Can't we all get along?
Old folks battle it out over Obama/McCain in nursing home

George Manos, the 75-year-old Republican, told police that Edith Walker, the 73-year-old Democrat, jumped on his back and struck him in the head three to four times with her fists. Manos said two other elections workers had to pull Walker off his back, according to a report filed with Cuyahoga Falls police.

Heads slammed into walls; McCain urges supporters to "stand up and fight"; Biden calls McCain "fighting mad"; Obama supporters "ready for fight"

It's all pretty tiresome. Me? I'm going to hide from political news for the next three weeks and listen to Bob Dylan's My Back Pages on my iPod:

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Palmer Hill condo's revisited
Earlier there was a discussion of this project and I admitted that I knew nothing of the builder's finances but did note that it was the largest project he'd attempted, a yellow light, in my view. This reader's experience would seem to justify that caution:

I bought pre-construction and pulled out when told that the condos and townhouses that are completed would be delayed over 10-12 months for what they are calling re-design. They are pushing dirt away slowly construction to a crawl to prevent over supply. They had 40+ people committed in early 2008 and that number dropped to 20ish or so once they annouced the delay. They builders hold a 20 year option to finish phase 1, 2 and 3. they can stop construction at anytime. Alot of early investors pulled out after they started offering options as incentives.

So, porceed slowly and carefully, is my advice.

A reader asks,

This post brings up a question that has been nagging me for a while...does it make sense to put money into a now depreciating asset in anticipation of making it more desirable to sell at a later date? What determines whether or not a house is a "tear down"?

I purchased my house in the early 90's after it had been completely redone by the previous owners (perhaps making it what you referred to as antediluvian). Luckily, the previous owners were a bit ahead of their time for 1990 and we do have 12 foot ceilings in the family room, playroom, kitchen and master bedroom as well as a double height entry hall. The kitchen is "state of the art 1990 corian" but with the economy lately, I am not going to be updating the kitchen any time soon. I have re-done two of the five bathrooms recently, but I think the others need to be done so the house will show well when it eventually goes on the market. We have put a lot of money into maintenance the past 15 years and built a beautiful pool and have had a lot of landscaping done. Am I crazy to put any more money into my house now that it isn't worth what it used to be?

Probably - I've always thought that any improvements a homeowner makes should be done with an eye towards his own enjoyment of that added feature (like your pool and beautiful landscaping) rather than resale. The law of entropy ensures that whatever you put into a house will age, fall apart, or at least go out of fashion - 10-year-old master bathrooms in trophy homes look positively dated when we agents see them on tour. Of course, the homeowners have been happily splashing away in that whirlpool tub for the preceding decade and, if they weren't moving, would probably enjoy it for another decade or two without noticing that time had passed them by but buyers see it differently.
So if you want a new kitchen with granite counters and all new appliances and you plan to stick around to enjoy it, go for it. Just don't count on getting much of your investment back when you move. There are tables out there showing what percentage of the cost of an improvement you can expect to get back upon resale, and all of them are under 100% (and all of them, I assume, don't figure on your using those improvements long enough to start their deterioration).

If I had a house that I was planning to sell soon I would not put much money into it except to fix obvious structural flaws, like a failed paint job, a rotten porch, a crumbling foundation, whathaveyou (I purposefully mention some big ticket items because these are things that really will hurt your resale value and should be addressed, regardless of expense). I would certainly not waste money on a new kitchen - the would-be buyers probably have different needs and taste than you and updating baths, while nice and which might make your house easier to sell, will not return any gain. I've written before of houses I've seen that didn't sell and whose owners were persuaded by their agent to do all these things I've just cautioned against. Now they have a house that, overpriced for the neighborhood to begin with, is even more out of whack. Far better to have cut the price $150,000 than to pour that same sum into a sinking ship. Price it right, sell it and move on - you can put your cash into the new house.

What makes a tear down? In happier days, any older house that sat on decent land was quarreled over by builders and first time home buyers alike - picture sea gulls fighting over a fish carcass. Now that the builders are on hiatus there are fewer tear downs and a much better opportunity for young families who can't afford a mansion to move in, maybe add that new kitchen you so wisely avoided, and live happily ever after. Personally, I like that development; I represent a couple of builders, whom I like and admire, but I also live in this town and I'd be glad to see the return of "normal" families.

