which, unlike its less expensive cousin, eastern cedar, bleaches grey, not black. The fenestration is by Marvin, there is custom millwork and cabinetry throughout the house and, all in all, it’s obvious that the building is being erected by a fussy, detail-oriented perfectionist. The third reason to take note of this house is that forty percent of it is (gasp!) modular – built in a factory by Haven Homes and shipped to the site. Despite what you may have read elsewhere about the poor quality of such construction, the only differences I can see between a “stick built” house and this one are the speed with which the initial building blocks went up and the craftsmanship in this one: it’s far better than most stick-builts. In evaluating a home, its place of construction —factory vs. on site— is irrelevant; it is the quality of construction you should worry about because, as they say in the computer business, garbage in, garbage out. Dave Tilly’s house is a finely-crafted piece of building which will still look good decades from now.

Update 10/10/08
The house sold for a then record price for that street and resold for even more a couple of years later.

Good Lord
This company is liquidating 15 of its money market funds. For one investor, gaining access to his money took weeks and he was lucky at that:

Volko's orders to withdraw the money were frozen for a couple weeks until he managed to get the cash back this week. But other investors still in the fund don't know when to expect their cash back, now that the fund is being liquidated.
"There are a lot of people stuck in these funds who have no idea yet they are even frozen out," Volko said.

Not that any Greenwich house buyers seem to need immediate cash these days but if lightening strikes and they decide to buy something, it'll be a real bummer if their down payment money is frozen or, worse, lost. Ugh.

Well if Greenwich isn't your cup of tea right now ...
Why not invest in Cuba?
You can't, for one thing, if you're an American citizen. And I wouldn't, for political reasons. But I'd always hoped Castro and his dictatorship would fall and I could explore the island before it was ruined. The article I link to suggests that I'll be too late: the English, the Canadians and Middle Easterners are already building golf resorts and eying the old historic homes confiscated by the bearded one 50 years ago. What a shame.

Shiver me timbers!
By happenstance I discovered that the Stamford Advocate now runs a real estate blog. I checked it out out of curiosity and at first it seemed like a real blog and even covered, as you'll see from the link, the price cutting going on over at Leona's place.

But the more I poked around and noticed links to Georgia chiropractors and a comments section mostly taken up with ads from readers looking to sell in Texas, rent (to film makers) homes in California and so forth, I realized that it's some generic, national "blog" generated by an anonymous writer (or writers) for the parent company of the Advocate, whoever the hell that is these days.

All of which tells me that traditional newspapers, doomed as they are, are hastening their demise by refusing to understand the internet. What could be more local than local news? And local real estate is part of that news. Instead of assigning some Stamford reporters to create blogs on various topics so that the paper could provide up-to-the-minute opinion, news and reader feedback, the parent company has done its best to shed its local reporters and turn as much of the operation of its local outlets over to some amorphous entity based in-I don't know, Kansas?

By the time these dinosaurs succumb to meteor dust, will there be any readers left to mourn their demise?

Greenwich Capital Markets
A reader points out that RBS bought Greenwich Capital Markets, the company Chip Kreuger founded and ran on Steamboat Road. His point is that not everyone involved in the sub-prime and derivative mess worked on Wall Street. I know that, and merely use Wall Street as a handy abbreviation, but I also gave our former Greenwich company a pass for a couple of reasons. Kreuger sold out to RBS several years ago and, at least according to the article I linked to in the original post, it's the present CEO who lost his mind and drove the whole company off the cliff. Kreuger was obviously a master of good timing, though.

Second, Greenwich Capital was a great benefactor to the town. It supported lots of local charities and, nearest to my heart, stepped in to fund the Old Greenwich fireworks one year when local residents (I include myself in that category) were too cheap to support them. Greenwich Capital continued this largess for years and even expanded into Greenwich when that fireworks crowd put the touch on Kreuger.

So I suppose the latter isn't a great excuse, but so what? And, in view of Greenwich Capital's being folded into RBS and that company's current fiscal woes, we townies had better be prepared to dig into our own pockets if we want to watch fireworks in the immediate future. Darn it, where's Gandalf when we need him?

