Parsonage Road
Marie Bates (Sally O’Brien & Associates) has a new listing at 44 Parsonage Road that is just about perfect. Built in 1930 and renovated and added onto in 1992, the home sits on an acre and a half in the RA-1 zone, with conservation land behind it. Set back from the road on a long, beautiful lawn, the house has a nine-foot, beamed-ceilinged living room, four bedrooms, three baths, a very nice eat-in kitchen and, in addition to studies, libraries and the like, a separate office with a guest bedroom and nicely appointed bath. 3,685 square feet, three-car garage, close to town on a good street, and very intelligently priced at $2,995,000. I’m guessing it will have gone to contract by the time you read this but if not, and you’re looking for something in this price range, go for it.
Market Activity
A friend of mine in town who works as a paralegal tells me that she has (in the paralegal’s world view, their lawyers work for them and not the other way around) forty-five closings scheduled for August. Those are house sales and purchases, not refinances, and this is just one relatively small law office. A recent article in the Greenwich Time commented on the sluggish spring market but mentioned “anecdotal evidence” that the market has bounced to life over the summer. This is more such evidence. Of course, all these closings reflect contract activity sixty to ninety days ago; focusing solely on actual recorded sales while neglecting to review contract activity can give you a dated, inaccurate view of current market conditions. I’ve been watching both and that’s why I’ve been bullish on the Greenwich market for some time now.
A Newcomer’s Guide to Greenwich
So you’re all settled in, the movers have pulled away and your kids have (temporarily anyway) stopped blaming you for ruining their lives. First question on your mind, naturally, is “where can I get the best bacon and egg sandwich in town and a bicycle on which to eat it?” (No? Where are your priorities, man?) Answer is easy: first stop is Dave’s Cycle on Valley Road in Cos Cob. Run by Glenn and Danny since they bought it years ago from the original Dave, everyone in the shop is personable, knowledgeable and competent. (Glenn also runs an evening winter-time course on bicycle maintenance via Greenwich Continuing education that’s that you might want to check out.) Once on the saddle, pedal over to Jimmy Bairaktaris’s van parked in the northwest corner of the Town Hall parking lot for the best priced ($1.75, without the cheezewizz stuff), best tasting sandwich in town. Not surprisingly, Mr. Bairaktaris offers terrific souvlakis for lunch but his bacon and egg creation is tops.
Quote of the Week
Courtesy of Rick Muskas, Greenwich Bank & Trust, who finances builders of all types of homes, including modular: “My new car was built in a factory in Germany and shipped to Greenwich without one loose nut, bolt, hose or clamp. It did not cheapen the neighborhood when it was delivered and I have trouble convincing myself that it would be a better car had it been assembled on my front yard.”
King Merrit
One of the best values in real estate, I believe, lies in the King Merrit development located, by coincidence no doubt, between King Street and the Merrit Parkway on the western edge of town. This a really nice network of streets and homes set on one acre lots. Some of the homes have noise exposure from the Parkway; most do not. The development went up in the mid-50’s, when land was obviously cheaper, and wends its way around streets such as Hettiefred, Bowman Drive, Stonehedge and the like. A small house at 34 Hettiefred sold for $495,000 back in 1998 but that, sorrowfully, is ancient history. The cheapest sale I could find for this year was 8 Mansion Place, listed for $899,000 and selling for $1,155,000 (!). That’s what happens when you have one acre lots, I guess. Still, there are a number of non-renovated homes in the area that might go for, perhaps, $750,000-$850,000 if they come on the market at all. Renovated or new homes in the area are selling for $1,650,000-$1,750,000 right now, with further increases in sight. The area seems especially appealing to Westchester County residents who can move across the border, cut their taxes in half and live on a full acre without leaving their old friends and family too far behind. A good neighborhood, and one that is often over-looked by home buyers.

Over-Pricing

How Do You Price a Rembrandt?
I have no idea. Fortunately, I’m in real estate not art, so it doesn’t matter. But pricing real estate is something all of us in this industry are supposed to have some grasp of, so I’m always curious when I come across a wildly over-priced home (wildly under-priced homes are rare, unfortunately, and the problem is instantly corrected via a bidding war). What went wrong? Was the agent so pressured by his customer that he went along with a crazy price just to get the listing? Was he dropped, repeatedly and hard, on his head?