Give my regards to Billy Joel
Realogy shutters its Corcoran branch in Hampton Bays . Things aren't going swimmingly for Realogy, which owns Sotheby's, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and Better Homes & Garden Realty and is in turn owned by Apollo management which is shuttering 317 Linen's & Things stores. Leon Black, Chairman of Apollo and known in certain circles as "Papa Sotheby's" is reported to have said, "Oops! But what's a piddly $1.3 billion mistake - you been following Lehman stock lately?"

It's estimated that all 17,500 Linen's employees will lose their jobs. "Oops" indeed.

So what's wrong with my house? Nothing!
There's a house for sale, and I don't want to embarrass its owner by giving its address, that's been on the market for well over a year. It was originally priced at just over $6 million and now, a couple of brokers later, it's down to $4 1/2. Trouble is, I think it's still too high. The place was built for its current owners nearly 20 years ago and, in terms of style and what today's buyers are looking for, that's antediluvian. Tomorrow's taste may change again but for now, this is little more than a building lot, on a nice, but not great, street. It was crazy to price it at $6 million to begin with and with building lots on Round Hill Road going unsold for $3.5, I doubt this one, in an inferior location, will see much action. Just my opinion, and I certainly wish the seller the best of luck, but somewhere along the line, the market will speak loudly enough for this seller to hear it.

(Click to enlarge only known photo of Jeffrey Gendell)

Now he tells us: "Mistakes were made."

Greenwich resident (7.27 acres in RA-2 zone, 5 bedroom, 6 bath brick colonial circa 1936 - ironically enough, that would mean it was built in the last Great Depression) Jeffrey Gendell's hedge fund, Tontine Associates, is down a wee bit this year: 65%, as of September 30, and possibly a bit more today, say what? He's certainly made tons of money for himself and his investors over the past 10 years so I'm not going to lose sleep over the possibility that he'll have to move from that colonial. But I was struck by this quote:

[Gendell's] fund is named after 17th century Italian banker Lorenzo de Tonti, who invented an annuity where several partners invest and receive annual dividends. As each investor dies off their share is credited to the remaining partners, leaving the last man alive with all the money. The name is a play on Gendell’s desire to be the “last investor standing.”

What do I know? Maybe being 65% down for the year is to be on top of the heap right now and Greenwich is indeed hosting the last money manager still paying his groundskeepers. I never could figure out hedge funds but I feel better about that ignorance now that I know that they couldn't either.

16 Beechcroft
Beechcroft (behind North Street's St. Michael Church) has seen a wave of new construction lately and this spec house was in that wave. Priced at $8.5 million when it came on the market in June, 2007 2008, its builder must have grown tired of waiting: he sold it yesterday for $6.150 million; 28% off. Hope his profit margin was a big one.

Price reductions!
Some readers tell me they find this topic boring. I think it illustrates two things: the danger of overpricing your house to begin with; and what's happening to the market. Those who disagree are urged to skip this post and come back later.
42 Richmond Hill Road. original price $15.9 million; as of today, $9.950 - 37.5% off. Remember, if the first price is ridiculous, a huge price reduction is not necessarily an indication of how much the market has dropped. Still, someone must have received a pretty hefty dose of reality out there on Richmond Hill.
45 Baldwin Farms South. Original price last January, $9.750. Today, $6.450; 34% drop.
38 Khakum Woods, land. Original price $8.5, today, $5.5; 35% drop. The pretty house pictured above is an artist's idea of what a house might look like, if it were built. As it is, you get a foundation only. Considering that the current seller paid $4.8 million for the lot in May, 2005, in a stronger market, I'm not sure that's enough.

There were another 17 price changes reported today, but these were the most interesting.
Update: Zillow.com
If you believe Zillow, 45 Baldwin Farms should be worth only $4.694 million but if I were the builder I wouldn't despair: Zillow has him in Glenville, rather than off Round Hill Road, and uses houses on such desireable spots as Thunder Mountain Road to compare value. Bah, humbug. Its possible that in this market their pessimism might just prove out, but I'd be more confident in their calculations if they got the location right.

