Ever Larger

A Mixed Review
The new home at 347 Sound Beach Avenue is . . .interesting. On the one hand, it represents everything unpleasant about what’s happening in town: it is huge and towers over the adjoining houses, making them seem lilliputian by comparison. But once inside, it is a very nice house. Solidly built, high ceilings, great kitchen and nice public rooms. I like it, even if I wish it weren’t there. But it is there and it won’t look as out of place when more homes on that side of the street get blown up to its size. Perhaps in ten years or so that section of Sound Beach Avenue will be a row of gracious, albeit very large homes. If so, then the town will have changed but not necessarily for the worse.
At 1.5 million, 13 Shore Road is half the price but just as nice in its own way. It has been thoroughly renovated to be a bright, cheerful home. Fairly priced by Shelly Simms Tretter of Soetheby’s, it overlooks the Innis Arden golf course (where you can watch coyotes—see below—chase golfers around the greens; so entertaining).
49 Tomac, a completely renovated home on not much land and a fairly busy street, came on the market via Joyce Somm for $2.375 million on a Thursday and was gone by the weekend. The owners made some really smart decisions when renovating: they spent money on a great, huge kitchen and a terrific master bedroom suite. Those two areas, properly executed, will sell almost any house, especially when it’s a nice as this one.
No Dog In This Fight
I note with regret that a professional trapper has been retained to catch the coyotes marauding near the end of Cedar Cliff Road in Riverside. Too bad; one of the few improvements to town in the past decade has been the return of wildlife: deer (in Riverside!) wild turkeys, hawks and now, briefly, coyotes. As a wicked college student I once sabotaged a trapper’s efforts by placing 2” plastic African animals in his traps. He eventually gave up—no Daniel Boone, he—but I’ve always wondered at his reaction when he first discovered that he’d captured a (very small) tiger in Upstate New York. But it’s against the law to interfere with a trapper, so don’t do it (and don’t confess to doing it until the statute of limitations has expired). A better course of action would be to upgrade your dog. My own old campaigner, Casey the Wonder Dog, was a hundred-and-ten-pound Lab who would have brooked no nonsense from a coyote. My guess is that, were Cedar Cliff folks to super-size their menagerie, they’d drive the coyotes to more accommodating neighborhoods, all without the risk and pain of leg-hold traps.

“No One’s Going To Steal This House!”
This cry of the beleaguered homeowner is usually heard when he’s rejecting a low offer. It is a legitimate sentiment but often the wrong reaction. Someone is actually offering to buy his house, after all; not steal it. Often, the first bid, albeit lower than hoped-for, turns out to be both the best and the only one the owner will receive for a long, long time. Happens all the time. A bid this September ($1.65 million bid, $1.85 asked) was rejected with those words. The house still sits unsold. Similarly, an Old Greenwich owner rejected a $4 million dollar offer for his $4.5 million home (which he himself had purchased two years before at $3.5, down from a $4.25 asked price). When he finally sold it eight moths later he settled for $3.7 million. In the lesser range, clients of mine bid $720 for a house that was asking $895K. No go, so my clients bought another home. The listing broker called me last week, wondering if they were still interested. Nope.
Here’s the point: buyers quickly learn comparative values. Anyone able to afford a house in Greenwich probably already possesses keen financial acumen and, even without a Harvard MBA, can soon distinguish between a house that’s worth, say, $2.2 million and one that merely wants that price. So if your house has been shown 20-30 times and one offer finally comes in, cherish it; blow on its embers and keep it going because it may well be an accurate reflection of your home’s value. Of course, if the offer is presented by a sunglassed-thug holding a large pistol at your head, you’re right: you’re being robbed.

