Welcome to the digital age
The Greenwich Board of Realtors has elected to give Realtors a choice to drop their subscriptions to the bi-weekly multi-list book, which I think is a mistake. The cost of printing will now be split between just the few of us who still want the book and, I suspect, that cost will soon be unaffordable. I’ve found the book invaluable with clients because we can sit down and flip slowly through the entire inventory rather than be restricted to a computer search with arbitrarily imposed search parameters. But that’s how the world’s moving, so on we go.

Pricing
I recently prowled through that very same MLS book and was gratified to see that most of the houses I had originally pegged as over-priced, some as long as a year ago, are still out there, begging for buyers. I am not always right, of course: one house that was priced well over $10,000,000 should have, in my opinion, sold for about half its asking price but went for 75% and in just a few months. There’s no accounting for taste but, leaving the clueless, tasteless freaks aside, it’s usually pretty obvious when a house isn’t going anywhere.

A whiff of mortgage fraud?
It’s not too common here in Greenwich, but we occasionally encounter a listing that at least hints of nefarious things going on. Listings that, for instance, expire unsold and then sell immediately for more than their last asking price, suggesting that the seller is giving cash back and the buyer is gaining a mortgage far in excess of what the house is worth. I saw such a deal a few weeks ago and it certainly made me suspect that some out-of-town lender hadn’t bothered to check out the house’s location or its condition. The name “Greenwich” alone doesn’t justify a wild appraisal but I think some banks don’t know that, and don’t care. Or they won’t until they have to foreclose on the place.

26 Bramble Lane
I mentioned this new construction some time back, when it was just beginning to be built, and several readers took me to task for what they interpreted as a criticism of its construction technique, an innovative process using insulated concrete walls. In fact, I’m always interested in new construction methods and this one, with the potential for huge energy saving, struck me as particularly nifty. In any event, it’s almost finished so I stopped by the other day to meet the builder, (Rob?) Wahl, and offer him a chance to punch me in the nose in case he thought I’d said mean things about his house. Instead, he gave me a complete tour and I think the house lives up to its promise. Very efficient, draft-free, quiet and impervious to rot, plus very, very nice finishing details. Five bedrooms, four baths and a finished “lower level” (we don’t call them basements anymore). Pam Chiapetta and Fran Unrine have it listed for $3,850,000, thus supplying further evidence of Bramble’s ever-increasing appeal. If nothing else, keep an eye out for a public open house and stop by for an education on this insulated concrete business. To this non-builder, it seems quite promising.

What’s killing my marsh grass?
I have been trying, completely without success, to get someone in town interested in discovering why the marsh grass (we always called it eel grass but everyone assures me that that’s extinct) on Ole’s creek (betweenRiverside and Old Greenwich) is dying off. Something’s happening and the banks are eroding rapidly and dramatically but no one seems to care, other than the creek residents. I don’t know if there’s a solution but this devastation must be a symptom of something worse going on. I blame Bush, of course.

Attention dieters!
Darlene’s, that very tempting ice cream and chocolate shop has moved from Cos Cob to a far more visible location on Sound Beach Avenue in Old Greenwich. It’s very much a family business: wander in and you’ll probably meet Darlene’s mom, Darlene herself and often, Darlene’s husband, plus an assortment of friendly teenaged staff. Pretty nice way to finish off a trip to the beach, as it offers tons of flavors in both conventional and soft ice cream, plus a variety of good-looking chocolates. Because the store’s located right next door to our Raveis office, I fear for our waistlines.

Talk Radio
I haven’t had much opportunity to tune into Russ Pruner’s Friday real estate show (WGCH, 10-11:00 am) but did so last week and heard my good friend Jeremy Kaye being interviewed by Russ and his new side-kick, Bill Andruss. Great show. Jeremy, one of the very best real estate attorneys in town, gave an hour-long walk through of a typical real estate transaction, from Town Hall records, to contract negotiation to closing. You might think that’s a pretty dry subject to spend an hour on (in my first year of law school, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d open my property law case book and doze off in minutes) but Russ and Bill asked good questions and Jeremy is almost as funny as his brother Joel so the time flew. If Russ is smart, he’ll make this interview available as a download on his firm’s website so that you can load it on your iPod and learn while you jog. Or you can just call Jeremy (625-5300) and ask him to entertain you. My only regret: Russ refused to take calls from listeners, thereby shutting off my creative impulses for the morning.

Two Nice Houses – cheap! (for Riverside)
I live down the street from Valerie Bromley’s new listing at 62 Arch Street and as I passed it each morning I wondered at the wisdom of its owners as the spent a year renovating what, to my eye, was a dated contemporary destined for a dumpster. I was (as usual) wrong, they were right. The house and yard have been transformed and the result is a very nice, livable house with five bedrooms, three fireplaces and a great deck overlooking Binney Park – throw your own July 4th party and have the best seats in town. Good price, I think, at $2,250,000.
Barbie Jackson has listed 23 Pierce Road for $2,395,000 and I liked it, too, although it’s a completely different type of house. This one is a 1927 farmhouse, totally updated and renovated in the past few years. Nice yard and a great porch. Either one of these houses would be a good choice.

Decks
The Arch street house includes a deck made of composite (okay, plastic) material that looks really good. This is a very practical choice for decking – more expensive than pressure treated wood but maintenance-free. My pal Nancy, tired of replacing rotten boards on our old deck, hired Rick Crossman of Old Greenwich (Archadeck, 978 –9050 archadeck.com) to rebuild the entire structure using composite decking and it looks great. I’ve known Rick and the rest of the Crossman family for many decades – good people and Rick sells a good product. He’ll make a deck from whatever you want: pressure treated wood, Brazilian Ipe (great, beautiful wood that lasts forever and comes with a price tag to match its longevity) or, as noted, composite. It’s always nice to use local vendors because in the unlikely event that a problem develops later, you know where to find them and, with a local reputation to defend, these guys will always work to make it right.

Attack Cat
My mother’s cat Henry, a 17 pound brute we adopted from the ASPCA, loves people but detests interlopers on his territory (which, sadly for my Nancy’s Miss Kitty, includes the house two doors up –poor Miss Kitty is terrified). But I watched with great amusement the other morning when Henry spied two geese on my neighbors’ yard. He crouched behind our hedge, then stalked the interlopers in a slow manner that caused them increasing concern and, when he finally charged they flew off, squawking in protest, landing in our creek, where the belong. Cheaper to maintain than a Border Collie, I may rent him out.

More on fluorescent bulbs
Interesting discussion on NPR the other day on the new fluorescent bulbs, soon to be mandated as the only light bulbs sold in America. Turns out that they don’t work in “cans’, the overhead lights so many people have in their houses. The trapped heat destroys them quickly and even while still working, their light is distorted. I don’t think this will be a popular law.

Memorial Day Parade this Monday, Old Greenwich
Best chance to revisit all those people for whom a once-a-year conversation is just about right. Besides, the kids on bicycles are cute and, although last year was a bit thin in this regard, you can usually count on some good marching bands. Don’t miss it. 10:00 AM.

Economists at work
The Greenwich Board of Realtors has commissioned a study by a UConn economist to measure the growth of Greenwich real estate. His conclusion: 600% over the past 20 years, outpacing all of the various stock indexes. That's reassuring, but should be taken with a large grain of salt. So far as I can tell (and a meeting to discuss these findings with its author won't be held until next week) the data don't reflect improvements made to the subject property. That's not necessarily fatal, because it's the land that is soaring in value, not the housing stock. My kids were horrified when I told them that their childhood home was destined for the dumpster when its sold, but there it is; Nancy and I put in over $150,000 to improve it (okay, that's a powder room for most readers but for this middle class family in the '80s, it was huge) but whoever buys it will be buying it for its location, not our improvements. All in all, I suppose the study demonstrates that Greenwich has been, and remains, a solid investment – just don't take the price you paid in 1986, multiply it by six and assume that that's your home's current value. Could be, but not necessarily.

Morons at the gate
I overheard two fellow agents (and friends, hence no names mentioned here) commenting at an open house the other day. The house we were in happened to be near the railroad tracks and some overhead power lines. "I'd never sell this place," said one, " those power lines kill". "Leukemia," confirmed the other, nodding with supreme confidence. Now, I know these two to be well educated, otherwise-intelligent people, so I was dismayed at their ignorant acceptance of junk science – if they're blundering around in a fog of ignorance, how are we supposed to calculate house prices? What (negative) value do we ascribe to bad Feng Shui, graveyards within 500 yards, nearby cell phone towers, a death down the street, etc? (I'll concede that Mr. Kissel's bloody, bound demise on Dairy Road significantly affected that house's resale value – by the way: another murder "solved" by our gendarmes, who declared it a suicide). If our otherwise well-educated sales force thinks these things matter, surely some customers do, too. I don't know how to adjust prices to accommodate superstitious nonsense but I sense that it's a skill I'd better develop, and soon – we're moving into over-drive in this country.

