Cherry Valley Road
Francine Coby has somehow wrangled a listing from the owner of 88 Cherry Valley Road (off of Round Hill) and it’s a winner. Four acres of beautiful lawns that roll down to a pond where fish—sturgeon?—were jumping recently, and a separate guest house that is the epitome of the ideal country cottage—separate from the main house, with its own, private back yard. As for that main house, it’s beautiful. Although it was built in 1938 it feels much older, in the nicest sense of that word. A buyer might want to knock down a few interior walls to make some of the rooms larger but, since those walls weren’t plastered by this town’s famous runaway, Israel Putnam or any of his contemporaries, a remodeler could whack away without feeling like some sort of historical vandal. All the main rooms have just incredible views over the property and pond. This house is a treasure and is very well priced at $3,795,000. As an aside to you do-it-yourselfers, Francine, who has sold more houses than you (or I, in my lifetime) has placed her home on the multi-list. Tell you anything?
Starter Homes
275 Bruce Park Avenue, a very nice-looking home on the dead-end portion of the Avenue, has been reduced to $599,000. I think it is now the best value in this price range; you can walk to parks, the train and Greenwich Avenue, it has good street presence and a nice back yard. What’s not to like?
Further up town, 47 Round Hill Road has been reduced to $9,750,000. Although there is no pool and only 10,642 square feet of finished rooms, this well-built home does sport seven bedrooms eleven baths, seven fireplaces “four car garaging” and one elevator; that’s a good start. The young Wall Street striver can buy it now and while he’s in Club Fed Buffy and her interior decorator can keep busy decorating the additional 7,500 square feet of unfinished space. What a nice homecoming that will provide!
The Broker
Why do so many otherwise intelligent people over price their houses? I’ve never been present at the meeting where an over-market pricing is decided upon, but I imagine it goes something like this:
Our broker tours the home and then settles down on the client’s living room sofa, ankles delicately crossed. Is tea served? I think so. The broker sips from the bone china, leans back a little against the pillows and sighs. “How,” she asks, “does one price a Rembrandt?” Our owner is a trifle Rubenesque herself, so this reference to a classical master sends her spirits soaring. Here, finally, is someone with the refinement to appreciate what those other uncouth brokers did not. This one, alone in town, sees the hidden value in her Byram split level; this one can defy the market and dig up the one buyer out there who will pay a premium for a masterpiece like hers. It’s all so exciting! And so enriching! Our owner can feel all that extra money in her pocketbook already. “Where do I sign?”
At least, I assume something like that happens. And what happens next? Nothing. No magic buyer will materialize. The market place does not pay you what you want to receive, only what your house is worth. And no, Virginia, there really isn’t a special, super-sensitive, super broker with X-Ray vision who detects the value that’s been eluding the rest of us. What there are, in fact, are a number of very intelligent brokers with a keen insight into human greed and stupidity (well, perhaps “human nature” says the same thing more nicely) who tell homeowners what they demand to hear. I don’t blame the brokers; they’re in the business of securing listings and they’re only doing what is necessary to secure those listings. And I don’t blame Greenwich home owners; anyone who has ever read Charles MacKay’s classic, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” knows that people’s economic irrationality is at least as old as the tulip bulb frenzy of the Seventeenth Century. My only observation is that, if you really want to sell your house, you’re going to have to give up your belief in the Easter Bunny. Sorry.