All of which comes to mind because I saw a house this week that was somewhere between $11,000,000 and $14,000,000 over-priced, at least in my opinion and that of several other agents (I’m at the harshest end of that estimation, by the way). A large lot, but not large enough to throw off a separate lot, and a rather unimpressive drive leading to an interesting experiment in architectural design: who knew, back when the house was on the drawing board, that twin steel fire doors as an entranceway would not be attractive? I wandered through the rather small (four bedrooms, if you make the servant give up hers) home, waiting to come around a bend and discover the rationale for the pricing. I was sure that there was a third floor, perhaps, or even a secret passageway leading to some special chamber in which all would be revealed but there was . . . nothing. What there is of the house is beautifully built but there just isn’t enough of it to justify this price. Outside, although there is a very nice pool, much of the remaining acreage is devoted to a pond that needs mowing. And you can wave to your neighbors on either side, which, while friendly, is not necessarily an attribute many buyers are interested in at this price range. A curious price, but one that will become less curious, I predict, over the next eighteen months.

Weekly ActivityAside from the light bulbs blowing out, not all that much went on last week. There are still bidding wars breaking out: Ken Yorke’s (Shore & Country) listing at 50 Hillside Road, for instance, asking $1,500,000, drew several bidders. And homes are selling. 9 Lake Drive in Riverside (Jackie Hammock), asking $1,449,000, went to contract, as did Linda Hodge’s listing at 40 Walsh Lane, asking $5,600,000 (new construction), and a bunch of others. In fact, it has been a surprisingly busy summer, with a lot of active buyers who seemed to shake off their spring time doubts and pulled out their checkbooks. If you house didn’t sell this summer, it was probably not because of summer doldrums but, rather, because it is over-priced. It may be true that some houses are so unique that sellers must wait for that one buyer in a million to appear, but I know of no such homes presently for sale in town.
Okay, I Take That Back
Alice Duff’s listing at 1 Brookside Park is a really, really nice contemporary on an acre plus of land with a rushing stream, nice lawn, privacy and close-to-town location. It does not strike me as wildly over-priced at $1.785, yet it has been on the market since June. If there is an example of a perfect, unique home waiting for the right buyer, this is it.
Rabbit Warrens
Real estate agents like to speak about “flow” meaning, I suppose, the ease with which one room leads to another. It is a desirable feature, usually, but sometimes a home has no flow to speak of and still pulls off the remarkable trick of being a great house to live in. Two such homes that come to mind are Sally O’Brien’s listing at 230 Bedford Road and Ann Benedict’s (Country Living) at 340 Old Church Road, $5,900,000 and $3,750,000, respectively. Both homes offer all sorts of unexpected passageways and rooms to hide in (or to hide from teenagers) and feel just right. Neither has a strictly logical floor plan (although Sally spread breadcrumb trails for her listing’s open house she failed to conduct a head count: the next buyer should insist that the house be delivered broom-clean and free of wandering agents) yet they work just fine. The Old Church Road property is just across from Country Day so that the au pair can escort the next generation of investment bankers to school and then get back to her real duties like window washing. Bedford Road is further out, naturally, but comes with lots of land and a beautiful pond. I like them both.

Short Greenwich?
The Dean of my law school, who spent much of his career as a Wall Street lawyer, used to warn us in class, “ladies and gentlemen, the number one cause of suicide on Wall Street is selling short”. I mention that because several of my Wall Street clients tell me that the cocktail wisdom among their peers in neighboring towns is to “short Greenwich”. The pessimists may be in for a bit of a wait. This week Amy Reed (Prudential) brought 11 Dearfield Lane to market at $1.395. A 1928 Tudor on a half acre of land, it went to sealed bids, no contingencies, within 24 hours. I’m guessing that it will sell for somewhere just under $1.5 million. I have pointed out before that a great number of homes on the market are over-priced; that should not be understood to mean that there is no market for well-priced homes, because there is. I don’t know exactly how many sealed bid auctions have taken place this year but I am aware of at least six and I suspect there have been at least twice that number. And that doesn’t include informal bidding wars, one buyer gazumping another without benefit of a formal process. All told, dozens of homes have been fought over in town since January and there’s no end in sight. Unless, of course, you are a Master of the Universe who sees, and knows, all. But then you probably don’t live in Greenwich and probably never will.