They laughed when we called him "The Messiah"

From guest columnist Marge Robben at OurGreenwich.com

My worst nightmare is that fear will win out over change and that Barack Obama will lose the election and I will sadly be saying on the morning of November 5, 2008, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

I think we should sit back, take a deep breath, and relax our minds.

Buying vs. Renting Calculator
I liked the calculator link a reader sent me so much that I've linked it permanently over on the right. Give it a try, if you're interested.

Hey, Milbank! Here's how to move those $6 million condos! (Courtesy NYT)
Bring in $1,000 lap dancers

Oh Geeze, now even PBS's Ray Suarez is climbing onto the racism wagon.
And I used to like him, too.

Opinions about Obama's inexperience, his childhood in Indonesia, and the persistent but untrue rumors of him being Muslim are stand-ins for something his detractors cannot admit, Suarez said.[emphasis added]

O.K. - questions about terrorist Bill Ayers, out. Inexperience, out. Political programs, out. Cronyism with Chicago pols, out. Campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and its CEOs, out. I got all that - is there anything we can question about this gifted, caring man without exposing ourselves as racists?

I didn't think so.

(Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gifford
dining at Mr. Fountain's house)
If Kathie Lee Griffith didn't exist, would the Greenwich Post?
Lord knows, we all adore Kathie Lee, and we certainly want to know if she's spotted at CVS, McDonalds, or the Tobacconist of Greenwich, but is there nothing else to report on in this town? Budgets? Inflated police union contracts? School Board hi jinks? Nope, says the Post. No link, because the Post can't link its articles, but here's a quote:

Scene ... Riverside resident and Today co-host Kathie Lee Gifford was seen having lunch at Terra Ristorante on Greenwich Avenue on Friday afternoon.

That's nice to know, isn't it?

Spindletop
Wow! A contract! Sort of, maybe.
4 Old Round Hill Lane was reported today as under contract, which must be a relief to its builder who first placed it for sale in May, 2006 at $14.5 million. Last asking price was $10.995 million and I think we can guess it went for less than that. But, while the contract was officially posted today, it was signed on September 3rd, a long, long time ago, far, far away and in a deteriorating but still different market from the present.

So much for that $25 billion, bar keep. Add it to my tab.
GM sales slump, stock price plummets

Update: Stock price is lowest since springtime, 1950. Would you lend money to a company like this? You just did.

Harry Reid is boring - this is exciting, in a sick sort of way. Dow below 9000

384 Round Hill Road
One good thing about a dead market
This 1745 house on 6 + acres of meadows and lawns is being marketed as land or residential at, naturally, the same price: $4,850,000. In a better market it might have been snapped up by a builder by now but it hasn't. I don't happen to have this kind of money around but if you do, and want to save this house, here's your chance. And, because of current market conditions, you probably have some time to do so.

Confusing moments in advertising
Priced at $4.55 million in November of last year, this house has slowly drifted downward, changing agents as it sank. Today it's back as a "new" listing (new after the original listing expired yesterday) at a "new" price (same as the last old price) of $3.6 million. Here's the part I don't get: the listing says,

UNBELIEVABLE VALUE, INVITATION TO BRING ALL OFFERS.

Isn't "unbelievable value" undercut a bit by following with "bring all offers"? I say, make up your mind.

Timber?
The Royal Bank of Scotland's stock is down 82%. CEO Fred Goodwin, who got the bank into this disaster, is on his way out:

``His credibility is shot to bits,'' said Ken Murray, CEO of Blue Planet Investment Management in Edinburgh, where RBS also is based. He has no holdings in any U.K. banks. ``Acquisitions are a risky business and they cost a lot of chief executives their jobs. If you get it wrong, you've got to go.''

