Big Houses I recently had occasion to run the numbers on large (expensive, at any rate) house sales and was a little surprised to see that, as of this week, forty-eight homes have sold for prices ranging from $4,200,000 to $6,800,000. Four more are under contract, putting us at fifty-two total, a bit ahead of last year’s forty-five sales. Not too bad, considering that ,for a long period in 2002 the five million dollar and above market was essentially dormant.
Medium Houses
On the other hand, the inventory of homes priced between $1,500,000 and $2,500,000 has pretty much been sold out and nothing new is coming on the market. For the month of October, exactly sixteen houses came on in that range. Weed out the hopelessly over-priced and you’re down to about four. And if you won’t live in Riverside, Old Greenwich or Glenville, you’re definitely out of luck: there have been exactly zero houses added to the mid-country inventory in what is usually our most robust price range. This is all rather frustrating for buyers and agents alike; the existing inventory has been picked over and rejected for a myriad of reasons, some good, some silly, and there is nothing new to show. Leads to cranky weekends spent in the car.
You Can Lead a horse to Water
But a pencil must be lead. I deal with a large number of Wall Street types in this business; the out-of-towners among them are often difficult clients because, not having the benefit of having lived in town and watched their house appreciate, many of them are convinced, absolutely convinced, that house prices will fall in the near future. So they wait, watch the market move past them and they never buy. I mention this because I also have a number of clients who are new to this country and they, having sized up the neighboring towns, all want to own real estate in Greenwich. I share their optimism so I wonder: what is it that a Harvard-trained MBA doesn’t get that someone who works three jobs, eighteen hours a day, does?
Little House on the Prairie
My firm recently listed a small cottage on ten acres of land in Conyers Farm for four million dollars. The owner’s (and our) expectation was that this was to be a land sale, with the cottage thrown in as a lagniappe. We were astonished, therefore, by the flood of calls from serious buyers who were perfectly willing to spend four million dollars for a secluded cottage on lots of land. Unless you move our listing’s cottage, that’s not us: it was the old gate keeper’s house for the original Rosenstiel estate and sits quite close to North Street. But I mention the experience because it reveals a market niche that I, at least, did not know existed in Greenwich (Wyoming, yes, but Greenwich?). I don’t know if the economics work out, but anyone sitting on a large spread of land might want to consider building a few modest cottages and selling them off to down-sizers. Judging from conversations we had with so many eager buyers, there is a market there.
Jargon
As a writer and a speaker of the English tongue, I despise jargon—arcane terms used by insecure people to puff themselves up and exclude those who “don’t get it”. That said, I reluctantly introduce the term “price point” into the discussion because I can’t think of a better word. A price point, as I use the term, anyway, is that specific spot where buyers balk. They exist at several locations in our housing market and they change over time; when I was practicing real estate law in the mid-eighties, for instance, $250,000 was a real price point dividing buyers. That price point no longer exists, but others have taken its place. For instance, houses priced at $2.3 million or $875,000 will draw more bidders than houses with price tags of $2.5 or $925,000. Sellers with an aggressive personality (ex-trial lawyers come to mind) often don’t get this; they’ll bid on anything, at a price they think is right, and assume that everyone else will too. But the world, thank God, is not exclusively peopled by ex-trial lawyers. Many would-be buyers see a house that they like, look at the price and walk rather than bid. So my advice to sellers is, if your house isn’t attracting bids, take a look at its price and consider moving it down below the next price point. I promise you that your showings will increase and you’ll start receiving bids.

Big Houses
I recently had occasion to run the numbers on large (expensive, at any rate) house sales and was a little surprised to see that, as of this week, forty-eight homes have sold for prices ranging from $4,200,000 to $6,800,000. Four more are under contract, putting us at fifty-two total, a bit ahead of last year’s forty-five sales. Not too bad, considering that ,for a long period in 2002 the five million dollar and above market was essentially dormant.
Medium Houses
On the other hand, the inventory of homes priced between $1,500,000 and $2,500,000 has pretty much been sold out and nothing new is coming on the market. For the month of October, exactly sixteen houses came on in that range. Weed out the hopelessly over-priced and you’re down to about four. And if you won’t live in Riverside, Old Greenwich or Glenville, you’re definitely out of luck: there have been exactly zero houses added to the mid-country inventory in what is usually our most robust price range. This is all rather frustrating for buyers and agents alike; the existing inventory has been picked over and rejected for a myriad of reasons, some good, some silly, and there is nothing new to show. Leads to cranky weekends spent in the car.