Milbrook
Josiane Collazo (Sotheby’s) has just listed a renovated home at 45 Overlook Drive (the good end of that street). It’s a terrific home with four bedrooms, three baths and almost a half acre of land; in fact, as the neighboring yard has no fencing or other barriers, this backyard seems positively huge. (As an aside, we had a similar arrangement growing up on Gilliam Lane with our neighbors and our own acre plus merged into a vast play ground for everyone. Robert Frost was right: something there is that doesn’t love a wall.) In any event, Josiane’s listing has been completely renovated over the past few years and has a great kitchen, top of the line appliances, new roof, garage, bathrooms, etc. $2,195,000 asking price.
Contracts
Although it seems that anyone who has somewhere better to go has got up and gone there, the real estate market continues to push along this summer. Elizabeth Douthit’s (Mrs. Doubtfire to her friends here at Round Hill Partners) listing at 16 Deerpark ($6,900,000) has gone to contract, as has Steve Archino’s 96 Round Hill Road listing for $8,950,000, Sally Parris’s at 58 Close Road ($2,995,000), Sherry De Luca’s at 145 Pecksland ($2,950,000) and Charles Magyar’s , 30 Mimosa, for $1,395,000. And in what must be a record price for the street, Peter Lauridsen’s listing at 4 Sickle Bar Lane, went to contract instantly; new construction, asking price $1,395,000.
Havemeyer Redux
Another columnist in town has taken it upon himself to personally lower the prices of homes in Havemeyer—I don’t know why. A few months ago he stated, in strong, positive terms that “Havemeyer is a $600,000 neighborhood”. I (gently, I thought) corrected him by citing numerous sales in the area that far exceeded the $600,000 threshold but he’s back again, this time discussing a new listing on Halsey Drive (disclosure—it’s a listing of my brother Gideon’s) and droning that “anyone who knows anything about real estate knows that this is overpriced by at least $100-$110k.” Well. Is it true? Does that columnist know anything about real estate? So far as Havemeyer is concerned, no.

Opinion columns are just that: one person’s opinion. Readers should remember that, no matter how strongly voiced an opinion is, it isn’t necessarily right or even based on fact—and I do not claim any sort of exemption from that caveat. But an opinion on value should be based on more than some fogged recollection of past selling prices from years ago. In November, for instance, the house directly across the street from the one referred to went to contract for $762,500.00. The house right up the street from that has an accepted offer of $799,000 and the one next door to that sold a few months ago, in one day, for $840,000. Three in a row, all within cup-of-sugar borrowing distance from the house in question. Havemeyer, in my opinion, is a neighborhood on the way up and is shedding old perceptions, old values and old curmudgeons as it goes.

Cos Cob
A few years back a national newspaper (The Wall Street Journal, I think) ran an amusing story about the desperate lengths some Cos Cob residents went to in order to have a “proper” Greenwich address. The local post office refused to cooperate and still does; if you have a Cos Cob zip code, you must publicly admit that you live there. The efforts of those status-deprived homeowners bespeak a prejudice that still exists, for just as there are people who wouldn’t live anywhere but Cos Cob there are some folks who absolutely won’t consider a house there, no matter how nice. I think that’s silly. There are $3,000,000+ homes for sale in the greater Cos Cob area; hardly housing for factory hands. In fact, the factories, bars and red light district that gave Cos Cob it’s taint disappeared around the turn of the last century. I’m not sure how long one should hold a grudge, but surely one hundred years is enough. Even though the average price of a Cos Cob home climbed eighteen percent last year, prices are still less than Riverside and Old Greenwich and relative bargains abound. Go see for yourself.
Street Names
While we’re in the area, may I say something about Hooker Lane, off of Cognewaugh? The Civil War general for whom it is named is more famous for the camp followers who accompanied his soldiers than for his war time accomplishments. Not surprisingly, the street sign is popular with teen-aged boys and has been stolen so many times that it now perches high up on a telephone pole beyond their reach. I seem to remember that the residents wanted to change the name to something (anything) else some years ago but were thwarted by a less-than-unanimous vote. My suggestion to the residents is that they rename it “General Hooker Lane”. That would remove the attractiveness of the street sign, I believe, and probably increase the value of every home on the street by $50,000.00.

Wow!
Julie Church and Sally Maloney, both of Sotheby’s, have a new listing at 25 Close Road (named after an ancestor of Glenn Close, I believe) for $15,950,000. That’s just a smidgeon over a thousand dollars a foot for this huge collection of masonry and is probably about right—I lose all perspective above a certain price range. The home has everything, including a 500 bottle wine cellar, two-story marble columns in the dining room (with a statue of a very stern Roman-looking gentleman staring down—like to see the kid brave enough not to eat his vegetables under that guy’s visage) marble flooring everywhere and what is called a “natatorium with fireplace” which is not, I am informed, a place for roasting gnats on tiny skewers but is instead a fancy Latin word for indoor swimming pool. Who knew? Anyway, it’s all brand new and unlived in. So if you won’t live in Cos Cob,….
Riverside Over-Reaching?
There’s a new listing in Riverside asking for a price that’s about double what anything has previously sold for on that street. That’s not an impossible reach, but I suspect it is for this particular home. Riverside is a distinct neighborhood, similar to Old Greenwich in that it attracts buyers less interested in flash than those in certain other areas of town. This house has been remodeled to have a huge, towering presence but not much else. A few walls knocked down, a lot of unusable space on the new third floor and that’s about it.These days, and for this price, a buyer will expect a master bedroom suite and I think the home’s lack of one will prove discouraging.
Old Greenwich Waterfront
Grace Mccarthy (Shore & Country) has a new listing at 2 Meadow Place right on the water (at high tide, anyway, but low tide brings Egrets, Blue Herons and all sorts of neat wading birds that are even more interesting than plain old water). The house was built in 1953 and hasn’t had much done to it since, but it’s quite nice and the gardens are beautiful. At $2,595,000, the buyer will have an interesting decision; build new or renovate. Any major renovation will bring you under the federal rules for flood zones and you’ll end up, probably, tearing the house down in order to comply with them. But someone content to enjoy a simple house on the water could update the bathrooms and kitchens and then stop, launch a canoe and go catch a striped bass for dinner.

