Hurricane Ike Slams into Cuba Dr. Jeff Masters reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here it is; enjoy.

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

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

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

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

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



2007 - Antares expands into luxury residential housing

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

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

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

New York Times to condense paper