And in our laundries
Did you see Consumer Report's latest review of "energy efficient" washing machines, now mandated by Congressional edict? Turns out, your basic top-loader machine no longer cleans clothes. You'll now have to spend $1,000 to get something that will do the job. That's probably no hardship for the average Greenwich household but I suspect that consumers in most of the rest of the country won't be pleased. Just wait until they can no longer buy incandescent light bulbs. With luck, we'll have a revolution.

The Back Country
A recent newspaper article on the Back Country quoted another two friends of mine who claimed that the beauty of the area has not been diminished by all the recent construction. Phooey, says I. A 15,000 sq.ft. badly-designed mansion crammed onto a 4 acre lot looks just awful, especially compared to the graceful houses set on 100 acres that they replaced. I understand market forces and I can accept change, but don't try to pretend that nothing has been lost; the town has suffered greatly. North Street, once the grand, beautiful entrance to our town, is now cluttered with tasteless, over-sized collections of builder's kitsch (fortunately hidden behind towering stone walls) – the rest of the Back Country has suffered as badly.

Wanna be a landlord?
Dan Piotrowski has listed a five unit condominium complex at 9 Riversville Road for $5,350,000. I assume that's not quite the right price or it would have sold by now but these are pretty neat units, each renovated and each, I would think, capable of bringing in a decent rent. So at some capitalization rate, these ought to be a good buy.

Vile bodies
Speaking of corpses, did you see the news account of a Realtor and her clients discovering a three-week-old corpse moldering in bed? We just hate when that happens.

Local Produce
Some time back I wrote, in response to a silly politician claiming that only losers with no better opportunities joined the Army, of Old Greenwich’s own, 1st Lt. Stephanie Whittle, GHS 2000, who turned down Harvard in favor of attending West Point. I just received the following email from another of her fans and I thought I’d reprint it here:

“That (now) Captain Whittle you speak of is pretty darn incredible. I spent four years with her at West Point in awe of her brilliance and extraordinary world view. She has always been the one to go to for advice, encouragement, and help with anything. That is to say that Greenwich Connecticut sends some good ones out into the world, and I'm sure that's enough endorsement to help those multi-million dollar properties sell themselves. –CM”

In fact, Greenwich has always turned out some pretty accomplished kids. I’m still amazed that my small Humanities course at the high school produced at least five published authors, including a Pulitzer Prize winner. Artists, musicians, investment bankers, too many lawyers (that would be any more than one), we have a talented pool of young people here and CM is right: people ought to be willing to buy in Greenwich just so their children can matriculate with winners. I single out Stephanie because she’s sacrificing potential financial gain and her personal safety just to serve her country. At a time of war and with Memorial Day approaching, it seems appropriate to give her an honorable mention.

Attention deficit disorder
I read that Sony is condensing a variety of truly awful 70’s shows like Charlie’s Angels to 3-4 minute episodes: the Angles meet, get instructions from Charlie, chase bad guy, catch bad guy, end of show. They intend to post these on the internet and expect to make a lot of money, which I’m sure they will. But besides illustrating just how little actual content was packed in the original 30 minute shows, I think this development has instructional value for homeowners: the younger generation buying homes has almost no patience; not for letting plots develop and not for renovation jobs. I’m speaking in broad generalities of course but I have noticed that “fixer-uppers” are increasingly a drag on the market. I recently listed a really charming cape in a great location. Although families have happily lived there since 1935, it could have used a new, expanded kitchen and a new master bedroom suite upstairs. Both those improvements could have been easily done but we received exactly zero expressions of interest from end-users and numerous bids from builders who were interested solely in the land it sat on. That’s an increasingly common phenomenon, I think. So, if you’re thinking about selling your older home, either consider doing needed renovations now, yourself, or resign yourself to selling for land value. The latter isn’t so bad, fortunately, because the price of good building lots keeps rising, while the value of a physically obsolete, dated house is falling.

But if you’re going to renovate …
Be careful – some houses just aren’t worth putting more money into. I’m aware of two houses, side by side on the same street that were priced within $200,000 of each other. One was a tear down, the other had a much better yard, a beautiful pool and a completely redone interior that, unfortunately, kept its original front-to-back split arrangement. The tear down was sold in days while the renovated house, at this writing, still sits because builders aren’t willing to pay extra for what they don’t need and, apparently, home buyers don’t want it either (their loss, in my opinion –it’s a nice house). So, before you commit to a big re-do job, you might want to pick the brains of a friendly Realtor.

Humor on the circuit
I thought I was being funny advertising a drawing for an Airbus 380 at my recent broker open house (no one wanted the rough sketch of a plane that I presented) but Andy Healy, of Surf &Turf Realty did me one better by requesting agents to “please remove shoes before entering”. Agents who showed up were confronted with a muddy, vacant lot. Well done, Andy.

Tod's Point wing ding this Sunday
The Greenwich Shellfish Commission (and I hope you knew that we have one) is sponsoring a pretty cool event this Sunday, from 1-4, at the Point. Besides a clam digging class, there will be an additional 25-30 exhibitors demonstrating or passing along information on just about every possible salt water recreation, from reading (Perrot Library), fishing (Sportsmen's Den), diving (Ski & Scuba), lobstering (Bill Fossum himself!) and on and on. The sloop Soundwaters will be moored off the Old Greenwich Yacht Club and available for inspection, Bruce Museum is doing something else which I can't recall so you'll have to go see for yourself, and so on. A map to the whole thing will be available at the gate but basically head down to the Yacht Club work your way past the windsurfing launching area, and you're there. Questions can be directed to either Roger Bowgen at 243-6364 or Sue Baker 637-4610. No rain date, so keep your Sou'wester handy.

Smart Renovation in Old Greenwich
Ginny Hamilton has just listed 27 Shore Road for $3,350,000. It's a house I liked a lot, an old (1894) Victorian that was intelligently expanded and renovated in 2004. I used to subscribe to "The Old House Journal" and each issue included a back-cover photograph of the "re-muddling of the month". Horrifying. The careful work on this house would qualify for a picture on the front cover. Of course, in Greenwich, we have less to fear from bad renovation jobs than from dumpsters swallowing old houses whole. It's true that some houses are simply obsolete, with low ceilings, failed basements and the like but I wish that people planning a tear-down would visit this house first to see what can be done to bring a great older house into the new century. Ginnie, perhaps you should hold a public open house.


Doing it on the cheap?
An agent who attended the broker open house for a very, very expensive house (if I gave its exact price I'd embarrass the builder, who probably deserves it but …) reports that its master bath was a cheap-looking plastic tub. I understand that weight considerations may dictate an acrylic, rather than cast iron spa but if the resulting product comes out looking cheesy and you're hoping to set a price record for you house, you might want to try a bit harder.

And speaking of trying harder …
I held a broker open house in Riverside the other day for a nice new house priced around $4,000,000 and only 47 agents showed up. The low turnout at open houses puzzles me. There are currently over 1,000 agents in town yet, as I've written here before, you see the same 150 faces at open houses – where are the others, doing lunch? Oddly enough, the largest turnouts come at the super mansions, when dozens of agents I've never seen before show up to tour. They have as little chance of selling a $15,000,000 mansion as they do of dying from the sudden loss of all the air in their living room but out they come, like groundhogs, before disappearing again. Riverside and Old Greenwich are still experiencing bidding wars over new construction so you'd think more of my competitors would be working the area but I'm grateful they don't. As it is, my listing is going to contract this week.

Floods
I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow-residents who were flooded recently (by the way, I've heard nothing but praise for the firefighters and police officers who responded to calls) but I lump their complaints and demands that the town "do something" in with those of the citizens of New Jersey – don't build in flood plains if you don't want your feet wet. This isn't heartlessness but rather basic geology, taught me many years ago in college: rivers have channels and they have flood plains which, by definition, flood when it rains a lot. It's stupid for states like New Jersey to keep rebuilding on floodplains, as though re-setting ten pins, and Greenwich might want to reconsider its policies, too. "Flood control" is an oxymoron – just ask Noah.

Storage Comes to Riverside!
A new, six-story building complex is coming to Pinecrest Road in Riverside. An eclectic combination of (windowless) Nantucket/Shingle-style Georgian-Colonial, the structure will provide room for town residents to place everything they can’t fit into their current homes. “It’s the least I could do for my fellow citizens,” said Franklin “Westy” Bloomer, ruefully surveying the rubble of his former residence. “We thought we were zoning out addicts, not attics, but now, thanks to FAR, no one has space to store a pogo stick. If I won’t admit I was wrong, at least I can say I’m sorry.” Completion date is expected by July 14th.

