Greenwich Real Estate
Christopher Fountain
A weekly column on our local real estate market. Readers are invited to send questions, comments and suggestions via email to the author at crfount@hotmail.com. Some questions may be printed; all will be answered.
Still Crazy After All These Years
There have been signs of life in the seemingly moribund upper end of the market recently. From June 1st through October, only four of the seventy-four houses with asking prices above four and a half million dollars went to contract. That is a batting average even the 1962 New York Mets wouldn’t envy. But late last year Aberdeen Construction’s $5,675,000 new home on Kennilworth Terrace went in two days with, rumor has it, four back-up offers. Nothing on that particular street has sold previously for more than $3,000,000. Proving what? That there is an abiding demand for new, quality construction in desirable locations. Unlike the recent past, today’s buyers seem to notice and be turned off by hollow-core doors, unfilled nail holes and generally shoddy workmanship in multi-million-dollar homes. Bad news for the plastic industry and window manufacturers who use those cheesy snap-on mullions, but good news for this town. Greenwich was in danger of seeing most of its housing stock of recent vintage self-destruct five years after completion.
Old houses are also selling, when the location and price is right. Two 1900-vintage homes—Victorianish, high ceilings, lots of rooms—were put up for sale last week, each priced around two million dollars. Both (one on Intervale Place, near Belle Haven, the other on Ledge Road in Old Greenwich) received offers within hours.
On the other hand, the lower end of the market has never let up. Anything decent under $850,000 went during the fall, leaving current buyers with the dubious choice of negotiating with unrealistic owners of schlock or waiting for new inventory to come on in the next few months. If you are the owner of such an unsold house, the market has a message for you: “drop your price!”
The Red Queen Speaks: “A Word Means What I Say it Means!”
Of all the realtorease out there, the one term that causes the most confusion is “renovated”. Most buyers understand that ‘convenient to transportation” means that you can climb the fence and hitch a ride on I-95, and “perfect starter home” means you’ll be pitching a tent in the living room to stay dry, but “renovated in 1997” means what? A new kitchen? New plumbing? New master bath? Sometimes, yes. And sometimes it means that the seller has swept the ashes from the fireplace and chased dust bunnies out from under the beds. How can you tell which is which? Here’s a clue: if a real estate agent can find anything nice to say about a house, he’ll say it. So when reviewing a listing sheet, look for specific mention of improvements. If there are new granite counters in the kitchen, they will be described. If the master bedroom was expanded to encompass a new, separate bathroom with the now-standard marble whirlpool tub for eight, free-standing tiled shower and his and her bidets, they’ll all show up for the reader’s approval. But if a 1905 house is being sold through Probate Court and the only mention of anything new is that it has been “renovated”, you can be pretty sure that you won’t have to worry about a dirty fireplace. You want anything more, line up a builder.
The Bibliophobic Theory of Value
Why do some houses sell the day they are placed on the market while others languish, unloved and unwanted? Price of course, but why are some homes valued less than others? I am working on a theory: the larger the number of books in a home, the longer that house takes to sell. I would not want to embarrass certain homeowners by exposing them as bibliophiles but there are a number of incredibly attractive houses that have sat on the market since summer while neighboring houses sold immediately. The only difference that I could see was the number of books in each. The quick sellers all had the requisite two books: one on Wall Street finance, another on the best golf vacation sites. The slow-pokes are just cluttered with books—by the bedside, in bookshelves and in the bathrooms. It is possible that book ownership is just the outward manifestation of another, more serious disorder that infects an entire house, sort of the New England equivalent of mold; it is equally possible that most homebuyers have never seen a book before, and recoil in horror at the sight of such an alien object. (Over-heard Starbucks conversation between a happy renovator and her friend: “they asked if I wanted to save any of the bookshelves, but what would I do with a bookshelf?”) Indeed. My research continues.
Christopher Fountain
A weekly column on our local real estate market. Readers are invited to send questions, comments and suggestions via email to the author at crfount@hotmail.com. Some questions may be printed; all will be answered.
Still Crazy After All These Years
There have been signs of life in the seemingly moribund upper end of the market recently. From June 1st through October, only four of the seventy-four houses with asking prices above four and a half million dollars went to contract. That is a batting average even the 1962 New York Mets wouldn’t envy. But late last year Aberdeen Construction’s $5,675,000 new home on Kennilworth Terrace went in two days with, rumor has it, four back-up offers. Nothing on that particular street has sold previously for more than $3,000,000. Proving what? That there is an abiding demand for new, quality construction in desirable locations. Unlike the recent past, today’s buyers seem to notice and be turned off by hollow-core doors, unfilled nail holes and generally shoddy workmanship in multi-million-dollar homes. Bad news for the plastic industry and window manufacturers who use those cheesy snap-on mullions, but good news for this town. Greenwich was in danger of seeing most of its housing stock of recent vintage self-destruct five years after completion.
Old houses are also selling, when the location and price is right. Two 1900-vintage homes—Victorianish, high ceilings, lots of rooms—were put up for sale last week, each priced around two million dollars. Both (one on Intervale Place, near Belle Haven, the other on Ledge Road in Old Greenwich) received offers within hours.
On the other hand, the lower end of the market has never let up. Anything decent under $850,000 went during the fall, leaving current buyers with the dubious choice of negotiating with unrealistic owners of schlock or waiting for new inventory to come on in the next few months. If you are the owner of such an unsold house, the market has a message for you: “drop your price!”
The Red Queen Speaks: “A Word Means What I Say it Means!”
Of all the realtorease out there, the one term that causes the most confusion is “renovated”. Most buyers understand that ‘convenient to transportation” means that you can climb the fence and hitch a ride on I-95, and “perfect starter home” means you’ll be pitching a tent in the living room to stay dry, but “renovated in 1997” means what? A new kitchen? New plumbing? New master bath? Sometimes, yes. And sometimes it means that the seller has swept the ashes from the fireplace and chased dust bunnies out from under the beds. How can you tell which is which? Here’s a clue: if a real estate agent can find anything nice to say about a house, he’ll say it. So when reviewing a listing sheet, look for specific mention of improvements. If there are new granite counters in the kitchen, they will be described. If the master bedroom was expanded to encompass a new, separate bathroom with the now-standard marble whirlpool tub for eight, free-standing tiled shower and his and her bidets, they’ll all show up for the reader’s approval. But if a 1905 house is being sold through Probate Court and the only mention of anything new is that it has been “renovated”, you can be pretty sure that you won’t have to worry about a dirty fireplace. You want anything more, line up a builder.
The Bibliophobic Theory of Value
Why do some houses sell the day they are placed on the market while others languish, unloved and unwanted? Price of course, but why are some homes valued less than others? I am working on a theory: the larger the number of books in a home, the longer that house takes to sell. I would not want to embarrass certain homeowners by exposing them as bibliophiles but there are a number of incredibly attractive houses that have sat on the market since summer while neighboring houses sold immediately. The only difference that I could see was the number of books in each. The quick sellers all had the requisite two books: one on Wall Street finance, another on the best golf vacation sites. The slow-pokes are just cluttered with books—by the bedside, in bookshelves and in the bathrooms. It is possible that book ownership is just the outward manifestation of another, more serious disorder that infects an entire house, sort of the New England equivalent of mold; it is equally possible that most homebuyers have never seen a book before, and recoil in horror at the sight of such an alien object. (Over-heard Starbucks conversation between a happy renovator and her friend: “they asked if I wanted to save any of the bookshelves, but what would I do with a bookshelf?”) Indeed. My research continues.
posted by Chris Fountain at 12:13 PM
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