Taxes

I held an open house on the western border of Greenwich last weekend and met a couple from NYC. They asked about taxes and, when told that they were under ten thousand a year, insisted I must be wrong. “We were just across the street,” the husband said, “and the taxes were twice that. For a less expensive house.” I pointed out that “across the street” was also across the state line, and welcomed them to Greenwich. Greenwich’s mil rate is $10.43 per $1,000 of assessed value (70% of market). A home with a market value of $1.2 million is taxed $8,761. Westchester County taxes that same property 2 1/2 times as heavily (plus an additional 15% as of last week) as does Stamford. That’s one reason why Greenwich real estate values are so high. If we can avoid Hartford’s attempt to double the conveyance tax and impose a “millionaire’s tax”, we should continue to enjoy our position of strength. If Hartford does impose those new taxes (and because most voters don’t live in Fairfield County it probably will) Stamford will suffer even more. Lucky old Stamford.
Speaking of Stamford
I notice a rivulet of Stamford agents coming into town, attending open houses and listing homes for sale. Nothing immoral about that; an agent licensed in Connecticut is free to sell anywhere in the state, but I wonder why they’re here? Most Greenwich agents know far too little about Stamford—its schools, neighborhoods or respective values—to even consider trying to sell there. An agent offers his client knowledge; if that’s lacking, so too is value. My guess is that, just as a bad winter drives starving deer out of the woods, Stamford’s real estate market is suffering. There is no statistical support for my theory, but it at least has the merit of being mean-spirited.
Is Paris Burning?
Here’s a conundrum: If a $14 million dollar home sells for $10.5, and an $11 million listing drops to $7 million, shouldn’t that decline continue through the price line? $5 million to $3 million, and so on, until the owner of a $450 thousand dollar home pays you to take it off his hands? So far, nothing like that is occurring. The high end has been trimmed by Wall Street’s collapse but other prices are still firm, and homes are selling. I theorize that that there aren’t enough houses in the nose-bleed altitude to affect the rest of the market. If, say, there are two hundred potential buyers in the $1.5-$3.5 range (and if so, all of you are invited to contact me immediately), the presence on the market of a dozen suddenly-reduced mega-mansions won’t meet that demand. Perhaps if all eighty-eight houses now on the market above $4.5 million were suddenly offered at half price we might see a significant impact. But many of these homes were purchased for cash and their owners, even if temporarily “looking for the next opportunity” aren’t under pressure to sell at a give-away price. I’m no economist and don’t even play one on TV, so readers should feel free to invent their own explanation. The phenomenon is there: I report, you decide.
Old Fashioned Quality
David Ogilvy’s new listing at 15 Dairy Road is exactly the type of home I remember as a Back Country manor. Built in 1941 using antique floorboards (and trim?) it’s set atop a hill on five acres. Long Island Sound glints in the distance, fields roll away from the house, it’s the very ideal of the “home in the country” once cherished by city folks. Unpretentious, comfortable and unique. Priced at $7.5 million, I hope and think it will defy the statistics I cite above: there’s nothing else like it on the market.
Fear of Libel Makes Me Vague
I recently visited a new home for sale. It must have been manufactured using the metric system and assembled using American inches because nothing fits. Cheap stonework rambles around its surface with huge, uneven gaps—they mis-measured near the garage, slapped three inches of mortar into the resulting gap and called it a day. The synthetic floors are already separating, the walls are cracking and the plastic-gridded-windows look like hell. What seem to be little Brussels sprouts comprise the landscaping. Beginning at its own price level and continuing down, I can think of better homes in all categories until perhaps $900K. The highest and best use is for this multi-million-dollar monstrosity is probably to raze it and restore the swamp from whence it arose.

This Bird Has Flown
10 Quail Road just sold for $7.485 million. That is a rather appreciable discount from its original (8/18/00) asking price of $11 million and, along with other recent sales, suggests that the bloom is off the extreme high end of the market. The sales price isn’t chump change by any means, but the last time the property changed hands it did so in 1998 for $7.5 million. As we like to say in this business, “your results may vary”.

Rooms to Let . . . Fifty Cents
Rentals are also down. While I have no statistics to prove it, the general feeling among agents is that homes that once commanded, say, $4,500 per month are now going for a thousand dollars less. A couple of speculative theories: (1) large corporations no longer pay $10,000 a month to house transferred executives and this has pushed everything down; (2) interest rates have dropped so low that renters can buy a condominium instead. Whatever the cause, investors in rental housing would be wise to base their financial calculations on current, rather than historical rents.

And Up Through the Ground Came a Bubblin Crude
Many homeowners who heat with oil assume that a nice man comes by regularly with a load of warmth, pumps that warmth into . . . somewhere and that’s it; the house is heated. And that’s all they need to know, until they agree to sell their house and the potential new owner’s attorney asks about the oil tank. “The what?” It turns out, all that oil delivered over the years was being stored somewhere, often underground in an oil tank. Because the State holds property owners responsible for environmental damages caused by a leaking oil tank (and, as of 1998, requires property owners to notify the DEP when a contaminant is discovered) buyers usually insist that any underground tanks be removed and a new tank placed inside before they’ll buy a home. That’s a three thousand dollar job even if the tank has not leaked (and ten times that or even more if it has) so sellers usually balk at such demands. The tank probably has to go, but who pays?
All together now: “It depends!” That’s right, once again, there’s no clear answer. The law is silent and buyers and sellers are free to distribute the expense however they see fit. Are there three backup offers pending, at prices higher than that offered by the hopeful buyer? Then the buyer will end up holding the wrong end of the dip stick. No other offers? The house has sat vacant for six months while the transferred owner pays for two homes, one on each coast? He’ll pay. It’s a matter of bargaining power. Those readers who bought “tank insurance” from their oil company and are counting on them to pay for its removal should read their policy. It may well not cover voluntary removal.
Assuming that the question of who pays is resolved, what then? (Someone) hires a tank removal company and the tank is inspected. Soil samples are taken. No leakage? Good news! The tank gets yanked (for about $1,500) and either a new one is installed inside (another $1,500) . If the existing furnace was installed just when coal began losing its luster, the home can be converted to gas. This will probably cost between $3500-$9500, but you’ll get a new, efficient furnace and be done with oil tanks. (If you do go this route be sure to have your chimney’s lining inspected. Exhaust fumes from gas can react with old oil deposits and quickly put you on the path to total involuntary renovation).
If the tank cannot be removed without causing structural damage (buried under a terrace, for instance), companies are authorized to test the soil around it. If there is no leakage they’ll cut off the top and fill the tank with an inert substance. They can, and will, provide a certificate of abandonment which should satisfy most potential buyers. Customers of mine recently benefited from just such a situation when another buyer balked at accepting a home with a (properly) abandoned tank. As everyone else concerned: town officials, lawyers and lenders all agreed that the tank posed no problem, my buyers stepped in and got the house. Lesson: try not to be hysterical about all this.