Okay, that was a joke.
But Mr. Bloomer, the “FAR Czar” (Tom Gorin, you have nothing on me!) has written an angry letter to this paper suggesting that, if I have any ideas on improving FAR regulations, I attend the next FAR meeting, date as-yet unscheduled. Heck, I’ll be there with pencil and pad, ready to report, but I’ve been there before and listened while residents complained about the extraordinary costs incurred trying to comply with the regulations, heard cogent arguments against its present interpretation (why, for instance, should a house of 5,700 sq.ft. be perfect for a one-acre lot yet 5,200 be the maximum allowable size for a two-acre lot?) and even learned of great solutions to the problem of reducing bulk while still permitting homeowners to have the house that they want. Every time, the FAR folks nodded their heads, tugged their beards and proceeded to enact even more stringent regulations. The only answer, I think, is to toss these people off the RTM. Until then, let me leave you with a question: what possible business is it of yours, mine or Franklin Bloomer what people do with the interior of their homes? If someone wants a lighted, walk-out basement or a useable attic, does it concern you, so long as height and set-back requirements are met? I think not; Bloomer thinks so. We’ll agree to disagree, until the next election.

What’s Unsaid
When you see a listing for a waterfront real estate listing that fails to mention, er, taxes, should your hairs prickle? I think so. Recent example, a property in Riverside that neglects to mention a tax bill of $54,000.00. Obviously this little omission would turn up sooner or later, but I prefer to see my numbers up front.

The $5,000,000 - $7,000,000 Market
My clients and I toured a number of houses recently in what used to be considered nosebleed altitudes and saw very little that impressed us. “How much do we have to pay to get quality?” asked my client. The answer, sadly, is far more than $5,000,000. Even considering the high price of land, that’s ridiculous. We saw cheap (and identical – Home Depot must have been holding a yard sale) thermostats, light fixtures, California Closets, and on and on. I suspect (or hope) that a number of builders who have refused to open their wallets to pay for the quality their high prices supposedly demand will get their comeuppance, either when they sell at drastically reduced prices or at the foreclosure.

Realtorease
Saw a listing recently that claimed that the house in question had been built by “a reputed local builder”. Somehow, that doesn’t set my mind at ease.

Nanny Quarters
Back to the recent tour of high-end houses. Again and again, I saw little windowless basement cubicles designated as “nanny quarters” or, just as bad, basement bedrooms with a single tiny window. Here’s the deal – if you want to place a human being in a basement bedroom, you have to provide a window large enough to accommodate a fireman and his (or her – I don’t care who saves me) breathing equipment. I don’t have the exact specs, but figure on something about 5 ½’ X 3 ½’. If a Realtor shows you something smaller and says it’s legal, she’s blowing smoke. You may not care about the safety or comfort of your staff but, given a chance to bring a wrongful death case against a rich, Greenwich mansion owner by an impoverished, hard-working Philippino girl, I’d dust off my law degree in a second. Do the right thing, or someone will do it for you.

“Could Be…”The other thing that annoyed my clients the other day were silly signs proclaiming, “could be wine cellar”, “could be video room”, etc. Build it and charge for it or forget it; don’t price your house as though these amenities are there.

Old Greenwich Waterfront
164 Shore Road, an “antique” (in this market, you can probably read that as “tear-down”) on an acre of direct waterfront has gone to contract. No word on final price but I assume it’s somewhere close to its asking price of $7,900,000. Gosh. I realize that they aren’t making anymore waterfront but prices for the stuff just keep zooming – must have been an okay year for Wall Street, after all. Helen Maher listing, Ellen Moger’s customer

Bigger Lots?
A builder-client of mine recently wondered whether he wouldn’t have made more money leaving a large lot intact and building one large house rather than two smaller ones. Too late now, but I think he might have. The one thing Riverside and Old Greenwich are short of is large yards, mostly because builders have been dividing up the original lots into the smallest lots allowed by zoning. They’ve been doing this since at least 1880 and until now, the market has rewarded them. But recently I’ve noticed owners paying large premiums for big yards. 402 Sound Beach Avenue, for instance, is set far back from the road on two combined lots with neighbors’ backyards affording additional privacy. Priced at $5,850,000 and not scheduled to be completed until August, it’s already under contract. A house on Gilliam Lane was just purchased for more than $6,000,000 by the neighboring homeowner who intends to tear it down and expand his back yard. 164 Shore Road, mentioned above, has more than an acre. A harbinger of all this was the purchase of a house on Indian Head a few years ago. The new owner tore it down and replaced it with a very nice stone garage and a beautiful side yard for his own house. I hope I’m seeing a trend developing in my area of town. At the cost of making houses still less affordable, little, crowded areas like Riverside and Old Greenwich will be considerably improved.

On the other hand
A building lot came on the market a year ago for about $1.1 million and none of my builders would touch it despite my assurance that it would support a new house in the low $3 million range. So it went to an out-of-town buyer who has put up a very nice house and priced it at $6 million, no doubt because of a recent sale around the corner. But bad things happen when you don’t know the town you’re building in and, in this case, sales around the corner are irrelevant. At least in my opinion, this guy is in for an awful disappointment.

Digital Cameras for Realtors
When I started this real estate gig my pal Nancy Fountain presented me with a very nice Canon digital camera, which has proved invaluable for snapping quick pics of new listings to email clients, etc. But, like most “point and shoot” digitals, its lens is too large to take effective shots of interiors (unless I’m photographing one of those Back Country houses with 500’ hallways). No matter how far you back out of the room, you just can’t capture all of it. So when I heard about Kodak’s new (new last year, anyway) V570, with two lenses, telephoto and wide-angle, I was intrigued. This review, from imaging-resources.com (Google for the Kodak model and you’ll find the appropriate link) clinched it:

“Our first thought when we took our first shots with Kodak V570 was that realtors are going to flock to this camera for its innate ability to capture more of a room than any other [camera]. This quick and simple panorama mode makes it even more compelling. (If you're a realtor, you can stop reading now and just go out and buy a Kodak V570: If you need any convincing, just check out the ultra-wide and panorama samples below.)”

Good enough for me. The camera can now be found on Amazon for less than $200, down from its original price of $400 (ah, technology!).

Vocabulary
Tom Gorin, head of Cleveland, Duble & Arnold, suggests two new terms for our real estate industry. One is “Farport”, describing what results when a builder is prevented by our Floor Area Ration rules (FAR) from building a real garage: you get a lattice-sided carport, easy prey to thieves and vandals but, by God, it’s not included in FAR calculations because the walls are see-through. Does this (farports, not the term itself) make any sense? I was on the Riverside Association Board of Trustees (or whatever) when that august body voted to support the FAR concept. I thought it was a dumb idea at the time but my fellow members did not. Dumb or not, the concern was restricted to protecting the streetscape from too bulky buildings; no one on the board seemed concerned with what individuals did with the inside of their homes, they just didn’t want to see large houses.

Franklin Bloomer and his fellow FAR zealots did, and do care, however, with the result that the interior space above garages must now be rendered unusable, garages can’t have walls and houses on two acres in the four acre zone must now be smaller than those in one acre zones. None of this affects bulk or serves streetscape preservation. In fact, the results are so blindingly stupid that the only possible excuse for not amending the FAR, in my opinion, is the refusal of Bloomer et als to admit that they were wrong in the first place. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

More Vocabulary from Tom“Listing wars”, used to explain a ridiculous price on a new listing. Happens when three or four agencies are invited to “price” a house. The first one in probably has a decent grasp of value. The third or fourth, knowing that others have trod where they are about to, shoots the moon and comes up with an absolutely insane price and wins the listing. Of course, the house will never sell for anything close to what the agent proposes but by then, it’s too late.

Maher Avenue
Two great listings on this street, 4 Maher Court (Michelle Klosson listing) asking $3,250,000 and 15 Maher Avenue (Martha Jeffrey) at $2,799,000. Each nicely redone, each with its own distinct charm. An added bonus: you can admire the cars parked along the street by Brunswick students. Nothing lesser than a Lexus, naturally.


7 Middle Way
This Lucas Point home, listed by Ann Simpson, is owned by friends of mine (well, I thought they were friends, until they listed with Ann!) so take my praise with a grain of salt. But really, it’s a wonderful old house. Built in 1889, nicely renovated and updated over the past century and located in one of the best neighborhoods in Greenwich. Lucas Point is a “you get it or you don’t” kind of place; if you get it, and I do, you’ll pay to have a terrific group of neighbors and friends, a private beach, boat yard, and so forth. You don’t get it, you’ll see a crowded area with no privacy and small yards. Testament to its virtues is that folks here either move entirely away, out of town, or just shift around within the Point. No one seems to leave voluntarily. Neat house, three floors, 5,000 + sq. ft., a ½ acre yard, all for $4,450,000. I think that’s a good price.

Lost Art
There’s a great book called, I think, “The Lost Art of Building Stone Walls”. I used it years ago when I was trying, with limited success, to rebuild drywall stonewalls but it’s superfluous now that our Mexican neighbors have figured out how to mortar and shape stone. We do seem to need, however, a new book instructing folks how to build banisters – I am amazed at how many otherwise decent houses have shaky banisters that wobble when gripped and give absolutely no assurance that they’ll prevent one from falling to his death twenty feet below. What gives? After the exterior appearance, the first thing a buyer encounters that suggests the quality of a building is the banister as he ascends the stairs. If that’s a flimsy bit of nonsense I, at least, assume that the rest of the house suffers from the same lack of attention to detail. Crazy, especially when the asked price is $6,000,000 and higher.