Bidding Strategies

Low Balling
Greenwich real estate attracts a fair number of Wall Street traders who, not surprisingly, bring their work tactics with them when shopping for houses. That means that they throw low bids at everything and see what happens. Often, the answer is nothing; the seller refuses to counter and the buyer moves on. But sometimes, a deal is struck. So when should you low ball? It depends, naturally, on the circumstances. A house that was originally listed for $890,000 (readers should feel free to add zeros until they reach their comfort zone) and has sat on the market for months might be ripe for a low bid of, say, $695,000. Another home priced identically but actually worth $890,000 will not fall to your charms. The basic advice is to work with your agent (assuming she’s earned your trust) and follow her advice. We hate to look stupid (a losing battle for me) and will resist fiercely any attempt by our clients to submit dumb bids. For instance, this firm’s listing on MacPhearson Drive, discussed last week, was priced at $2.895. The price was right, there were a number of interested buyers and it went immediately for more than its asking price. A low ball bid would have been pointless in that situation and an agent who submitted such a bid would have looked as foolish as she felt. But other homes are not so well priced; the agents all know it long before the seller will admit it. You might want to put in a low bid on that kind of property long before it sinks to its proper level but beware: it is the rare owner who will acknowledge that he’s over-priced his home without suffering for awhile. Still, bids are free, so if your agent agrees, go for it.
Old Greenwich Victorian
One home that is not going to be (successfully) low balled is Joan Epand’s (Shore & Country) new listing at 14 Nawthorne Road. Built in 1904 and completely and beautifully renovated last year, this three-story house is in turn-key condition. Six bedrooms, three baths, huge new kitchen and all new mechanicals. It’s very, very nice and, although I personally would like a larger yard (the site is a quarter-acre), that’s about what you get these days in Old Greenwich. Asking $2.795 and, given comparable sales in the neighborhood, likely to get it. Good house.
Contracts
Homes that went to contract this week include Blanche O’Connell’s listing at 31 Lindsay Drive ($3,450,000); Julie Church’s (Sotheby’s) at 50 Richmond Hill Drive ($4,770,000), and our listing at 2 Ashton Drive ($6,100,000). Eighty-one Butternut Hollow Road sold for $8,750,000 the impressiveness of which is tempered by the fact that it last sold, in January 2000, for $10,000,000. That buyer put it back on the market in April 2000 asking $14,000,000. A bid of 0.625 of that amount would qualify as “low ball” in my book but it worked; it just took twenty-seven months to reach fruition.
Riverside Lane
Josiane Collazo’s listing at 78 Riverside Lane went to contract July 18th for $1,749,000. It’s a brand new, well built house and the almost identical home next door sold last fall for somewhere in the $1.5s, but still. . .this is Riverside Lane. The homes there were originally built as temporary veterans housing and were intended to be torn down. Sixty years later, they are finally going, replaced by homes and prices that, I suspect, those veterans would never have imagined. A real bargain on that same street, although without the access to the Mianus River, was Jennifer Walsh’s listing at 102 Riverside Lane for $550,000. I wrote about it a few weeks ago and now it has an accepted offer. You should have listened.

Yeah But
In last week’s article on gazumping I suggested that buyers not spend a dime on a house until they had a fully executed contract in hand. But what, you ask, do you do about the current practice in Greenwich that dictates building inspections be done before anyone signs a contract? I’d suggest a provision in your original offer that, should the seller renege, he’ll reimburse you for the actual cost of the inspection ($600-$850, generally). The downside of this is that the seller can accept a higher offer and ease his guilt by forking over the inspection money. But if he’s that type of guy, he’d probably stiff you anyway, so what the heck. Ain’t life grand?