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.
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.
posted by Chris Fountain at 12:47 PM
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