The Best Streets in Town (Published in Greenwich Magazine, April 2007)
Some of smartest people I know in real estate (not as low a barrier as you might think) advised me against taking this assignment because, they warned, I’d be bound to offend hundreds of homeowners who expect their own address to be included among the best streets in town. Offend hundreds of people at once? That’s the kind of challenge I relish, so here goes.

First of all, of course, there is no such thing as “the best street in town”. Individuals and their desires are far too idiosyncratic to allow that kind of ranking. For every desperate striver who would gladly sell his first-born in exchange for a huge house in a prominent location that simply shrieks, “look at me!” there’s another who, like Garbo, wants to be alone. A Back Country house may be perfect for a hedge fund trader who’s chauffeured to work every day but a mother of five who is the chauffeur might prefer a house in crowded Riverside, where her kids can walk to school or their friends’ houses without parental supervision (although these days, observing the nearly-empty bike racks at Riverside School, I wonder if that happens any more). With that caveat, here are some of the streets in town that command a premium.

Field Point Circle
David Ogilvy, speaking of the entire Belle Haven community, says that it “retains the feel of a summer community that just happens to be attached to Greenwich”. Grand old summer-houses with great architecture and all long-since converted to full-time residences. There’s high security and a neighborhood club (as a sailor, I won’t vouch for its harbor but, in this case, that’s a quibble and beside the point). I’d suggest that Field Point Circle should be at or near the top of anyone’s list of best streets in town, even though it’s approached via the Grass Island sewer plant (there are compromises involved in every scrap of Greenwich real estate). While it doesn’t hold the record for the highest sales price achieved (Conyer’s Farm, at $45,000,000 has that distinction) I think, year in and year out, this address holds the most prestige and commands the best prices. One thing of note: my brother Gideon once researched sales in this neighborhood to see if the “international marketing” pitch some firms tout as the way to sell Field Point Circle homes actually worked. Turned out that, out of twelve recent sales, eleven of the buyers were relocating within Greenwich. Sometimes you have to live in town awhile to appreciate or at least understand its high market prices.

Maher Avenue
Other than the Brunswick traffic and the great Halloween invasion, when half the town and all of Westchester descends on the place, this is a great, family neighborhood littered with grand old houses, almost all of which have been renovated. Owners who live here seem to gladly put up with Brunswick (and some actually enjoy the Halloween frenzy) in exchange for living in beautiful houses and having good friends on either side.

Park Avenue/Park Place (Greenwich)
One of my very favorite streets. Big yards, dignified houses of all ages and a really convenient location. Without spending too much time on research (okay, no time on research) houses here seem to sell rapidly and well. You or your agent will have to keep on top of new listings if you want to live here.

Parsonage Road
I only know this street from my bicycling tours but its western half, beginning after the parsonage itself, holds some of the best-looking houses in town. I like it a lot but one potential buyer, eying St. Mary’s graveyard behind and the Nathaniel Witherall down the road protested, “I’ll be living between the dying and the dead!). Aren’t we all. Get over it.

Back Country Roads
Cathy Adams still sounds wistful remembering her commute, pre-real estate days, to IBM via these roads. “I’d drive up Clapboard to Round Hill, cross Porchuck to John Street. When the leaves were turning …”. These are all still nice streets but, to my eye, they’ve lost some of their lush beauty as, one-by-one, the 100-acre estates have been chopped into 4-acre ranchettes and high, towering walls have blocked the views of what were once rolling meadows. It’s your call but, in my opinion, we’ve lost something here.

Quintard, Keofferam
Almost any street in this section of Old Greenwich is a winner. A huge stock of large Victorian summer homes all long-since winterized and updated and, although lot splits are becoming more common, still some very nice, big yards. There’s easy access to Tod’s Point, Old Greenwich School and the train. Riverside native Mary Karlan has lived on Keofferam since 1998 with her nine (!) kids – okay, it’s a blended family – and loves the street: “there are lots of kids, everybody’s really nice and if you like to run at the beach, walk your dog or walk your kids to school, this is the place.”

Club Road/ Gilliam Lane
These parallel Riverside streets present a bit of a quandary. My editors chose Club Road while, no doubt because I grew up on Gilliam, I prefer the latter. Club Road is busier in the summer due to the daily stampede of cars delivering and picking up kids at the Riverside Yacht Club but, for now, the houses are mostly larger and more impressive. I suspect that will change as the tear-down boom continues its sweep through Riverside but you can’t lose on either street.

Up and Coming?
Perhaps Arch Street, right next to Binney Park. This area starts off with some so-so 1960s contemporaries but four new, expensive and good-looking houses have been constructed recently (Peter Fusaro, of Riverside, got the ball rolling with a nice one on the corner of Wesskum Wood that sold for around $2.4 million a few years ago – it’s worth at least $1 million more today) and, as prices climb, you’ll see more such projects. The latest mind-blower was 30 Arch, built by Doran Sabaag two years ago and recently listed for $6,250,000. Several of us thought the sellers would get their price, others, also very experienced agents, thought that someone had sucked a bit too long on the old bong. Turned out we were all wrong and the house went in just two days for, rumor has it, $6,400,000. Mr. Sabaag is one of the best builders currently working in Greenwich and, if anyone’s creation is going to draw a premium, his is, but still – astonishing.

Start High, Finish Low
There are a number of streets that provide a friendly, close neighborhood experience that approaches or surpasses that offered by Field Point Circle. Fado Lane in Cos Cob, for instance, is a dead end street that gets closed off for neighborhood block parties on a regular basis. Its houses are not going to win any architectural awards but you can get your family into a house here for under $1,000,000. These days, that qualifies as a starter home. And, by way of amends, may I suggest Cary Road which I once described as the worst street in Riverside? (I heard about that, believe me). A tiny, crowded street abutting the Mianus River with, it turns out, and notwithstanding the tone of their letters to me, some of the nicest folks in town. Without the river, it’s not much but the water yields skating, boating, fishing and swimming, all for far less than you’d pay to belong to the Belle Haven Club.

Pricing!
I was at Starbucks the other Sunday when a man approached me to ask if I wrote ‘that real estate column”. Upon confessing that I did (an admission that always leaves me wondering whether I’m about to be punched in the nose) he thanked me, saying that the one thing he’d taken away from my writing was not to be stupid when pricing a house. So he’d rejected his Realtor’s advice and insisted on a price three hundred thousand dollars less. Result: multiple bids, all over asking price, and a contract in four days. Contrast this result, if you like, with a recent sale where a house came on the market in the spring of 2004 at $8,500,000 and finally went to contract last week at somewhere below (presumably) it’s final price of $6,500,000. I do not suggest that you give your house away but a realistic view of its true value will spare you months or even years of annoyance and inconvenience.

Wood roofs – worth the cost?
There are differing opinions on the value of wood roofs on New England houses. These roofs are traditional and certainly add to a house’s looks, often transforming them from boring capes to seemingly-Revolutionary War-looking cottages, but they require a lot more maintenance than other materials and, with a life span of about twenty-years, they are expensive. My pal Mickey at ARE Restoration (arerestoration.com, 531-0600) isn’t impressed by them, even though he can, and does, do a beautiful job installing them. My personal choice is synthetic look-alikes, either slate or shake, but many Realtors insist upon only the real thing. Your decision; if you’re planning to move in five years, you’re probably better off using wood and leaving the maintenance/replacement issues to the next owner but, if you’re in it for the long run, you might want to check out alternatives.

Beach Cards
I recently had occasion to learn the cost of a summer at Tod’s for a summer rental family. Three kids, two adults and a car will cost them about $1,000.00. That’s a lot, considering that the tax-paying family that’s renting to them will, obviously, be away this summer and not using the beach themselves. The town collects twice, which is nice for the town, but does it deserve to? As I wrote earlier, you may not want to rent your house but if you do, you’ll find these excessive fees to be a deterrent to success, in my opinion. I prefer the old system, which provided beach access to summer renters at the same rate charged to year-round residents. We’re double dipping here, at a miniscule gain for ourselves and at a great cost to residents who wish to rent their houses for a month or two.