You Can Lead a horse to Water
But a pencil must be lead. I deal with a large number of Wall Street types in this business; the out-of-towners among them are often difficult clients because, not having the benefit of having lived in town and watched their house appreciate, many of them are convinced, absolutely convinced, that house prices will fall in the near future. So they wait, watch the market move past them and they never buy. I mention this because I also have a number of clients who are new to this country and they, having sized up the neighboring towns, all want to own real estate in Greenwich. I share their optimism so I wonder: what is it that a Harvard-trained MBA doesn’t get that someone who works three jobs, eighteen hours a day, does?
Little House on the Prairie
My firm recently listed a small cottage on ten acres of land in Conyers Farm for four million dollars. The owner’s (and our) expectation was that this was to be a land sale, with the cottage thrown in as a lagniappe. We were astonished, therefore, by the flood of calls from serious buyers who were perfectly willing to spend four million dollars for a secluded cottage on lots of land. Unless you move our listing’s cottage, that’s not us: it was the old gate keeper’s house for the original Rosenstiel estate and sits quite close to North Street. But I mention the experience because it reveals a market niche that I, at least, did not know existed in Greenwich (Wyoming, yes, but Greenwich?). I don’t know if the economics work out, but anyone sitting on a large spread of land might want to consider building a few modest cottages and selling them off to down-sizers. Judging from conversations we had with so many eager buyers, there is a market there.
Jargon
As a writer and a speaker of the English tongue, I despise jargon—arcane terms used by insecure people to puff themselves up and exclude those who “don’t get it”. That said, I reluctantly introduce the term “price point” into the discussion because I can’t think of a better word. A price point, as I use the term, anyway, is that specific spot where buyers balk. They exist at several locations in our housing market and they change over time; when I was practicing real estate law in the mid-eighties, for instance, $250,000 was a real price point dividing buyers. That price point no longer exists, but others have taken its place. For instance, houses priced at $2.3 million or $875,000 will draw more bidders than houses with price tags of $2.5 or $925,000. Sellers with an aggressive personality (ex-trial lawyers come to mind) often don’t get this; they’ll bid on anything, at a price they think is right, and assume that everyone else will too. But the world, thank God, is not exclusively peopled by ex-trial lawyers. Many would-be buyers see a house that they like, look at the price and walk rather than bid. So my advice to sellers is, if your house isn’t attracting bids, take a look at its price and consider moving it down below the next price point. I promise you that your showings will increase and you’ll start receiving bids.

Competency Hearings
A homeowner I know has contracted to sell his house. The deal will probably go through, but not without some incredibly difficult contortions, none of which would be necessary had he received professional advice when he originally bought the place. When he purchased the property the homeowner was represented by an out-of-town attorney and a real estate agent who was presumably more interested in luncheon dates than in protecting her client. As a result, no one checked for open building permits or tested for radon, water potability, septic capacity, etc. The prospective new owner has done all that and now the seller is scurrying around, dealing with a six bedroom house with a three bedroom septic system, a large number of open building permits which require final inspections if he is to close them and obtain certificates of occupancy, radon far in excess of EPA guidelines and grossly polluted well water. All these problems can and will be corrected, but if a real estate professional— agent or attorney—had provided some guidance a few years ago this man would be happily on his way to a new home instead of cooling his heels in the Building and Health departments. And he wouldn’t have been serving his children filthy water all this time.
My advice to buyers is to use a local attorney, one who knows the conventions of Greenwich real estate practice and who knows how to find his way to Town Hall. And if you’re working with an agent who tells you that there is no need to perform building or well inspections, send her off to lunch and find someone who will put your interests ahead of her own desire to close a deal.
New Listings of Note
Ken Yorke (Surf &Turf Realty) has one of the old Lockwood properties for sale with an asking price of $1,560. I think that’s an excellent price. Built in 1868, it’s set back from the road at 7 Hearthstone Drive, which was itself carved from Lockwood farmland in the 1950’s (I think). With four bedrooms and a really nice, modern eat-in kitchen (the house was completely renovated in 1994) this house is pretty nifty. I like its location, its curb appeal and, as noted, its price.