ACORN attempts to register Mickey Mouse to vote
ACORN and the Demmerkrats say, "nothing to see here, move along, move along", but haven't yet commented (to my knowledge) on this story:Indiana registers give up screening 5,000 ACORN-submitted registrations after the first 2,100 proved bogus. That's right - every single one. The story omits, by the way, to mention that ACORN works for only one candidate - wonder who that is?
I've been posting these stories for awhile now, but here's a Complete Guide to ACORN's Fraud.
Of course, as ACORN keeps working, no guide can be complete. For instance, there's this.

Turns out that “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will” are not the only phony contributors to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The New York Times finally bestirred itself to apply some basic investigative journalism attention to the Democratic presidential nominee’s donor list. The Times found nearly 3,000 other questionable donors like “Jgtj Jfggjjfgj” and “Dirty West” after what the paper admitted was just a cursory look at the Illinois senator’s September financial filings. But then Times reporters Michael Luc and Griff Palmer revealed an incredible level of naivety by stating “it is unclear why someone making a political donation would want to enter a false name.”
Unclear? What other motive could there be for using a phony name and a nonexistent address to make multiple small donations using a single credit card than to evade U.S. election laws? Such journalistic gullibility may explain why bloggers have been on this story for months and the Times is only now noticing. The Atlas Shrugged blog first broke the story of such suspicious donors behind Obama back in July after noticing little gems like this in the Illinois senator’s official FEC filings:

Name: Hbkjb, jkbkj
City: Jkbjnj
Works for: Kuman Bank
Occupation: Balanon Jalalan
Amount: $1,077.23

In case you are wondering, there is no such thing as the Kuman Bank. It is difficult to see how the Obama campaign could have mistakenly accepted such an obviously duplicitous donation - and thousands more like it - in good faith. Yet the campaign is now claiming to be the victim of “Internet fraud.”

Then there’s the question of whether foreign nationals are contributing to the Obama campaign. There is more than enough evidence to warrant a full-scale investigation by the Federal Election Commission, including the $32,332.19 that appears to have come from two brothers living in a Hamas-controlled Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah, GA (that’s Gaza, not Georgia). The brothers’ cash is part of a flood of illegal foreign contributions accepted by the Obama campaign. Potentially at issue, according to a complaint filed last week by the Republican National Committee, is as much as half of the $427 million he’s already collected. In any case, a complete FEC audit became an even more urgent matter after MSNBC reported that Obama’s Muslim outreach director quietly met with top Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) officials in an uncharacteristically unpublicized event in Springfield, Virginia on September l5th. The FEC’s primary job is to protect the integrity of our federal election process. With this many red flags flying and barely three week left before election day, there’s no time to lose if voters are to have all the information at hand before casting their ballots.

Obama - New Politics, for a change.

As usual, great insight and commentary, this time on corporate (and governmental) owning up.
From my favorite blogger,James Lileks

The theme of the conversation was responsibility, and why no one in the current crisis seems willing to own up to this mess. I said that no one could see an advantage to admitting culpability, however small, and if I had thought of it I’d have brought up the Japanese; can’t have a big failure over there without someone sweating, bowing, apologizing, banging his head into the table, generally behaving as though he deserved to be stoned. And those are the showy ones who earn only contempt; it's the guys who go home and hang themselves that really get a round of applause. It’s almost impossible to imagine that here, what with the diminished likelihood of hosswhipping, or a dispassionate, sustained interlude of public caning. If we interviewed any of the people responsible for this situation and asked them what they planned to do now, we wouldn't be surprised if they said they were going to Disneyworld.

Who's crying now?

This was reported by the Wall Street Journal at least a year ago but I'm delighted the man's troubles continue.
Oil production slumps 25% under Chavez. And it will continue to drop, which is what happens when your fire all the people who know how to produce something and replace them with political know-nothing appointees. I'm sorry for the people of Venezuala but many of them thought a free lunch was their due. El wrongo, and oil's price is plummeting. Hee hee.

Do "Green" houses command a premium?
This story from Australia suggests they do, but I have my doubts. I've seen no evidence of any such premium paid in Greenwich and even down under, there seems to be more poll evidence than actual sales. Yes, people say they'll pay more, but that may be (okay, I suspect it is ) because no one wants to admit to a stranger that they're a coal burning ecological vandal.