Old Greenwich Riverside Community Center
A group of my fellow citizens has announced some pretty grand plans for the replacement of what I knew as the Eckman Center. The building was originally built by Electrolux as a recreational center for its employees but it opened to the public after the workweek. We could bowl there for $0.35 a game which, even then, was pretty cheap. Later, after the town bought the place, the Pearson family (Jones Park, Riverside) in conjunction with First Church, ran “The Sound”, a weekly dance featuring up and coming bands. We (they, but I hung out with Ridley) hired “The Young Rascals” for instance, for $650. The band appeared in knickers, floppy-collared shirts with big bow ties and rocked the place. A week later, their song “Good Loving” broke number one and the “Young” prefix, the knickers, and their $650 fee went the way of history. The building’s a wreck now and certainly could benefit from being replaced, but the proposed $40,000,000 cost, (to be privately raised) seems daunting. Do we really need another indoor pool in town, especially with the YMCA’s current ongoing fiasco? But I wish them well – I have so many fond memories of the place and I think a community center in Eastern Greenwich has much to offer and anything would be an improvement over the current, leaking edifice.

Worst Streets in Town?
I just wrote an article on the best streets in town. It would be fun to write its opposite but judging from my past forays into this subject, my opinion isn’t welcomed. I never called DeLuca Drive the worst street, for instance, just questioned their neighborliness, but the reaction was … strong.

Spring Market Conditions
Not so bad. I recently ran the numbers for the first two and a half weeks of March and saw that 64 houses had gone to contract, compared to 57 during the same period last year and 74 in 2005. So we seem to be doing okay; certainly not collapsing like some of the boom and bust areas like Florida. My advice would be to sell if you want to but not because you’re panicked.

Two Small Houses in Riverside
By coincidence, the childhood homes of my two best friends went on the market last week, both on Summit Road and just three doors apart. It was fun to revisit these houses for the first time since – I don’t know – 1967? Especially because, while they’ve been updated, they remain pretty much the same. Nancy Healy has listed 28 Summit for $1,259,00 which I think is the buy of the week. The house is a smallish contemporary (smallish by today’s standards – the Kramer family, three kids, two adults and, if memory serves, a dog, all fit in comfortably back then) with a good back yard. I know of no other property in its condition in that part of town at anything close to that price. Just up the street at number 36 Ann Simpson’s listed my friend Chase Carey’s house for a bit more, $1,525,000. It’s shy a bathroom, which could be remedied, but boasts a new kitchen and a lot of nice, new touches. Chase, by the way, grew up to become the CEO of DirecTV and recently contributed $2,000,000 to Colgate University, proving that growing up in a small house doesn’t permanently prevent a child from succeeding in life. Or it didn’t used to, anyway.

And over in Glenville
Barbara Suthergreen has 1 Strawbridge Lane (off Weaver Street) for sale at $1,579,00. It’s a good example of how much more your dollar buys in the western side of town because this house is almost 3,000 sq.ft., sits on a great, full acre of land, has been completely renovated, etc. etc. I really liked it and I think it’s an excellent buy.

Price it, sell it
We’re seeing bidding wars again, as I’ve previously reported, but many houses are still priced to high to attract interest. I see that one Riverside home finally sold for almost a million dollars less than the original price. For a house under $4,000,000, that’s a pretty large over-estimate of value. Of course, that error pales in comparison to another house, in another part of town, that originally came on the market in 2002 asking almost $10,000,000 and is still available five years later at just over $6,000,000. I hope for the owners’ sake that they’ve long since vacated; I can’t imagine keeping a house in showing condition for all that time.

Religious Fanaticism?
My father, who single-handedly kept the fifteen-watt light bulb industry alive, taught all of his children to eschew waste and save money. So I think it’s a good thing to conserve fuel, use energy efficient furnaces, insulate our houses, leave the Suburbans to celebrities, and so forth. But this global warming stuff has, in my opinion, zoomed way past the science that may support it and wandered into the realm of religious zealotry. Case in point: the news release last week that the average American woman weighs 164 pounds, which is up some 30 pounds from a generation ago (this study clearly was not conducted in our fair town, where three Lycra-clad Starbucks women together weigh less than that). The study’s authors weren’t content to point out that we’ve gotten fatter – they proceeded to calculate the extra gasoline expended and carbon emitted from transporting that extra poundage around and came up with a suspiciously-precise sounding sum. I don’t remember the figure but it was obviously enough to melt the polar ice caps and drown those cute bears. Forget gluttony; the new sin is being too large for the planet. Interesting (to me) is that the study failed to mention the patron saint of this new religion, Al Gore, who weighs 300 pounds and seems to travel with a driver (200 lbs?) a bodyguard (another 200?) and a publicist (93lbs). Everyone in a Suburban. But he pays John Edwards to install fluorescent light bulbs in John’s 28,000 sq. ft. home so all is well, I suppose.

Oops!
Do to an editing error, my praise for two houses last week, one on Kennilworth Terrace, the other on Intervale, ran under a week-old headline, “Looking for an eyesore?” That certainly wasn’t my meaning and, while it didn’t hurt Kennilworth, which went via multiple bids at a price presumably higher than its asking price of $6.1 million, I don’t want readers to think either house is unattractive. Quite the contrary.

Don’t be a pig
The market has heated up, as it always does in spring, and we’re seeing bidding wars breaking out. Worse yet, we’re seeing the reemergence of “highest and best” situations where the loser throws still more money at the deal and “highest and best” becomes “highest and best and better yet”. I advise against this practice because you the seller will infuriate the original winner and, when the second bidder develops buyer’s remorse and walks away, you’ll discover that you’ve lost both. But the dumbest thing to do is to accept someone’s offer, let them spend $1,000 or more on building inspections and then break your word, accept a higher offer and refuse to compensate the first buyer for his out of pocket expenditures. Don’t do this because (a) it is wrong: you gave your word, the buyer relied on your word, and you should not let him be harmed by trusting you; or, for those of you who couldn’t care less about (a) then, (b) it may cost you dearly. Buyers who can’t stand losing out on any deal will often bid anything to win. Deal. Then they start thinking that they’ve over-paid and they walk. If you’ve treated the first buyers well – apologized, made them whole, etc., they may still be around to complete the deal. If you’ve stiffed them, trust me- they’re gone. So don’t do it. If you’ve accepted someone’s offer and the buyer, in reliance on that acceptance, incurs expenses for a building inspection, your best course of action is to stick with that buyer and place any higher offers in “back-up” status. But if you won’t do that, dig into your pocket and reimburse the first, disappointed party. It’s the smart thing to do.

Two Master Bedrooms
The New York Times reports on a growing trend, his and her “master” bedrooms. Apparently, after the kids have grown, spouses are deciding not to put up with each other’s snoring, sheet tossing and whatever other annoying habits the other has and are moving into separate bedrooms. I can’t say that I’ve noticed this here in Greenwich, yet, but the article quoted architects and builders from around the country who all said they were designing or building these things, so watch for it soon. Our houses will presumably get even bigger.

MulBerry Lane
Off Mead Avenue in Cos Cob, two nice houses. Number 2, priced at $879,000, is a move-in-ready Cape just renovated. Small but nice. Sally Parris listing. Number 6, listed by Tod Laudonia, asks $949,000. It needs work but it’s right on the millpond and its location justifies the effort.

Bad Houses
I’ve lived in town for more than fifty years and, during that time, I’ve seen out-of-towners make the same mistake, again and again. Because Greenwich residents are wealthy, these folks – store owners, builders, what-have-you, assume that they can charge any ridiculous price and Greenwichites will pay it. They’re only half-right; (some) Greenwich residents will indeed pay insane amounts for some things – have you priced clothes at Richard’s lately? – but they insist on getting value in return. In the case of Richard’s, it’s superb service (or so I’m told; I haven’t shopped there since they stopped selling Levis and moved across the street). For builders, the quid pro quo for high prices is superb quality of construction. So when I see, for example, a $10,000,000 mansion with flimsy banisters, lousy trim work, Home Depot cabinetry, I suspect that I’m looking at the work of a naive, cost-cutting neophyte who thinks a Greenwich address allows him to charge any price he dreams up. It doesn’t happen. Much as it galls me to admit it, most of our rich citizens in town got that way by being smart (well, lucky probably helps, too) and they aren’t going to toss their money away on junk. So if you build junk, price it as such. If you want top dollar for your efforts, you can get it here, but you’ll have to work for it. It’s a tough life.

Kitchens
I enjoy cooking and often suffer intense jealousy pangs when I tour some of the luxury kitchens installed around town (the fact that, judging from their unused looks, these marvels of granite, 16-burner stoves and huge refrigerators are there solely for the convenience of caterers only increases those pangs, but never mind). The New York Times recently reported on what’s sure to be the next essential for Greenwich kitchens, the TurboChef oven, a combined micro-wave/convection/conventional appliance that cooks chickens in 12 minutes, soufflés in 2, and so forth. I want one, but I don’t think I’ll be shelling out $7,800 to buy one (unless all of you, right now, call me to sell your houses). But for some of my fellow residents that’s just chump change and I predict that as soon as one happy homeowner installs one all his friends (I suspect this particular gadget will be a guy thing) will want one too. Just think how happy your caterers will be.