But what's going to happen with RBS's still uncompleted, 600,000 square foot headquarters in Stamford? The state piled a lot of our money into this deal in anticipation of 3,000 new jobs, $204 million in tax revenue over ten years and $1-2 million per year in City property taxes. Sure hope neither budget, state or municipal, was counting on that because if the stock's worth nothing, I doubt the headquarters will be all that busy.
Update: It was a bit more than "a lot of our money" diverted to RBS. Connecticut gave them $100 million in tax credits . I hope they appreciate it.

Update (10/11/08): Britain to take control of RBS Monday. I wonder if the Queen will want an office building in Stamford?

Harry Reid greets American public
Harry Reid says Radio Host is racist for tying Obama to Fannie Mae Exec., Franklin Raines
At least one of my readers thinks that there is a racist opposition to her candidate, Barack Obama. Who knows? She may be right. What I posted earlier is that it's getting boring to hear, endlessly that McCain, Palin and anyone else who opposes the Messiah does so because of racist hatred. An ad against Obama's friend and advisor, disgraced, fired and fined Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines? Racist. Another ad, released 12 hours later, against Obama friend and advisor, disgraced, fired and fined Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson? Silence on that one, because Johnson is white. This is stupid. And tiresome.
Obama only served 186 days in the US Senate before beginning his campaign yet he's already second in campaign contributions received from Raines and Johnson's personal piggy bank, Fannie Mae (our own Chris Dodd leads the hogs at the trough, but heck, he's had years to stretch out his hand). Google Obama and contributions from Raines and you'll see that Raines was doling out cash to Obama at least as early as 2004, when Obama was a lowly state senator in Illinois. So is it fair to assert a link between Raines and Obama? I think so. If you disagree, that doesn't make me a racist.

Open House Report
Nothing to report. A few retreads, still over-priced and .... I did see one last Tuesday that was of note because its price was so grossly off the mark. Everything conspired against it: wrong section of town, crowded in with its neighbors, parking on one side and the front entrance all the way around the house (technically, that would be half-way around the house, but you get my meaning) and then that price. I won't blame the seller because it was her agent who crowed, "it's priced to sell". It certainly isn't, and if the agent believes her own hype, the market has a rude surprise in store.

Open House Tour Pet Peeves
Only two, actually. Number one is agents who schedule an open house for, say, 11:00 AM and fail to show up to open the place. In the past, my time was valuable and gas was cheap. Now that's reversed but I still won't loop back later in the day to see if the agent decided to work for a living.
Okay, that's always the agent's fault. Sellers can also set blood boiling by insisting that their agent schedule a broker open house on the wrong day. North Street and west: Tuesdays. East of North Street, Thursdays. We're just not going to drive to, say, Sheephill Road in Old Greenwich when we're in Byram, so the seller is annoying his agent by wasting her time and accomplishing nothing: no one will be there. If a particular day is inconvenient, hold your open house another week. Or don't expect any agents to view your house, because it won't happen.

65 Patterson Ave.
At the risk of seeming downbeat
you're looking at the only house to go to contract in all of Greenwich this week. This property has been on the market since November 2007 and was priced then at $3.595 million. It was dropped to $3.295 million in April and didn't sell, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it's selling for less than that.

19 Desiree
Big enough?
Price cut, that is. This house was purchased for $4.9 million back in April, 2004 and returned to market this April at $5.595. It hasn't sold so today it was reduced to $5.375. Call me crazy, but I don't think that's enough of a slicing to attract buyers who were turned off by its original price. What I mean is, if someone liked the house and the area it's in but didn't like its price, an offer of $5.375 would seem expected. The fact that no one did make such an offer makes me suspect that dropping it to that level is futile. If the seller knows that, and is hoping for and will accept an offer below $5.375, now is the time to have the price reflect that.

317 Stanwich Rd
Well now, here's a price reduction
Original price, back in January, $3.850. Today, reduced to $2.650 million. This drop is not entirely due to current market conditions; in my own opinion, the back lot location, cheek-by-jowl with two half-developed building lots, and the quirky layout of the house itself might have suggested an original opening price closer to where it is now, but again, that's my opinion. And I really liked the house, I just doubted that the typical Greenwich home buyer would share my taste. Regardless of all that, this price reduction is strong evidence that at least one owner "gets it". Nice to see.

