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

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

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

And this:

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

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

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

Pricing (and building) to the neighborhood
This beautiful house on Loading Rock Road in Riverside was originally priced at $3.695 million in January and has now been reduced to $3.195. Why won't it sell? I suspect it's because the neighborhood won't support that price level. Pioneers sometimes do well -Dave Tilly, builder of beautiful homes,broke through the price barrier on Irvine Road in Old Greenwich - but they usually need an extraordinary feature to do so. If this house were directly on the Mianus, for instance, instead of across the street from it, I'm pretty sure it would have sold at its original price a long time ago. As it is, who knows?

95 Cognewaugh Road
The owners of this house paid $1.150 million for it in August 2003 and, after renovating it, tried to sell it 5 years later for $1.550. It sold yesterday for $1.245 which, while technically not a loss, sure isn't a home run. Moral is, buy your house as a place to live and possibly raise a family - any appreciation is a nice bonus. I used to say that five years ago, so I feel almost smug in these trying times.

44 Close Road
Built in 2003 for Tommy Hilfiger, neither he nor anyone else has ever lived in it and it's been on the market ever since. It started at $12.5 million, was raised to $13.995 million a year later in an attempt, I assume, to punish those buyers who were too stupid to buy it at the lower price and then gradually slipped down through the 12s and the 11s. Today it was reduced to $10.995 which might move it, or might not. It's a perfectly good house but unlike cheese, listings don't improve with age.

7 Dwight Lane
Here's the house on Dwight Lane that's being sold via court judgment later this month. If you enlarge the first photo you'll notice that the house, built in 1986, has suffered from malign neglect. The original builder was on site and the auctioneer says that the man will "fix everything" for $100,000. Considering that that would involve, at a minimum, new siding, new decks, new electrical, new pool and God knows what else, that sum sounds suspiciously optimistic to me.
As did the auctioneer himself, who told me that his only problem was that he "only has one of these to sell". I questioned him on that and he assured me that $2.5 million was only going to be the starting bid and that he already had numerous buyers chomping at the bit. If he does, they almost certainly aren't from Greenwich because I can't believe anyone familiar with our town and this street's location would share the auctioneer's fevered enthusiasm.
Of course, he could have been shucking and jiving me - you think?
The grounds are nice, though. By the way, I just remembered what else needs replacement: the tennis court.

View Larger Map

On second thought ...
A builder (I'm pretty sure it was a builder) paid $2.840 million for a building lot on 3 Quintard Ave (Old Greenwich) in July of this year. Today he's put it back on the market for $900K more. I understand why he might not want to proceed with a building project at this time but I'm at a loss to explain why the land is worth so much more now than it was six weeks ago. With that kind of creativity, you'd think this guy could have made a go of this project regardless of market conditions.

16 Ridge Brook
How about this one?
This house was listed April 15, 2008 for $6.950 million and immediately underwent seven price cuts until by June 30th it was priced at a mere $3.695 million. It then disappeared for two weeks and popped up in mid-July at a new, higher price: $3.995. Today that failed experiment was deleted and replaced by a new listing of $3.495. Make up your mind, will ya?

11 Winding Lane
Agents: Don't let this happen to you!
This house came on for sale last September at $9.975 and sat at that same price until July 2008 when the seller lopped $1.0 million off the top. Too late, I fear. There was an additional price drop of almost $300,000 two weeks ago, no doubt because the broker's listing was due to expire but expire it did and now it's with a new broker, but at the same last listing price of $8.695. The original listing agent is one of the most successful in town and her replacement is also excellent but I suspect neither was or will be enough to overcome what was obviously the wrong price.

Something for insurers and taxpayers to chew on
This site is always a helpful source of weather news, particularly Gulf hurricanes. It may be worth your while to scroll down his site for the discussion of wind shear, where you'll find this alarming quote: "Make no mistake about it, the levees didn't save New Orleans from a rare and powerful storm. Cuba and some slight wind shear did, ensuring that Gustav was barely a category 3 hurricane in the open Gulf of Mexico, as it was building its maximum storm surge."
By the way, hurricane Ike seems likely to be heading west, into the Gulf, but at least one model has it slamming full force into Miami. That's probably not going to happen with this storm but sooner, rather than later, some storm will and the results will be awesome: I've read predictions of $400 billion in damages. That would take care of the current housing glut down there, sure enough.

Free Cardboard
Is there a typo on this card or have moving boxes really risen in cost so much that they can cost $3,000? I used to work summers for a moving company (a long time ago) and I think we moved entire houses for what this guy's boxes cost. Of course, his use of the term "house removal" suggests that he's a Brit, so perhaps someone just took advantage of him: "How much is that in pounds? Really? Jolly good!"

26 Taconic Road
A reader asked what happened to this house. The answer, it turns out, is "nothing". It came on in September 2006 at $7.45 million and slowly dropped in price to $5.980 before being withdrawn from the market June 28 of this year. It was a nice house but the yard was a bit dodgy and the beautiful porches extending on the east made many rooms too dark, at least for my clients' taste. The builder may be living in it himself now - I don't know - but I'm sure we'll see it back for sale one of these days.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to
According to Drudge, Oprah is balking at inviting Sarah Palin onto her show. I'll admit that I've never watched Oprah but I'd have thought she'd be interested in a female VP nominee. Wrong again.