And homes to put them in
So you’re ready for a new TurboChef but you worry it will dwarf your little Havemeyer kitchen. What to do? You might want to check out two new listings, either Joan Sutter’s at 25 Kenilworth, $6,195,000 or Jean Ruggiero’s at 12 Intervale Place, $6,450,000 .Both were built to exceptional quality standards (and both are Raveis listings, but regular readers of this column will have noticed that I don’t use that as a criteria for mentioning a house). If you think that this kind of price guarantees quality in new construction, you’re wrong; I’m not sure why, but possibly a combination of a shortage of skilled craftsmen and the natural desire of a builder to cut a few corners. Both these builders, Aberdeen (Kenilworth), Jeff Knapp (Intervale) resist that temptation, as evidenced, in a small way, by the crown molding in every closet. No sane buyer will pay extra for crown molding in a linen closet. These guys make the effort, I think, because their pride insists on it. In any event it’s a pleasure to tour houses like these after seeing some other new construction in town.

7 Old Kings Highway
I missed this house when it held a broker open house but I heard very, very positive feedback about it from my fellow agents. An attractive 1939 house updated in 1997 with three bedrooms and a small backyard, Dundee and Eastern school district, asking $960,000. From what I heard, that’s a good price. Catherine Stahl (David Ogilvy) listing.

Anecdotal Market Report
While out showing houses the past two weekends I noticed that at almost every house we were either preceded or followed by other agents and their clients. Offers are being tossed around, contracts signed and, I think, we’re seeing the end of winter doldrums. I’m waiting for the month to end to compile first quarter statistics but things feel busy. Feelings, of course, aren’t facts, so stay tuned. But if you’re house hunting and think there’s no urgency, you should probably reconsider.

A final food item
Did you see that PETA has chastised Al Gore for eating meat? In an open letter to Mr. Truth, PETA points out that “ the United Nations [has] determined that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.” The ex-VP, says PETA, should switch to a vegetarian diet if he really wants to save the world. If this is true, and who am I to doubt the United Nations, why isn’t anyone else talking about it? Could it possibly be that Americans might be willing to consider buying smaller cars and a few fluorescent light bulbs but, threatened with having their Big Macs wrenched from their hands they’d rebel and start examining the whole global warming panic? Certainly there must be some reason why Al Gore and his friends in the press never even address the number one source of deadly carbon gasses in the world. Of course, judging from his ever-expanding size, I suspect Gore is eating far more than his share of meat and, probably, buying sirloin offsets as compensation but, as with his private jet, shouldn’t he be at least telling the rest of us not to do it? I want a new movie.

Mail Boxes
I received a number of emails from readers squawking about the Old Greenwich Postmaster’s dictate that his carriers will no longer deliver mail on foot and that every household without a mailbox must have one by March 1st if they wish to continue to receive their mail. Has the Postmaster had ever tried digging a posthole in the middle of a Connecticut winter? The ground’s frozen this time of year, sir. By the way, I suppose that the Post office’s new motto will be something along the lines of, “neither rain, nor sleet nor fear of snow will keep us from our jeep’s window”. Not quite as inspiring as the original.

Parkway School
Parkway’s predicted extinction is casting a long shadow over sales in that area. Parents with kids in public school seem determined not to send those children to Glenville or Western – a prejudice that I believe is completely unfounded – so listings in the Parkway district are lingering, at least among public school buyers/parents. That’s a huge area of town to hang in limbo, and I hope a resolution is coming soon. My preference, even as a taxpaying resident of Riverside, is for Parkway to stay open. My political sources tell me, however that the school is 40% underutilized, feeds almost no students to Western Middle School and is therefore doomed. What happens if it closes? Where will those elementary students be sent and what about houses in the Parkway/Central district? Will the Central kids be shipped to Western? If you own a house in the Parkway area, count on your buyers being limited to private school parents or on owning the property until the situation clarifies.

505 Cognewaugh
Here’s a nifty house, listed by Krissy Blake (Prudential/ Brad Hvolbeck). A 1927 farmhouse that’s been completely redone and expanded, on an acre of beautiful land. The owners utilized some of my favorite things in redoing this house, including miniaturized air conditioning (essential if you’re dealing with plaster walls) and a “slate” roof made from recycled tires, great stuff which lasts forever. A brand new, modern kitchen, all top appliances and the house itself has been beautifully finished. It didn’t work for my clients (when the 6’4” husband ducked his head entering the old, low-ceilinged living room I suspected as much) but for short guys like me, just perfect. The living room is the exception, by the way: most of the house will accommodate even Allan Houston of the Knicks.

Riverside tops out?
As a life-long Riverside resident I have always touted this section of town as the perfect place to grow up and to raise a family. But recently, while showing houses to a Riverside family, I was struck by the huge disparity between what a dollar buys in Riverside and what you’ll get in the Mid-Country. Riverside and Old Greenwich have always been priced, per square inch, at the highest level and you get something for that: kids can walk to school and their friend’s houses, there’s a real feeling of neighborhood and, assuming you belong to either Riverside Yacht Club or Innis Arden, your playground is just around the corner. All that said, I sense that we’re a bit out of whack here in the eastern part of town and either prices will level off for a spell or other areas are going to rise. Riverside has always been bomb-proof and I think that will continue but I wouldn’t count on soaring appreciation until other parts of town catch up. Just one man’s opinion, of course, and one from someone who’s often wrong.

Six Frigates
For history buffs, this new book by Ian Toll recounting the founding of the U.S. Navy is a great read. Mr. Toll is, I guess, an amateur historian (he once worked as an analyst for the Federal Reserve, which greatly increases my respect for that institution) but he’s collected all sorts of well and little-known facts into a compelling story of the navy. The bickering, back-stabbing and second-guessing that went on during this period of 1795-1815 will be strikingly familiar to anyone living now during our current war, and the descriptions of Decatur’s battles against the Barbary pirates and the Brits are well told. It’s not on U-Tube, yet, so you’ll have to actually read it, but there are pictures.

FAR and House Values
39 Edgewater Drive in Old Greenwich, a long-abandoned structure, has been placed on the market with an asking price of $895,000. The lot is a mere 0.15 of an acre in the R-12 zone yielding a permissible building size, by my calculation, of just over 2,000 feet. That’s a lot smaller than most people demand these days so I’ll be curious to see what happens to the place. Someone will certainly buy it – the question is, for what price? Regardless, I’m sure the neighbors who’ve watched this eyesore deteriorate for years will be glad when it disappears. By the way: while I’m no fan of the floor area ratio regulations, this lot is an argument in favor – it’s just too small to support a mega-mansion. I still think that set back rules and height restrictions would suffice to control what’s to be built here but, for once, FAR may be helpful.

Woodsman, Save that Tree! Or some of them, anyway.
We now have a new advocacy group in town, the Greenwich Tree Conservancy. Most of their goals, such as updating our inventory of town-owned trees and taking better care of them seem worthy but I worry about their push for a new ordinance that will regulate trees on private property (other than trees in danger of toppling over and damaging a neighbor’s property, which are already regulated via our nuisance ordinance). I share most people’s distaste for clear-cutting and, if builders knew better, they’d appreciate that mature trees add to, rather than subtract from a building’s value, but Greenwich, bastion of free enterprise and property rights, seems an odd place to champion yet another diminution of those rights. And I hate to see yet another layer of regulatory approvals added to the building process. When your neighbor wants to add on, I’m sure you’ll appreciate all the delays and hurdles now built into the building process but when you seek to build your own project, you opinion may change. It’s a jungle out there.

Still Crazy After all these years?
Prices of many new listings still seem out of whack to me and to other agents I respect. So much so that it’s become a steady source of conversation on the open house circuit, as in, “did you see that house on X Road? What are they thinking?!” We could all be wrong, of course, and sometimes are, but it won’t help your prospects for selling quickly if those of us who at least try to be professionals think you’ve been smoking dope. We won’t waste our clients’ time showing houses that are hugely over-priced and, by the time a seller accepts reality and drops his price, we’ve long since forgotten about the property and moved on. I point this out so often because (a) it’s true and (b) sellers just don’t seem to get it.

But Wait, There’s More!
Not every seller is nuts. Tamar Lurie has just listed 19 Lakewood Circle South for $7,745,000, a price ordinary mortals might deem a wee bit high but in fact, it’s a terrific value. A number of us who viewed this completely restored 1930’s house thought the owner could have added a couple of million to its asking price. Of course, that would have entailed months of disruption, keeping everything in showroom condition while buyers strolled through at all hours of the day and, eventually, some sort of negotiated price. Instead, the owners priced it just right and they should be able to get through the process fairly quickly and painlessly. “They want to sell it,” Tamar told me, when I complimented her on the price. What a concept.

Hedge Funds and Greenwich
A panel of financial types recently examined the hedge fund industry and determined that no further regulation was required. Our state’s Attorney General, Michael Blumenthal, crowed that this finding opened the door for people like him to do their own regulating. I sympathize with the man – he’s just watched Elliot Spitzer be promoted to Governor on the basis of whacking Wall Street regularly and no doubt wants to follow him upwards – but, while I’m no particular fan of our country’s financial industry, I have more confidence in the judgment of experts, including three Goldman Sachs alumni, than I do in an ambitious lawyer. I’m not worried about losing money in hedge funds - I have no money- but I do worry about an over-zealous politician driving these people from our state. Who else can afford to buy your house?