Another rent vs. buy calculator
A reader sent me this link.
I tried it and it's got a cool sliding calculation tool that let's you change assumptions on the fly. I like it.

A Great Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth
Joe Pisani, former editor of Greenwich Time and now an occasional blogger at OurGreenwich.com has posted a very sad story about his daughter, McDonalds, Big Mac's and Haiti. At least I think it's sad; I couldn't really understand much of it except for the part that liberal guilt is a good thing. But this passage puzzles me:

A few minutes later, she came out, paper bag in hand, and got into the car, stinking of fast food, with a troubled look on her face.

What stunk of bad food? The daughter, the car or the paper sack?
I only ask because, like, he was an editor, you know?

Hey, Dickie - can I get an advance on my allowance?
UBS's general Counsel, David Aufhauser, agrees to disgorge $6.5 million in profits from illegal insider trading. Aufhauser, who presumably counseled UBS that its sales of mortgage rated securities was entirely ethical and legal (advice that cost it a whole bunch of billions of dollars in restitution earlier this year), turns out to have been trading on inside information. You may find that disturbing but rest assured; according to his bio, he's a recipient of the Treasury Department's highest honor, the "Alexander Hamilton Award". Phew! For a moment there, I was worried that we might have crooks on Wall Street.

And more local politics
The Hamilton Avenue School construction project continues to fall apart, with every day bringing a new announcement of further delays and more money required for completion. Meanwhile, school test scores drop, the students are being ill-served and no one will take responsibility.

The First Selectman and his branch of our local government pretty much get a pass on this because, under our town's charter, the School Board is a separate fiefdom. It owns and pretends to maintain our schools, initiates and oversees disasters like the Hamilton Ave. project and selects all our school administrators and teachers. To suggest that the Board has completely failed to execute any of its responsibilities is to understate the problem badly. And for that failure, we can look to the two governing political parties running Greenwich.

Under the charter they created, Democrats and Republicans control the School Board by holding the exclusive power to nominate candidates. They could, if they wished, each nominate four candidates and give the town's voters a choice - a limited choice because, again under the system they set up, each party is guaranteed two seats on the four-person board. But they won't. Two candidates from each party are "nominated" - appointed would be a more accurate term - and on Election Day, you're free to pull the lever for those four or not - it makes no difference in to the result.

The same machinations are used to fill the BET but, usually, the BET runs efficiently and competently and there's not much of an outcry for change. The School Board is clearly an institution in serious need of reform; we could start by demanding that the Democrats and Republicans give us a choice of who serves; then we should perhaps consider why it is we've allowed these two parties to run our town.

Taxes
There's a letter printed in today's Greenwich Time (no link because that paper's pathetic website can't be bothered to put it up) from a reader who not only wants higher taxes imposed on all of us but implies that the Founding Fathers would, too. I wasn't particularly surprised at the writer's historical and economic ignorance - those qualities are prerequisites to breaking out in print at GT - but I was a little dismayed when I turned to the paper's coverage of the debate between our two vying candidates for State Rep, Ed Krumich and Fred Camillo. Krumeich's answer to all our problems, at least according to the article, was for more state spending.

Now either Krumich was being disingenuous - which I don't believe; Ed's a lawyer, for heaven's sake! - or he truly doesn't know that Greenwich already sends $600 million a year to Hartford and gets $5 million back. A call for additional state spending, therefore, is actually a demand that Greenwich be taxed even more harshly. Bridgeport certainly isn't going to ante up, that's for sure.

Krumich's other argument for being sent to Hartford is that, as a Democrat, he'll be listened to. That seems to me to be a very bad thing. I think he should stick to writing stupid letters to the Editor of Greenwich Time under his pen name.