For What It's Worth

What’s Selling?
A number of big-ticket homes went to contract this week and with any luck will close before our friends in Hartford double the conveyance tax. 179 Taconic ($14,000,000); 313 Stanwich ($8,495,000) and 11 Quintard ($5,150,000). The parenthetical numbers are the asking price which usually (but not always-see the next item) are higher than the final accepted price. 11 Quintard, direct cove-front in Old Greenwich, is probably destined to disappear under a bulldozer’s blade but then, it only cost five million. Update: 179 Taconic did close, at $10,525,000. The lesson to be drawn is that, if you’re bidding at a substantial discount from the list price, offer cash and a quick closing. This works better, naturally, when there is three-and-a-half-million dollar’s worth of wriggle room.


21 Dialstone Lane in Riverside came on the market two weeks ago at $759,000 and went immediately to sealed bids. Winning price? $812,000. It has already closed. To those builders out there who wouldn’t buy the house next door (bigger house, bigger lot) way back in 2000, for $550,000, I told you so.

Where’s Waldo?
Or where’s his house? Not up for sale, apparently. Open House days (Tuesdays and Thursdays, when brokers all jump into their Mercedes and scurry about town looking at new listings) have been remarkably lean the past two weeks. A number of retreads and a scattering of new offerings, and that’s it. There are some nice homes coming on (Mary Jane Frost’s listing on Druid Lane in Riverside seemed intelligently priced at $1,379,000), but not in the quantity January usually sees. And the reason for that is . . .? Readers may supply their own guess and do no worse than this writer.

Great Old Home
Francine Ehrlich (Sotheby’s) has a listing at 20 Brynwood Lane, off of Round Hill. The house was originally built in 1922 and renovated within the past decade without losing any of its beauty. The rooms are all proportioned to fit actual humans, which no doubt diminishes the home’s appeal to the Masters of the Universe set. For lesser folks, its five bedrooms, six baths, servant’s quarters, pool, tennis court and three acres ought to serve. $6,195,000, if you keep track of such things.
She Should Have Coached Oakland
Janet Milligan’s clients at 23 Old Stone Bridge wanted to sell their home before the Super Bowl. The clients did their part, presenting a tastefully renovated house and Jan did hers: she priced it at $1,649,000. That might be high for some houses on the street; it was just right for this one. The house
went on the market on Thursday and had an accepted offer by that Saturday, thereby freeing the owners to host their Super Bowl party, toss avocado dip around and generally celebrate the worst game in years.
Dumb and Dumber
As the spring selling market approaches it’s time once again for the EPA to warn us all of those twin dangers, asbestos and radon. Asbestos we’ll save for another column, except to mention that its existence has bankrupted dozens of corporations and made multi-millionaires out of a small handful of my former trial-lawyer peers, all with no discernable benefit to the health of this country. The radon story is almost as bad. The EPA is against it, and claims that this invisible gas kills 20,000 Americans a year. Unless, they admit, it kills 7,000. Or, when pressed, maybe only 1,400. In fact, no one knows if the stuff has ever killed anyone except for tobacco smoking uranium miners, who spent years deep underground breathing the stuff for twenty years. A study published in Radiation Research [144:329-341] states that "to date, epidemiologic studies of risk from residential radon have not convincingly demonstrated an association with lung cancer." What does this all have to do with you, the homeowner? Two things: if your house has it (and since we live in granite-bound New England, it very well may), you’ll have to spend a couple of thousand dollars to vent it from your basement or you won’t be able to sell your home. Second, if the house you’re considering purchasing comes in at a “high” level (cautious old Sweden, by the way, which won’t let its citizens drink coffee and drive at the same time, sets the acceptable level of radon at twice that established by our own EPA), make sure that it’s vented, take a deep breath and relax. Just don’t take up smoking.