How to Win Friends and Influence People
At a public hearing held to discuss what to do with Glenville School: tear it down, rebuild, wait and do nothing, etc., the Parkway PTA school sent a representative down from the Back Country to scold the crowd. Parkway, not Glenville, she argued, should remain open because Parkway parents pay more taxes than Glenville. Properly chastened, the Glenville folks knuckled the tips of their caps and bowed their heads in shame. Or something. Here’s a tip I’ve learned from spending a half century in Greenwich and observing its politics: people with less money than their betters don’t seem to understand that they should get the dirty end of the stick when it comes to town services. Hard to believe, but it’s true and, surprise! They vote. Try another tactic.

Contracts
As of February 12th, 57 singe family residences have gone to contract this year, which seems healthy. Of those, only seven were new construction, indicating that the market for older homes appears to be coming back.

Prices
I cannot figure out what’s going on with sellers these days. Week after week, we’re seeing houses on the broker open house circuit that are millions of dollars too high, and that’s not just my opinion; other experienced agents say the same thing. So what gives? Have sellers lost their collective mind or are agents telling them anything they want to hear to get the listing? Either way, it won’t work – the market is just fine, but you can’t sell a $2,000,000 house for $3,000,000, or a $5,000,000 house for $8,000,000, not matter how attractive your marketing.

Zillow.com
The Wall Street Journal recently compared 1,000 actual sales to Zillow’s estimate of value and came to the same conclusion I did when I conducted my far less scientific survey: the site is generally accurate but, when it’s wrong, it’s way wrong. The Journal cited one house that Zillow said was worth $600,000 – it sold for $2,600,000. Oops! The danger here cuts both ways because buyers pass on great deals when Zillow says a house is worth far less than its true value and sellers insist on pricing a house far above what it’s worth if Zillow says otherwise. Look: it’s a stone throw’s distance from Hamilton Avenue to Belle Haven. Zillow doesn’t recognize that proximity doesn’t necessarily yield a comparable sale. Be careful.

Marketing
Can’t sell your corner lot house for months and months? One Realtor’s decided to change the address to the other street and raise the price $100,000. Seems silly to me – how dumb, exactly, are we supposed to be? – but it kind of makes sense, in a sneaky sort of way. I’ll let you know if it works.

For this we need Republicans?
Governor Rell has proposed raising taxes on Greenwich by another ½%. Already our tiny sliver (less than 2% of 3.4 million residents) pays 10% of all income tax. Rell wants us to pay more. Connecticut is already the third most expensive state in which to do business. In the past two decades we’ve loaded on an estate tax, an income tax, doubled (!) the number of state employees, are looking to add a “millionaire’s tax” (defined as anyone earning $500,000, by the way), and are now proposing to tax internet sales. As a state, we’re tops in the number of young people leaving and job growth is falling off a cliff. We’re third in the nation for spending per pupil, with dismal results, so Rell wants us to be first. Greenwich’s own Livvy Floren describes the Governor’s budget as, “ gutsy and very visionary”. I have a vision, all right; one that doesn’t include Ms. Floren as a state Representative.

Delta’s Not Ready When You Are
My youngest daughter is off to Costa Rica for a semester. Delta gladly sold us a one-way ticket online (return date is uncertain) but, when we dropped her at Kennedy at 5:00 a.m. she was told that Delta will not board any passenger flying one-way from one country to another. Besides the incredible rudeness of the ticket agent and his absolute refusal to even attempt to resolve the problem, further insult was added when Delta would only “cure” things by selling us a second one-way ticket at a huge premium. Absolutely appalling service; next time this airline returns to bankruptcy and its employees whine about losing their jobs, I’ll be cheering, loudly.

“A Compelling Value”So says Diane Carnegie of Barbara Hindman’s new listing at 16 Barnstable Road (off Stanwich), priced at $2,395,000. While I can’t duplicate her English accent, when Diane says it, it sounds extremely convincing. In fact, even before her pronouncement, I liked it too. This is a 1960’s colonial, renovated in 1987, sitting on two plus acres and complete with five bedrooms, a solarium and all sorts of great living space. If you’re insane, the FAR allows a 9,000 sq.ft. building on the land but I’d leave this house exactly as is. Either way, you’re paying just about land value for property that happens to include a very nice house. As an aside, one of the late Mr. Kessler’s projects, unfinished, stands nearby. This bit of history will be gone soon and, if the foreclosing bank knows its business, it will probably be sold for just about the price of 16 Barnstable, thus proving my point.

And Also Nice
Liz Dagnino’s listing at 31 Stonebrook (nee Hooker) Lane asking $1,495,000. It’s a four bedroom contemporary –gasp! - which means it’s bright, open and comfortable. The current owners have updated and maintained it so that it really is in move-in condition, a phrase that’s frequently misapplied in this business. On two acres, with the nice plus that it’s just around the corner from the Mianus River Park, on of my favorite in-town locations for hiking and X-Country skiing (if it ever snows again). Stonebrook leads to Cognewaugh, perhaps one of the least convenient streets in town, but people who choose it obviously are willing to trade a few minutes of driving time for the privacy and serenity of this area.

Price It, Sell It
Touring the latest batch of new listings coming on the market, I am struck by how far off the mark so many prices are. It’s no wonder that there’s no sense of urgency among buyers: they know that the houses they’re seeing have many months, and hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars to go before they sell. What’s frustrating is that many of these buyers, having been stupefied by seeing so many over-priced wonders, don’t believe their agent when told that a particular house has been well priced. And they lose out thereby. Moral here is to trust your agent. If you don’t, find another agent.

Beach Passes, Again
I see that the town’s knickers are knotted again over what to do with beach access by non-residents. I really don’t get the controversy here because, much as we all love and appreciate Tod’s Point, it’s hardly a big tourist draw and, so far as I can tell from attendance figures, we’re just not being swamped by busloads of folks diverting from Jone’s Beach. The real reform called for, in my opinion, is to return to the days of yore when summer renters could obtain a pass at the resident price upon presenting a copy of their lease to Parks & Rec. If you ever care to rent out your own house while you traipse through Europe for a few months, you’ll find that access to the beach by your tenants is a real selling point. Or it used to be. Of course, if you’ve read my book, “Greenwich Mean Time” (you haven’t? Why Not? Just Books! E. Putnam Variety, next to Whole Foods! Amazon!) you’d know that we’re about to cede the Point to a remnant of our original Siwanoy Indians so that they can build a casino and they, of course, will have an admissions policy so liberal that all of this will become mute, dead and buried.

The Island at the Center of the World
I really enjoyed this book by Russell Shorto, chronicling the early history of Manhattan. As the author points out, victors write the history so the Dutch founders of the island were pretty much wiped off the page by the Brits. Now, thanks to a thirty-year effort translating old Dutch to English, a more complete history can be written, which Shorto has done admirably. It’s his contention that Dutch Manhattan, a polyglot society of Jews, Dutch, French Huguenots (my ancestors included), freed slaves and slaves, created a tolerant, boisterous settlement that, far more than the stern Pilgrims to the north, set the tone for modern America. It’s a fascinating read and, reviewing the behavior of those hard-living Huguenots, I was reminded that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Published by Random House with a Vintage paperback edition.

No More Cops?
I’ll be sorry to see the patrolmen directing Greenwich Avenue traffic disappear, but the logic of such a move seems compelling. Unlike thirty years ago, when the Avenue rolled up its sidewalks at sunset, the new restaurants there now produce almost as much traffic after dark as they do during they day, yet the patrolmen quit at 5 (or so), and then there’s no control at all. And while it’s true that an occasional crime has been thwarted by one of these men and women, even more have gone unnoticed. Remember the guy who cut the window out of Betteridge’s while working fifty feet from a manned intersection? The robbers of Putnam Trust who, having pulled that heist off and in the face of an all-points bulletin, continued down the Avenue to duplicate their crime at People’s? The police say they’d be more effective walking the sidewalks and Jim Lash says we’d save money. It’s probably time to listen to them, even if we’ll all miss those white gloves.

What Are Our Builders Up To?
When I recently suggested to another agent that, unlike Naples, Florida, whose housing market is collapsing, Greenwich doesn’t have speculators, she reminded me that we do: they’re called builders. Some recent open house tours made me appreciate her insight. These guys are building on ever-more-marginal lots: swampland, back lots and rocky little outcrops and pricing their creations at ever-higher levels. I’m not at all sure that there are buyers out there willing to pay $6,000,000, or more, for a mosquito- infested yard, even if the accompanying house comes complete with all the latest and most expensive French appliances. Of course, if the buyers come from the City, perhaps they won’t know about the relationship between swamps and insects. Sell ‘em in the winter, is my advice. (By the way, speaking of the French, did you see the recent article on “Google bombs”, whereby someone with too much time on his hands creates a Google search result with er, an unexpected answer? “George Bush” yields “miserable failure” or did until Google stepped in, and “French military victories” still comes up with, “no such documents meet your search criteria”. Hoo hoo hoo).