Did you think we'd forgotten the Black Knight? Hah!
The Somali pirates are close to negotiating a deal with Ukraine. they'll get $8 million in U.S. $100 dollar bills and go away. The U.S. Navy says its only concern is that the tanks the ship is carrying not fall into the wrong hands [Ed.: are there any right hands for tanks in Africa?] and the pirates don't care about tanks:"we only want money", says their leader, the Black Knight himself.
That may work for the Navy but I think it's a lousy idea to fund pirates with loot so they can buy better pirate ships and better arms with which to continue their pirate days. But I'm just an uninformed civilian, so I'll shut up.

Why are we doing this?
Fed to give AIG an additional $37.8 billion. That's over and above the $85 billion we've already dished out. Why stop at AIG or, better question, why did we start down this road at all?

Rent vs. Buy Calculator
Somewhere buried in the comments a reader asked if there were an easy way to figure the comparative advantages of renting vs. buying. I can't vouch for it because I just Googled the term and am posting what came up (yes, I'm lazy this time of evening) but here's Yahoo's answer to that question. Continuing my theme of laziness, please try it and let me know if it works. Thanks.

Update: Okay, I'm not as tired as I thought I was, so I tossed some numbers into the calculator and looked at renting for $6,000 per month vs buying for $2.1 million assuming a 30 year mtg with a 15 year ownership or rental span. The result (you can see the other assumptions I plugged in at the link) is that, absent any appreciation over the years, you save (a lot of) money renting instead of buying

The kicker here is no appreciation. I'd have felt confident in years past tossing in a 5% per year figure and that would swing things in the buyer's favor, but now? Who knows?

7 Orchard Drive

This is getting interesting
This property in Milbrook sold for $3.780 million in September 2004. The new owners returned it to the market in May of '06 as land or residence and asked $4.895. That hasn't worked so well and it's gradually dropped in price until today it's being offered for $3.295. I don't know if, in this market, that will finally move the place, but if you're looking for the difference between 2004's market and 2008's, this is the place to start.

They're fattened on human breast milk, so why is PETA in such an uproar over a simple Peruvian cat eating festival?

This is becoming so boring
A black Congressman calls Governor Palin a racist. She's married to an Eskimo, for gosh sakes! but she disagrees with the anointed one, and that moves her into the racist camp. I'm very much afraid that Obama will win and we're in for years of this, every time someone balks at El Presidente's plans for our future.

Swedish Housewife Splitting a Walrus

Okay, the earlier posting was unfair
After brashly stating that there were no writers in Sweden, your author thought to check out Wikipedia to see if that was true. It was not. There are
144 writers in that blighted land ,out of a population of 9,192,088. There would be more, but the State Dispensary ran out of crayons.

Better news?
Another link supplied by a reader: Home Sales up Sharply Nationwide. Any good news is welcome, of course, but a lot of these sales are generated because of drastic price cuts by the new owner (a bank) or a desperate seller. Still, a sale's a sale and accomplishes at least two things: provides a house to someone who perhaps couldn't afford one last year; and clears out inventory. If you wonder why Greenwich sales are dead dead dead, start by looking at pricing.

Chewing Mukluks

It's always something, eh?

Troubles flow across the frozen waters up north and now Iceland is on verge of collapse.
The country's Prime Minister isn't all that worried. "Okay, so international banking hasn't worked so good," said leader Geir Haarde. "We'll just move to Sweden and turn out books. I understand there's a shortage of writers there."

Good for you, Geir - keep your spirits up and your gumption at full throttle.

Ouch
A reader sent me this link to the WSJ 1 in 6 Homeowners "Under Water". It's true, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, that even the Greenwich MLS has seen fit to add the category, "short sale" to its listing forms, so we're not going unscathed here in fair Greenwich. I'll point out that the percentage of investors whose IRAs and pension plans are under water is probably greater than 1 in 6. And you can't live under a bond certificate, so keep those mortgage payments current.