As I've said before, I think energy efficient homes are a great idea and I personally know, because I've done so, that I would pay extra to cut drafts by installing new windows, adding vapor barriers and extra insulation and all that. But again, when I've compared the sales prices of truly innovative houses with those of their plebian brothers, I detect no difference. This is also true, by the way, when it comes to quality of construction: buyers look at the location, the number of bedrooms and how many plasma TVs are hooked into the master bedroom and that's about it. Quality, like energy efficient, more comfortable features, seems to fall into the "nice to have" rather than "must have" category, at least when people are speaking with their wallets and not to pollsters.
Update: (10:32 pm)
It seems to me that a warm feeling that one's doing her bit for the environment only goes so far. Witness, for example the willingness of most residents to wash their garbage and place it in a blue recycling bin and then fly a private jet to Colorado to ski at an area whose development raped and destroyed a pristine mountain (I'm much more of a backpacker than a skier, obviously). But self interest always rules, so if I were a "green" builder or represented a green house, I'd translate the home's ecological virtues into dollars and cents and put it all on a single sheet of paper. Most buyers worry about monthly payments and if that gas bill is going to be less by, say, $400 a month, put it in writing and win a sale.
Can a builder quantify these amounts? I don't know - he (or the window, furnace and super-insulation manufacturers) should be able to; if not, then it's all a bunch of hot air, you should pardon the expression.

20 Carpenter's Brook

Does this look like a $4.0 million family room to you?
It didn't to me when I first saw this place (convenient to I-684, if you like that sort of thing. Can't hear your spouse nag, for instance), nor did the rest of the house. The market must have agreed because it hasn't sold and has slowly declined in price from $4 million to $2.4 million. Once again, don't interpret this as evidence of a collapsing market but rather, an unwise pricing decision made long ago.
Update: My readers are right: this is the house shown in the McClatchy forecolosure vido (check comments for link, if interested). Their eyes are better than mine - I toured the house (a year or so ago but that's no excuse) and didn't recognize it - they did. Off to get new glasses.

A reader asks, "what is the Golden Triangle?" According to this Wikipedia entry,

The Golden Triangle is one of Asia's two main illicit opium-producing areas. It is an area of around 350,000 square kilometres that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. (Other interpretations of the Golden Triangle also include a section of Yunnan Province, China.) Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent and Pakistan, it has been one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of Asia and of the world since the 1950s.

Oh! You mean Greenwich? In Greenwich, my source for all things pertaining thereto, Tom Gorin of Cleavland, Duble & Arnold, tells me that Mrs. Duble herself used to refer to "the Golden Circle", an area encompassing the land between North Street and Riversville Road and extending south to the Lake Avenue circle. According to Tom, the term dates back at least to the 1930s and he's yet to figure out who was left out when the circle was chopped into a triangle. Did it extend north of the as-then-unbuilt Merritt Parkway? Neither of us knows but I've always heard it applied to the mid country, so I think not.

But that was then. Now, realtors and builders use the term pretty loosely to add cachet to whatever they're peddling. Sort of like that standard advertising phrase, "on the Stamford/Greenwich border". You know, reading that, that the land's in Stamford. No self-respecting Greenwich realtor ever admits that Stamford even exists.

Perhaps it is a circle after all: A drug buyer seeking wares today can probably have as much success in Greenwich's Golden Triangle as that of Asia's. Go figure.

"Not My Job" contest, Riverside entry
The town is apparently trying to lay down a dividing line on the curve on Riverside Avenue just before St. Paul's Church. If they follow its guidance, drivers will swerve back and forth from one side of the road to the other, repeatedly. I'll stop by later and attempt a shot with my iPhone's camera but here's a snap from the web that seems to sum up the attitude of our line painters.

Newspapers' Internet Revenue Declining
I wish traditional newspapers well - without them, I'd have a far less interesting day and because I have a number of friends and relatives earning their daily bread at them, I'd be sorry to see them go. But they, for the most part, aren't adapting well to the Internet. Greenwich Time, for instance, insists on running the most annoying ad imaginable on its front web page. Click on to read and a fake "post-it" note from Greenwich Hospital scrolls around the screen. It's impossible to shut the damn thing off and impossible to read while the ad runs its course. How inviting.

And that paper is not alone in posting selectively. Columnists often aren't up on the net, articles disappear while moving from hard copy to the electronic version, what news there is is often posted hours after the fact, reader feedback is curtailed and made awkward to submit, "registration" is often required - who the hell wants to submit a full personal bio to some stranger just to read a story? If the guys running these things ever checked, they'd discover that a surprisingly large percentage of their readership was 90-year-old women living in the North Pole; now there's some useful information - and on and on.