Belle Haven
David Ogilvy has just listed 31 Bush Avenue, a six bedroom, 1890 house on almost an acre, with pool. I toured it after a long day of seeing some of those new monstrosities I write about above and told David that it served as a palate-cleanser, which it does. This is what a house should feel like, in my admittedly idiosyncratic opinion. Great, flowing rooms that can accommodate anyone’s entertaining needs and yet still serve as a wonderful family home. There’s lots of old paneling, human-sized ceiling heights, and it’s nicely renovated throughout. I’m not as enthusiastic about its price of $8,850,000 but that is very much just my opinion, and not fact; besides, if you’ve climbed far enough to afford Belle Haven, surely you’ve acquired some negotiating skills along the way. A very, very nice house.

You’ve Received an Offer – Now What?
In what seems to be a rejuvenated market a number of sellers are receiving and accepting offers almost as soon as their house is listed. It can be an agonizing decision – hold on for something better or seal the deal? There’s no one answer, appropriate for every seller and every house but I think there are more would-be sellers who regret turning down an initial offer than there are those who think they sold too soon. Often, after that first offer is declined, another buyer won’t come along for months and usually at a lower price. Hurts.

But accepting an offer doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop showing your house. I’ve been surprised recently to see several houses, with impressive price tags, stop showings within days of being listed. It may be jealousy speaking (I’d have liked to have had a chance to try to sell them to my own clients) but, in my experience, so many things can go wrong between accepting an offer and entering into a signed, contingent-free contract that it seems foolish to pull your house off the market so quickly. Remember that, until a real estate contract has been fully executed by both parties, all the promises and good faith in the world can’t compel the buyer or seller to perform. It’s good to have a back-up.

29 Stanwich Drive
Renee Gallagher (Round Hill Partners) has just listed this house for $4,450,000. A great old house (1918) with high ceilings and very nicely renovated. It’s close to town but I think its best feature is its setting on 1.24 acres in an R-12 zone. It’s getting harder and harder to find a decent yard these days and, while I acknowledge that most kids are too busy with organized sports and Nintendo to actually play outdoors in their own yard, it’s nice to be able to offer that opportunity. Great house and, in my opinion, good price.

Poisoning our Minds
Did you see the story recently where some hapless homeowner dropped a rectal thermometer and spilled an 1/8 of a tsp of mercury on his floor? More than one hundred emergency workers responded, evacuated the family, donned space suits and cleaned up the mess, presumably using a single Kleenex. My former wife Nancy, a doctor’s daughter used to play with this stuff – rolling it into little balls, running it down inclines, etc., and so did the Fountain boys. Nancy turned out just fine, with no mutations, so the odds are pretty good that the substance is as harmless as most non-alarmists claim (we Fountain boys had other issues). I blame main stream media for collectively instilling an irrational fear in our minds of any number of toxic poisons du jour. Dan Rather, commenting on a teaspoon of dioxin spilling from a train wreck some years back looked solemnly into the camera and proclaimed, “Dioxin, of course, is the deadliest chemical known to man”. It’s the “of course” that slayed me – he was dead wrong, but anyone who disagreed was a no-nothing moron. These same people have taught us to fear urea-formaldehyde insulation, mildew, radon, asbestos, underground oil tanks, child abductions, and on and on. I think it’s time to get a grip.

Threat to Greenwich Real Estate Prices?
Okay, probably just a distant threat, but my less-than-favorite Senator, Chuck Schumer, has teamed with my favorite mayor, Michael Bloomberg, to release a report that the U.S.’s position as the world’s financial center is at risk because of the onerous effect of our strict immigration laws (prevents firms from hiring talented experts), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the post-Enron “reforms” that impose huge, costly accounting requirements on all companies) and a securities litigation explosion (no explanation necessary). Just as there is no longer a need for financial firms to be stuck in Wall Street’s canyons, hedge funds IPOs and other consumers of capital are free to roam the world for accommodating places to do business. I’m not advocating eliminating all regulation of our financial industry but the report’s statistics are frightening: in 2002 (these figures are all quoted from the New York Times) London hosted 3 of the largest 50 hedge funds and now has 12. New York dropped from 28 to 18, while Connecticut (Greenwich and Stamford, really) grew from 6 to 8. The U.S. controlled 16% of the global stock-offering volume last year compared to 57% in 2001, while Europe’s share has grown from 33% to 63%. Hong Kong and other Asian markets are seeing similar growth. Between 2002 and 2005, London’s financial work force grew by 4.7% while New York City shrunk by 0.7%. The two cities are now just about equal in financial service jobs: 318,000 in London, 328,000 in NYC.

While it’s true that Wall Street had a great year in 2006 and its profits are higher than ever, much of those profits were earned overseas. Greenwich real estate prices depend heavily on a robust Wall Street and if the combination of harsh national laws and increased Connecticut taxes (which are being touted in Hartford as I write) make it more convenient to do business elsewhere, the capital, and the financial industry, will move. That may please some of my liberal friends who’ll respond, “good riddance”, but it won’t help you sell your house.

Pricing Strategy
Put your house on the market in September for $8,995,000 and it doesn’t sell. Response? Raise its price to $9,995,000. That’ll teach ‘em. I’ve yet to see this tactic work.

Whole Foods is Hiring
And offering ten bucks an hour, plus benefits. We may finally see a drop in the number of licensed Realtors in this town.

Two Nice Houses
Traci Vaccari (Round Hill Partners) has a listing at 94 Valleywood Road that I think is a good deal. Originally priced at $2,100,000, the owners have now finished the basement and dropped the price to $1,850,000, which should do it. Completely renovated in 2004, four bedrooms, 3 baths, good street and a decent, if small backyard. Only in Greenwich could this be considered a starter home but there you have it. Good house for a family with small kids.

And if, in addition to kids, you’ve got a whopping end-of-year bonus just sitting around catching dust, Mary Crist, (David Ogilvy), has listed 39 Doubling Road for $6,250,000. A 1930 Spanish style (says I – Mary claims it’s “English Manor” – go look and decide for yourself) renovated two years ago, this is a really nice place. Five fireplaces, a billiard room, for heaven’s sake, over an acre of land plus an addition acre of conservation land that’s nothing more than a huge, level yard you can use freely, pool, gardens and very close to town. Funny thing – in the early eighties I was in this house as a young lawyer conducting my first foreclosure sale. I haven’t been back until last week but the subsequent owners have obviously retrieved this beauty from its wrecked, awful condition and given it new life. Which is nice because I hate when bad things happen to good houses.

Oops!
Nationally, new housing starts are up for the second month in a row and unemployment continues to seek a new, low level, but pockets of the real estate market continue to suffer. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a condo-glut in Naples, Florida, where speculators are stuck with un-sold units. One lady has seventeen of them – make her an offer. In Washington D.C., according to the New York Times, condo developers have also over-built and are now converting their projects to rentals, for far less profit or even at a loss. Around here, things feel much better. Maria Ruggeberg, of Raveis’s Greenwich office, represents developers of a number of Stamford condo projects and she tells me that the market is hot, with lots of pre-construction contracts, but single-family homes are languishing. Pure guess here is that USB and RBS are bringing in a lot of young, single workers who aren’t interested in settling down yet, but who knows? The Greenwich single family market continues to be robust – statistics shortly – but I’m aware of one house on Stanwich Road that, a year to the day that if sold, went to contract again for $135,000 less. This was a real apples-to-apples case here, in that the house was unchanged in any way that caught my eye, so it serves as a reminder that one can indeed lose money in Greenwich real estate if plans change and you have to get out as soon as you got in.

Star Bucks in Cos Cob
Great place, friendly staff but limited parking unless you park on Strickland Road and take a 10 second stroll through the little park. I am amused at how many drivers eschew such a simple strategy and wait, endlessly, for a parking spot to open up directly in front of the store. I’m usually in and out with my order while these guys are still sitting. Many of these drivers look as though they have at least a passing familiarity with gyms, so what gives? Exhausted from working the treadmill, no doubt.

Manners
Since moving to Raveis’s Old Greenwich office a few months ago, I’ve noticed a most unwelcome change in this end of town’s citizenry: they’ve discovered their car horns. I’m not speaking of the brief toot some people might use to alert the driver ahead that the light has changed but rather the angry, hand on the horn five- second blast, repeated two or three times to drive home the point. What gives? Do we have new, rude people in town or has something made everyone furious? I think that, in the past, people refrained from such aggressive behavior out of fear that they might be blasting their neighbor. That no longer seems to control the louts, so perhaps we should adopt Mayor Koch’s brilliant proposal and make car horns sound inside, as well as outside the car. Cool.