Dead cats bouncing

Okay, you've been warned
Reader CEA warns of the "don't try to catch a falling knife" adage and that brings to mind this one: even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from a sufficient height. So maybe you don't want to buy stocks right now. But Warren Buffet does - selectively, to be sure - and he's old enough and has experienced enough to have coined all these adages in the first place.

Wounded Elk?
Says here that Hartford Insurance is next for the chopping block. Derivatives, apparently.

Downtown Condos
A reader who is contemplating selling her home in the Back Country and relocating downtown asked about condominiums. No price range was specified so I ran a search for units between $1.5 million and $3.0 million, just to see what's out there. It's not too bad (below $1.5 doesn't yield all that much; above $3.0, the choice expands considerably).

First, some personal prejudices and opinions: I don't like units too far off Greenwich Avenue for older people. Idar Court, for instance, off of Field Point Road, has some nice, very large units, but it's a hike if you're of a certain age. Same goes for hills. And I'm wary of two-unit condo townhouses because, if one owner defaults - these days, it could happen - the other owner is left holding the bag. A larger complex spreads the risk around.

That out of the way, I think my favorite condominium project for older people is 40 West Elm Street. An easy walk (or jog, if the elder is spry) to the Avenue, plus a doorman, elevators and covered, secure parking, all with, depending on the unit's location, a spectacular view across Long Island Sound. There's one 2 bedroom there currently listed for $2.5 million, which reflects at least one price reduction. Great view, great unit. Others come on pretty regularly and they sell well - it's a nice place.

One Milbank, that brick edifice at the intersection of Milbank and the Post Road, isn't as close to Greenwich Avenue but it's not too bad and the units are pretty nice inside. Right now, two bedrooms range from $1.9 to $2.9 (and maybe more - I limited my search, remember?).

20 Church Street's a good location though the building isn't in the same league as 40 W. Elm. But the prices reflect that: there's a 2 bedroom listed now for $1.475.

The "Nantucket" on Church Street isn't a huge project but the location's convenient and its units relatively new. Renovated units fetch more than the untouched ones, obviously, but I've always thought the prices reflected a pretty good value.

Putnam Park can be alright, especially if you're looking at a renovated unit. I worry about the age of the complex, however (perhaps unnecessarily; I have no knowledge of what the management has done to renovate and upgrade the infrastructure) but it has very attractive prices, generally well below a million.


So those are some possibilities. If readers have specific price ranges in mind, send them along and I'll do my best to opine on them. If you prefer to keep the specifics of your request private alert me to that and I'll post a general reply or email you directly, your choice.

Time to buy stocks?

There's an adage on Wall Street that says, more or less, "when your mother in law is selling stocks, it's time to buy". This article in the Times today suggests that that time may have come. I witnessed the inverse of this adage when, at the height of the tech boom, my girl friend and I stopped in a deli for coffee after a day of X-Country skiing at Pound Ridge. There in rural Pound Ridge we noticed the counterman, a fellow who barely spoke English, glued to the CNN Business channel, monitoring his investments. "If you own any tech stocks," I warned my friend,"it's time to sell." When coffee dispensers know that the stock market is going to make them rich, you don't want to share that dream.

Which is all a long way of pointing out that when everyone in the market is convinced of one thing, a smart investor might consider the contrarian view (I'd say something about Global Warming here, but I think I'll give that a rest). When this Kramer guy is screaming "sell!" on national television, when the Time's reporter finds people whose mothers in law are fleeing stocks, when "everyone" is convinced that worse is coming, the "irrational exuberance" may have been wrung out of the market and prices may finally be getting real. I haven't noticed that phenomenon among Greenwich real estate sellers, yet, but perhaps it's on the horizon. In which case, be ready.

Attack of the Booboise

I'm late to the story, but apparently some Swede in charge of handing out literary prizes just dissed America and its writers.

Horace Engdahl is permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, the body which chooses the Nobel Prize for literature. In an interview with an American journalist this week, he dismissed the writing of the US – the land of Melville, Hemingway and Fitzgerald – as "too isolated, too insular". "They don't translate [foreign books] enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," he said. "That ignorance is restraining."