Can newspapers save themselves? I don't know but, unless they get with it, I fear not.

I like this trend
God knows what will happen to this happy line by 4:00 PM, but things are looking brighter this morning. I was thinking over the weekend - an unusual activity for me but it was a boring, if quite sunny weekend and ... - As a real estate agent, I'll do okay no matter what happens to prices, once we get some stability. If prices stay really, really low, Greenwich will still attract buyers and they'll be more of them who can afford to live here. I'd miss the occasional sweet commission from that $7 million sale but the bread and butter of real estate, prior to the run up of the past two or three years, was the $1.5 -$2.5 house. If that range drops to $750 - $1.5 well, I'll have to sell more houses to make the same money, but life will go on. I need to keep busier anyway, as some of the postings on this blog will attest.

But I do worry. There are 3 Fountain households in Greenwich and it's been comforting to reflect on their "value". We all felt, if not rich, assured that there were assets there to fall back on. I'm much more worried, however, by the toll this is all taking on my friends' jobs. Already I know folks who've lost their employment not only on Wall Street but in all the peripheral areas - career placement, for example, contracts when no one's hiring. Builders are hurting, and carpenters, and who wants to hire consultants when business is in the toilet? Except for our public schools, however, but then they're immune from this stuff.

So I hope that the panic subsides and the economy recovers. I'm not at all confident that it will; there are too many long-deferred problems out there to make anyone sanguine, but I can, and so I do, hope. Not much else to do.

546 North Street
A reader asked about this property and I'm happy to write about it because I like it very much. It's set way off North Street on 5 1/2 acres, was built in 1924 and, although the listing sheet makes no mention of it, has been maintained and updated through the years. Great yard, very nice house, good location. It's my own firm's listing, just so you know, but very much not my own listing - I wish. Originally listed at $7.995 million it's come down 25% to $5.995. I'm not blowing my own horn here, but its new price is much closer to what I suggested when I participated in a price opinion inspection. Sometimes sellers, particularly estates, have their own idea of value, but even they have to hear the marketplace's response, eventually.

Anyway, it's a grand old place, in very good shape, and I think it speaks to what Greenwich used to look like. Which I consider to be a good thing; others' opinions may differ.

I posted on this yesterday but if you missed it,...Britain takes over Royal Bank of Scotland. 60% anyway. What will this do to the corporate headquarters in Stamford? Beats me, but I would not plan on setting up a catering service for traders on site, at least for now.

17 Khahum Wood Rd
The Winner!
In an earlier posting I stated that the biggest loser in price cuts was 66 Cherry Valley Road, listed for $20 million and sold for $11.4 million, or 57% of its asking price. I forgot (because its listing was deleted) 17 Khakum Wood Road, whose builder, Mark Mariani, originally listed it at $25 million and, after slowly marking it down to $13.5 before deleting it from our MLS records, eventually sold it privately for $12.5 million. That success earns Mariani the coveted "What Was I Thinking Award" for 2005, 2006 and 2007 (the years he first listed it, reduced it and sold it). That's a trifecta, no? When this first came on the market I suggested in print that there were equal or better houses available for half its price, a comment that caused the builder to permanently ban me or any member of my firm from the privilege of viewing his subsequent creations. I paid no heed, of course, but I did take a certain satisfaction in seeing where this house ended up. Instead of banning me, maybe he should have listened.

Update: A reader asks how this particular Waterloo compares with Antares own fiasco on Langhorne Lane and, I do so hate to break this to Mr. Mariani, but it appears that Antares has edged him out of the title by a hair. Langhone was listed for $25 million in April '07, increased (Antares genius at work)to $28 million that October and sold this August for $13.75, or 49% of the highest listing price. Mariani may squeal, but I decide the rules in this contest and I've determined that calculating mark downs will be done using the highest, not the first, asking price. Antares is out of the residential construction business now but they were certainly competitive for the title when they were building. 16 Cherry Blossom Road, for instance, part of their failed mansion project in our N.E. corner (which any realtor could have told them was a dead spot for sales) listed at $10.9 and sold 1 1/2 years later in December '07 for $6.6 million, 60% of its asking; not enough to win the award but a darn good try. I'll miss those boys.