Woodsman, Don’t Spare that Tree
With apologies to George Pope Morris, a great many homes for sale in town could benefit from a session with a Stihl-wielding lumberjack. Cute little spruce trees, planted decades ago in post-Christmas festivities, rhododendrons deposited by the front steps to celebrate the move into a new house and, worst of all, Norwegian spruces left unattended for decades, all tower over these houses, blocking out light and air and making them almost impossible to sell. I know of one house in particular that has been marked down several hundred thousand dollars and still sits unsold; a tiny fraction of that sum could have been paid to a tree service with much better results. My brother Gideon represents a client who buys, on average, one investment property a year; the two of them always seek out over-grown houses to buy because they invariably represent the best value on the market. That’s great for buyers, not so good for sellers. I am not suggesting that you clear-cut your property like that poor sap in the Back Country who was driven from town after an exuberant day with his chainsaw, and I certainly don’t question the capability of fine specimen trees to add hugely to a house’s value, but a ninety-foot Norwegian spruce rising five feet from your home’s foundation is doing you no favors. Call in the sawyers.

Horse Country
Speaking of magnificent trees, Carol Clark’s listing way up Bedford Road has them by the dozen: pines, maples and oaks, all at least a hundred years old, to this non-arborist’s eye. This is a solid, center-hall colonial set on almost five acres of sweeping meadows with a pool, ten-stall horse barn with paddock and riding ring. The house could use some modernization, but is certainly livable as is, and the views over the fields are fantastic. I won’t swear that you can see Long Island Sound from there but it’s high enough up and if the neighbors heed my advice about cutting down nuisance trees . . . .$2.795, asking.
New Construction
Two new houses have replaced one old one on Laddins Rock Road, to excellent effect. Built by Lee Seward and listed by Marilyn Secord (Anderson Associates), these are well built, very attractive three bedroom homes. I wondered a bit at the decision to create a large master bedroom suite at the expense of a fourth bedroom but not everyone has sixteen kids to house, and those master bedrooms are really nice. I bet these sell quickly. Asking about $1.490 each, which will set a record for the street.

Another Lee, Lee Neuberth of Pinecrest Builders, is building a new house at 122 Lockwood Road with an expected completion date of January and an asking price of around $2.5 million. Lee builds high-quality homes, using plywood sheathing instead of OSB, for instance, and masonry chimneys instead of pre-fab. He builds to close tolerances and does things right. Neuberth will spend about $50,000 on the heating system for this house; he could do it for half that, and the buyer probably wouldn’t notice the difference until it was fired up on the first cold night and produced a roar just slightly louder than a jet fighter. It’s then too late to wonder exactly how a home was put together. Anyone can put a flashy marble surround over cheap construction; I admire the builders who build the quality in, even in areas that buyers don’t notice. Lee is one such builder: you can reach him in Riverside at 637-9711.

And, speaking of quality, the “Fieber Group” built 2 Old Mill Road to an Alex Kaali-Nagy design so of course, it is beautifully done. Set on two acres off Round Hill Road, 10,000 square feet and an attractive pool. $6.995, from Sotheby’s.
What’s Selling?
The usual. Year-to-date, there have been five hundred four single family homes sold in town. The most active market segments were $650,000-$799,000 (15% of total), $1,000,000-$1,499,999 (20%), and $1,500,000-$2,299,999 (22%). The top of the market, homes selling for $5,000,000 or more, made up 4% of all sales. While this is probably not the best market in which to unload a $12,000,000 home, well-priced houses in the mid six hundreds to, say, the four million range sell quickly. Over-priced homes languish; buyers distinguish between good value and bad, especially after they’ve seen ten or twenty homes in their price range, and jump on the good. So if you want to sell you house . . . .

Exclusive Listings?
A number of real estate ads describe the person responsible for obtaining the listing as the “exclusive agent”, implying that only that agent can show you the property. This is all just a shuck and jive, as almost every single property for sale in Greenwich is listed on the Real Estate Board’s multiple-listing service (and, without exception, every property I’ve seen advertised as an exclusive listing is in fact on the multi-list). Anyone, including Joe the hot dog vendor can show you the house, assuming he has a valid real estate license; in this town, the odds are at least 50-50 that he does. I assume these ads are directed at Manhattanites who are used to that city’s system of genuinely exclusive listings; if your agent’s firm doesn’t have the listing for a particular co-op, she can’t show it to you. Not so here, and that’s a good thing for both buyers and sellers. The multi-list exposes your home to all fifty thousand agents in town, all of whom are eager to sell your property and at least some of whom will have actually taken the trouble to inspect your home and become acquainted with it. Buyers, if their agent is competent and up to speed, can be confident that they are being shown every house in their price range and desired location, notwithstanding the deceptively worded ads promising exclusivity.
Market Activity
The summer doldrums are over and open house days are again crowded with listings. Many are left-overs from the spring market, a few with reduced, more realistic prices and more with the same price that failed a few months ago. Hope springs eternal. New listings of note include 135 Taconic Road for $12,500,000, sixteen thousand feet of very well constructed home with nicely proportioned rooms (hard to believe with this sized building but it’s true), beautiful grounds, two swimming pools, and a tennis court. I find it difficult to maintain perspective at this price range but, comparing this house to others in the nose-bleed altitudes, I think it’s the best value on the market.