A Swede said that? A Swede?! Has anyone in the history of the world ever heard of a Swedish writer? Can they write? That's one attempting the act in the upper left hand corner; he's not doing so well. Have they done anything notable in the past 1,000 years except rape, pillage and plunder the English Isles and invade Russia, where they discovered the use of booze and took (all of) it back with them? Their cars rust, their music reached no higher than Abba before quickly degenerating back to sing alongs with Laplanders, and their national cuisine is limited to skimpy little pancakes smothered in sour Lingonberries. Nobel himself had to hie off to Miami to be tutored by Thomas Edison and Eli Whitney on the fine art of making dynamite and barely made it back to the frozen tundra without blowing himself and his raft to pieces.

And what's all this about no great American writers? Has this fellow never heard of Zayne Grey? Tom Clancy? Harold Eff'in Robbins? Jerk.

My image of a Swede is a large, blocky lout, sprawled idly in an igloo while his dirty little brood of ragamuffins chews his frozen mukluks into usable form so that he can stumble over to Sven's for a night of debauchery. If he writes at all it's during the annual appeal for pardons from the King, which requires only, I am informed, an X from the miscreant himself and a hoof print signifying assent from the violated reindeer. Picture the aspiring pardonee now, struggling to see by the dim, flickering light of a seal blubber lamp, asking his brutish wife how to draw a picture of the aquavit bottle that caused all the trouble to begin with. How sad.

Look - God love'em, who can resist a s Swede choking down a lump of lye-soaked lutefisk? Who wouldn't find the little square heads adorable in a retarded, goofy kind of way? But a Swede pretending to be a literary critic? Sounds very much like Samuel Johnson's observation so long ago: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Gimme a break.

Update: And who needs the Nobel prize anyway, when ig-Nobel Awards are here?

Just how bad is this housing market?

A reader writes:
"Thought you would like an interesting statistic from a friend who is a mortgage broker. In September he and his partner closed 6 loans between them. Their best months of 2005 they were closing 120-130...EACH. It is tough slogging for a lot of people these days."

Speaking with real estate attorneys and title searchers, I'd say they're not having any fun either.

As bad as 2004!
This chart shows that the Dow has fallen from almost 14,000 in July to 9,500 today. That's scary, but we turn out to be back where we were four years ago. If you didn't buy this year, how bad is that?

Demolition of 17 Brookside Drive

A reader asked about this so I stopped by to look. Certainly looks as though someone's planning to tear the place down. I couldn't find the tax card for 17 Brookside on line (curious) but it would seem to be a circa 1920's mansion which, these days, isn't in vogue. The demolition sign posted in front certainly doesn't comply with our town ordinance, which states (Exhibit B to the permit) that the sign identify the age of the building, contact information, etc. This one just says "Demolition" and calls it a day. It's not my job, but someone who objects to the destruction of this building can probably delay the inevitable by complaining to the Building Department and having them force the builder to start over again, with a proper sign that complies with the regulation. But there's no stopping it permanently.

Relax, Dickie, it's nothing personal

Scientists say urge to punish is instinctual.

“The urge to take revenge or punish cheaters,” said Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and author of the book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct,” “is not a disease or toxin or sign that something has gone wrong. From the point of view of evolution, it’s not a problem but a solution.
The downside of these instincts, Dr. McCullough added, “is that they often promote behavior that turns out to be spiteful in the long run.”

Darn it, there's always a downside!

The voice of experience

California tries to stop federal government from dumping homes.

The concern in parts of Southern California illustrates the risks that could lie ahead for other communities as the Treasury begins a massive churn of assets. Depressed real-estate values in areas across the country could slide further if homes are sold to large financial investors who then flip them to others who want to make a quick profit.

"The U.S. Government is now in the real estate business" one Californian representative said. I say, what happens, even in Greenwich, when fire-sale prices start knocking off our spec house inventory? If your own, slightly dated home is priced at $2.5 million and right down the street a spec house, brand new, suddenly appears at $1.95 million, which is going to sell first and what's going to happen to your price? Just asking, is all.