Here's an example of (builders') optimism
My friend Jonathan Wilcox took it upon himself to compare builders' claimed square footage with what town records show. I suppose that attics and basements do provide some sort of space but when some builders add those areas to their square footage calculations and others do not, it makes it difficult to compare apples to apples.

Click to enlarge

You think I'm pessimistic
A friend emailed me this story predicting a housing decline worse than the Great Depression. That's just nasty and, to make certain he ruined my morning, he also sent me this.

Wet Basements
If you're considering buying a house, this weekend looks like a good time to visit the subject property and inspect its basement. Hanna's on her way and the National Weather Service is predictingup to 7" of rain in our area. A storm like this will reveal drainage flaws far better than the most thorough home inspection and, conversely, if the place is dry on Sunday, you should be able to relax.

What Was I Thinking??!
Apropos of the post below, 29 Byfield Lane was listed April 15 of this year for $9.450 million. It dropped a wee bit, then was excised from our listings and returned June 24th at $6.350 million. Even a $3 million drop didn't work so today it's been cut again, to $6.298. Call me overly pessimistic, but if cutting it $3.145 million didn't do the trick, I'm dubious that a trim of $52,000 is going to help much. And again, what is a buyer to think when he sees a house drop by more than a third in two months? He might think, "that was a stupid price the first time." He might also think the market's in a free-fall.

Interestingly enough, the same broker's got another listing that can't seem to decide on the right price. 101 Dingletown, a 1964 house renovated four years ago, has jumped around since it was first listed in late June of this year. It started at $5.785, went up to $5.995 10 days later, climbed again, to $6.395 2 weeks after that (I'm not kidding), and dropped today to $5.798, or $13,000 more than when it started its journey. I've mentioned this before, but if your house isn't selling, the price direction you want to go in is down. Try it and see.

I don't know what this means, but I suppose it's not 'discouraging"

In Greenwich, we are continuing to see a shift in what price ranges homes are being purchased. In July, 72% of homes sold were below $3 million. Thirty percent of these homes sold between $2 million and $3 million or slightly above our median price of $1,825,000. Our market is appropriately adjusting to the economic changes that can further support its stability.

That's from the real estate column in today's edition of The Greenwich Post (no perma link available so you'll have to click through to find it). The writer in question works hard to keep up a happy face, week after week, so "appropriately adjusting to economic changes that can further support ... stability" must be her attempt to offset news even she feels compelled to disclose:

In Greenwich, single-family sales decreased 34.7% and condominiums decreased 5.1% in July as compared to this time last year. In June of this year, existing homes decreased 31.1% as opposed to condominiums that decreased 19.6% from a year ago.

It must have killed her to admit that.

Open house report
Well, nothing much out there today. I saw one new listing whose listing agent was asking for price opinions. I suspect I added no cheer by suggesting a price cut of $225,000 off its $1.995 price but hey - he asked; and he won't listen anyway, so no harm no foul.

But there's a problem with these over-priced listings that affects all of us: a friend tells of showing a house yesterday that had been marked down a full million dollars from its two million plus original price. Instead of seeing a bargain, his potential buyer was scared off, reasoning that if a house could "lose" a million dollars in value one week, what was to prevent it from losing another million next week?

What's being exposed in the present market is the unreality of pricing in this town. I know that sounds "too discouraging" for some of you readers, but when Back Country mansions start whacking $3-4 million from their asking price, over night, buyers can be forgiven if they conclude that there's no real substance behind some of these prices.

So they're waiting things out.

Tear down of next week? 7 Hearthstone Drive

This beautiful (to my eye) 1868 farmhouse, originally belonging to the Lockwood family, is presumably slated for destruction. There's no demolition sign posted yet but the lawn isn't being maintained and it recently sold for its land value, $1,315,000. What a shame. The owners tried selling it for $1,560,000 back in 2003-2004 but found no takers, a reflection of what's happening in Greenwich.

I've often wondered why Greenwich buyers show so little interest in antique homes. In many towns - look at Guilford or Westport, for instance, older homes are treasured but not so here. Even growing up, I noticed a dearth of old houses, even though the town was settled in 1640. What's different about Greenwich that causes its residents to disdain our heritage? I have no idea, but I do know that in the years I've been doing this gig, I've had exactly one buyer who specifically asked to see old houses. That's discouraging.

Tear Down of the Week - 384 Sound Beach Avenue

This is (soon to be was) a very nice house with, as I recall, a pool dominating the small back yard. It sold via bidding war (asking price, $1.795, selling price, $1.873 million) in August 2004 (which we now refer to as "the good old days"), a price that I would have thought precluded it being torn down. Obviously, I was wrong.

I'm off to see new listings on the open house tour and will report on any bargains that turn up. Unfortunately, even in this market sellers tend to still price their new listings at unrealistic levels but I'm always ready to be pleasantly surprised.