Further up on that same street, at 264 Taconic, the original 1840 Stanwich Church parsonage is for sale. A beautiful home on 1.6 acres, it will require careful restoration work to be brought back to full life, but this is a project well worth doing, both from a financial and fine home-lover’s perspective. $1.995 million, Country Living Associates.

And, continuing to drift down in price, if not quality, Dianne Carnegie’s listing at 447 North Street is a nifty property for sale at $1.045. This 1803 building was originally the old North Street School building and has been completely restored by its present owner. Its proximity to the road is more of a problem now than two hundred years ago but for someone who doesn’t want much yard to worry about and does care about old, beautiful homes, it’s a perfect cottage, close to town.
Traffic
My father’s favorite cartoon from World War II depicted a full Admiral pounding his desk and exclaiming, “Damn it, I tell you, there is no reason for it, it’s policy!” I’ve often thought that most governmental units are guided by that thinking, so it was with some trepidation that I called the highway division for an explanation for the disappearance of the right hand turn lane at the intersection of Route One and Riverside Avenue. The gentleman who answered the phone, a Richard Doll, not only didn’t pound his desk, he came up with two very good reasons for the change: drivers were using the lane as a speed-thru, endangering pedestrians, and Old Greenwich-bound drivers were abandoning the Post Road and pouring down Lockwood Avenue. I still don’t like the traffic back-up that occurs in evening rush hour, but the wait is mitigated, in part, by realizing there are no Admirals working for Garo Garabedian. Those same people, by the way, have resolved the Starbucks-Fresh Fields mess in Greenwich by making Washington Avenue one-way, adding diagonal parking and prohibiting left-hand turns. A huge improvement and, from the department of “a good deal just gets better”, my favorite in-town house of the year, 58 Washington Avenue, has just had the traffic in front of it cut by at least half. Lucky owners.
Oops
178 Riverside Avenue was not, as was erroneously printed here, sold to a developer. The new owners will be building for themselves and, while I’m certain the house will be as nice as I originally predicted, you’ll only be able to look, not buy.

masonry vs. pre-fab

Up In Smoke
There is a new home going up in Riverside that, judging from its location and size, is probably destined to sell for about $2.5 million. Nice looking house, but I notice that they’ve installed a prefabricated chimney; too bad. I’m sure that, properly installed, a pre-fab chimney is every bit as efficient and safe as a masonry one so please don’t write to tell me so. But the same thing can be said for Anderson windows with plastic snap-on grids; they work just fine; I have them in my own home, in fact, but they look cheesy. Fine for a tear-down like my house, but not okay for multi-million dollar new construction. With masonry, you can depart from the standard firebox and be creative: build a Count Rumford fireplace, for instance, that’s shallow, wide, and actually throws heat into the room instead of sucking it up the flue. Or be creative with the chimney itself, designing with brick and enhancing the exterior. Go wild; the few bucks extra you may spend will only add to your enjoyment of your home and its ultimate resale value. Your neighbors will thank you (and members of the brick-layer’s union may thank me by sending suitable contributions to this paper).
And Speaking of Which
Can we agree that the neo-shingle style has run its course? The first few hundred of these homes were a welcome change from split-levels and the New Canaan style (pseudo-Georgian with stone and a fake balcony) but Greenwich is beginning to resemble Nantucket South and it’s boring.
Riverside Fluke?
If you attended college anytime after 1970, you probably read Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. To recapitulate for you fraternity boys, Kuhn posited that scientists create a paradigm in which to view the world: the sun revolves around the earth, for instance. If a new datum appears outside that paradigm (a planet doesn’t orbit the earth) it is dismissed as an aberration. Gradually, as exceptions accumulate, the paradigm is shifted to accommodate them and, when that becomes too unwieldy, the paradigm falls, to be replaced by a new one that encompasses all the data: the earth orbits the sun. And the process begins again.
Real estate pricing is similar. A house came on the market this spring at a price that I and many other agents felt was much too high. Two equivalent or better homes just around the corner were asking $350,000 less; a brand new home just a hundred yards away was only $100,000 more. Yet the house sold, and for 98% of the asking price. Right now, I’m inclined to dismiss the sale as a fluke; a crazy price paid by someone with either more money than sense or a steely determination to own that house on that street. But the other possibility is that I was dead wrong (perish the thought) and that this “aberration” is actually evidence that the market has suddenly lurched forward. Like Mr. Kuhn’s scientists, those of us who think this house was over-priced will not start adjusting our view of relative values until and unless more such “flukes” start occurring. But if it was not an aberration, then everyone in Riverside south of the Post Road can start notching up their house values by $300,000 or so.
Gilliam Lane
Ed Mortimer’s new listing at 7 Gilliam Lane looks interesting. Quirky, with a backyard devoted mostly to a very nice pool and bricked surround, I liked this house very much. Easy walk to the train and Riverside’s schools, Gilliam is a quiet (now that the Fountain boys have moved out), beautiful street with very nice people. $2,095,000.
Child Abuse
(A better man, seeing the following, would refrain from commenting on it in what purports to be a real estate column. I am not that man)