I thought we solved all this last week

Bloomberg reports that the Fed will buy all commercial paper to ease credit crunch. That's at least $1.6 trillion, over and above the paltry $700 billion we're spending to save the banks. Thank goodness for printing presses, eh? Let's just hope we don't suffer a shortage of wheelbarrows or we won't be able to carry our paychecks home from the bank.

This is why we're in the mess we're in
Barney Frank says attacks on Community Reinvestment Act are racist
There's no room for discussion: don't like fiscal irresponsibility? Then "you're a racist! Don't blame me for trying to help the poor." I suppose that this, coming from a man who let his Senate Page lover run a prostitution ring from the Franks manse in Washington for years and "never noticed" is hardly surprising. The man may really be as clueless as he claims to be. He's certainly as venal.

Update: From someone who gets it:
Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus:

"Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."

Barney, have you met Artur?

Harbor Point Troubles Continue

I'd thought that, with Antares booted off the site, Stamford's huge Harbor Point project would get back on track. But a reader just emailed me this article from the Stamford Advocate and apparently the new developer has been forced to stop construction because of flagrant zoning violations. Hmmm. Sounds to me like they need the Hamilton Avenue School Construction Committee to step in and lend a hand. God knows, we in Greenwich would be happy to send them over the border: permanently, if that's what it takes.

Fair Market Value?
In my post yesterday about a building lot listed for sale on Thornhill Road I hinted that its asking price of $850,000 precluded a builder from making a profit and hence was too high. A reader then asked what a fair price would be for the lot. I think my answer is that "fair" has nothing to do with it. In a better market, where houses on Thornhill could command $2,000,000, $850,000 for this lot might fly. But, as Mr. Rumsfeld so famously said,you don't sell your house on the market you'd like to have, you sell it on the market you do have. With that, he marched his troops into Iraq and the rest is history.

The market right now will not support a Thornhill price of $2,000,000. In fact, I'm not sure it will support anything much above $1,250,000 in which case, accounting for building costs, the market value of this lot is ... very small. Don't like that? Don't sell, and wait for better days.

When I opined that relaxing the mark to market rule for banks might make sense several readers promptly corrected and educated me. The current value of anything, be it toxic loans or real estate, is whatever buyers will pay for it, not what its owner hopes it will be worth in the future. I did reprint a letter I received from a (soon-to-be unemployed) mortgage broker who said it wasn't "fair" to make banks mark their unwanted loans down to zero because, while the market might consider them worthless now, surely a better time would come and some value would be discovered. When better times come, then those loans might indeed be worth something. But right now, securities with no buyers and real estate that no builder or even end user wants has no market value. Let's hope that changes soon.

Going boldly where no editor has dared tread before.

Greenwich Time runs a hard-hitting editorial on property taxes today. It starts off with the usual liberal lament that Greenwich doesn't pay enough taxes and Waterbury too much then, perhaps sensing that its readers might not agree with that proposition, switches gears and rails againt wasteful spending: that ought to appeal to these damn skinflint Yankees!

I was under the obviously mistaken impression that editorial writers took a position and then defended it. Our local paper differs, and has instead produced another soggy opinion piece that says and concludes nothing. I don't purchase the Greenwich Time so I suppose I have no cause to complain about the salary paid to its editor, but talk about wasteful spending ....

Oh great, this we need?

Some nitwit claims that this is the perfect time for stay-at-home moms to become real estate agents. While surely it's coincidence that the lady is flogging her new book on just this subject, I still question her sense of timing (and that of her publisher, come to think of it). If it works, though, I may finally release my own, long deferred opus, "Mom's to Bond Traders - How to make billions from your own kitchen table".

Update: a reader who knows (well, he thinks he knows) that I'm kidding about bond trading from the kitchen table warns me not to laugh: it's been tried in the past with rather unfortunate results. As proof, he sent me this link to a NYT article on Japanese housewives going bust in currency trading.

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