From the Greenwich Time advice column, “Ask Annie”:
"Dear Annie-my 4-month old daughter is emotionally abusive. When I get ready for work in the morning, she smiles and giggles and is so cute that I cry all the way to the office....How can I escape the house without seeing her?” Inglewood California.
Well. These clever, rotten Babies! Even at 4 months they know how to abuse us-SMILING! GIGGLING! Probably even COOING! I'm sure Ms. Inglewood will soon block this trauma from her mind but, living in California, she's bound to run into a recovered-memory specialist sooner or later and THEN won't she have a juicy lawsuit against this little monster! Perhaps our own Attorney Blumenthal can represent her.

Basement Woes

Water , Water, Everywhere
One of the more vexing problems afflicting homeowners is underground water. The stuff flows and percolates into basements, ruining floors, popping pools from the ground and creating ideal environments for mold to flourish. It’s vexing because it is often hard to detect where the stuff is coming from and how to stop it. Mattis Engineering Group in Ridgefield, Connecticut , (203) 431-6497 can help.
By way of disclosure, I sold a home to the daughter of the principal of Mattis, but that’s how I came to meet the man, and not why I now recommend his company. That principal, a Mr. Milioski , is a remarkable man with a remarkable history. After working a few decades for Bechtel he established his own engineering firm and took on projects all over the globe. He designed the Baghdad Airport, for instance, and his plans for that project were in great demand in Washington at the beginning of this year. After the World Trade Center calamity, he was brought in as a consultant to keep the Hudson River out of the wrecked building’s foundation “tub”. He succeeded. He is now more or less retired, but still has access to workers he trusts and, of course, his own experience and knowledge.
The man is fond of saying things like “don’t go to war against water—you lose.” Instead, he devises ways to divert, or drain or otherwise avoid direct confrontation while solving the underlying problem. Mattis Engineering can analyze a water problem, design a solution and perform the actual repairs if desired. While it might seem like overkill to call in one of the top structural engineers in the world to address a leaky basement, it won’t cost you any more than the services of a less experienced expert (in fact, the initial analysis, diagnosis and repair estimate are free), so why not start at the top?
Scrapers or, Another One Bites the Dust
178 Riverside Avenue disappeared while I was out of town for four days last week. Other than the fact that I helped build it when I was a college student working summers, I can’t say I’ll miss it all that much. An awkwardly designed saltbox, the home never did work well as a residence. The new owner is a builder known for erecting $4-$5,000,000 homes so we can expect to see a rather large house replace the original. I’ll be curious to see what it sells for. On the one hand, one of the best new homes in that price range sits unsold on a far better street (Glen Avon) and with water views. On the other hand, 178 Riverside is flanked by two homes that clearly are in the $5,000,000+ category, and any construction that starts now won’t be ready until Spring of next year, so I’m guessing the builder will do just fine.
Right around the corner from that disappearing act, three homes on Indian Head have recently gone under. The cheapest of the three, on the corner of Wellwyn and Indian Head, sold for around $1.6 million, the others were closer to $2 million. None of these are waterfront lots, which means that the price of an ordinary building lot on Indian Head is getting to be . . .interesting.
The Man Who Would Be King
During that aforementioned flying visit out of town I spoke with a lawyer who knows quite a bit about Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal’s suit against the University of Miami. Blumenthal has retained the NYC firm of Skadden , Arps and has already incurred more than $3,000,000 in fees on our behalf. Most Connecticut residents could care less about which football teams compete against UConn, but it’s worse than that: my source, a far better lawyer than I ever was, confirms my own assessment of the suit: D.O.A. I know that this is not a political column, and I promise to only touch on the subject during slow weeks like the week before Labor Day, but this frivolous piece of litigation ( one of dozens our ambitious Attorney General has filed) serves no purpose except to further his political aspirations and soak those who pay the bulk of Connecticut taxes: that would be us. We report, you decide.
What The Heck Is …
The new building going up on River Road Extension alongside the Mianus River looks like a great big, ugly, temporary shack and that’s what it is: the Cos Cob firehouse is slated for renovation and the firemen need a place to house their trucks for the duration. Once the firehouse is done, the shack will be history.