Around the corner, sort of, at 46 Terrace Avenue, Michael Dinneen’s listing offers a different opportunity. With apologies in advance to its owner, this house needs a complete gutting and expansion. But its price of $899,500 reflects that. While it may be a bit too pricey for a builder to make it work financially an end user could put, say, $3-400,000 into this property and end up with a home worth far more than the total he invested.
And although I don’t think I’ve ever been on Mannetti Lane before, I thought both the street itself (off of Cat Rock, in Cos Cob) and Maria Kelly Steven’s listing at 11 Mannetti were quite nice. The house is the standard mid-seventies builder’s special but it’s got a great yard of almost a half acre and, like the street, is light and sunny. $1,060,000. In need of some updating, but your investment would be returned in spades.
Finally, and a bit further along the price scale, MaryJane Bates (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold) has a new listing at 60 Round Hill Road for $4,000,000. Five bedrooms, with the master on the ground floor, this is very much an “adult” home. It’s on a very private, beautiful two-acre lot and has a nice free-form pool. It has been completely renovated and I predict that the combination of location, condition and layout will produce a quick sale.
Sell That House!
A Back Country house recently came on the market at a price that, in the consensus of several of us, was perhaps a million dollars too high. Nothing too surprising about that; owners of older homes often age along with them and grow accustomed to the dated kitchen and baths while focusing instead on the building’s charms. They see no reason to lower its price to “compensate” for non-existent flaws. What sets this story apart from others, however, is the alacrity with which the seller responded to what he heard from the market. Rather than resist that news he has instead taken two half-million dollar price reductions in the past two weeks. This was really smart. The house is now where most of us thought it should be in the first place and it’s still new enough to the market that those of us with feeble minds can remember its charms and recommend it to our clients.

Terminal Uniqueness
In the past two weeks some forty-eight houses have gone to contract, in all price ranges ($15,500,00, $11,500,000 and on down), in all areas of town. A fixer upper on Doubling Road, asking $1,895,000, went to sealed bids, all over asking price, within five days. Similar battles are raging everywhere. If your house has still not sold it is time to quit deluding yourself and face the hard fact that it is over-priced. There are buyers out there for everything; multiple buyers. It is simply not true that, for instance, no one wants a house in Riverside in the $1.6 range, or in Old Greenwich at $1.9, or the Back Country for $3.5. Buyers are being cautious, and with good reason, because they can’t grossly overpay for something and know that the market will rise 20% in the next year to bail them out. But anything that is priced properly is going. If no one is bidding on your house, it’s because its price is wrong. You say that you don’t want to “give it away” and you don’t have to; there is a buyer for your house. But again (and again and again), if your house has been on the market for months, if fifty prospective buyers have traipsed through it without result, then you’re out of whack with the market and are not competitive with better or lower priced homes. You don’t want to believe it but it was hard to accept that the Tooth Fairy didn’t exist either. Grow up, lower your price and move on.
Building Permits
It’s surprising how many home owners perform work on their house without benefit of permits. Surprising because they aren’t difficult to obtain and their existence when the house is resold makes life a lot smoother. What often happens is that, during the sale process, the buyer’s attorney will check for all open building permits (work for which a permit was given but no final inspection made) and ask for an affidavit from the seller that any work requiring a permit during the seller’s ownership was performed pursuant to such permit. When, as can happen, the owner refuses to sign such a document the two sides reach loggerheads, “take it or leave it” vs. “I’m not buying without a certificate of occupancy”. How is the dispute resolved? It depends on how badly the seller wants to sell and the buyer wants to buy. One can always accept the house as is and, six years after the work was performed, everything (almost everything) becomes legal by operation of law. Or the seller can go over to the town’s Building Department and ask, nicely, if they wouldn’t consider giving him a permit. For the most part, this latter option isn’t too bad, but if wiring must be inspected, or support beams looked at, there’ll be some work to be done. Of course, if the wiring, say, was improperly installed in the first place, that’s a problem. So my advice is, if you’re ready to work on your house, pull a permit. It’s much easier to do it right from the beginning.
Unchained
I hear all sorts of errant nonsense about the big chain Realtors operating in town. “They have secret listings that the smaller firms don’t know about”; “They tap into the international market and bring in (mysterious, one presumes) Europeans”; and so forth. It isn’t so, but here’s one truth about the chains: they can provide lousy service to their clients. For some time now I have noticed that, if I am having trouble showing one of the chain’s listings because of a malfunctioning door lock, for instance, or a missing key, or an agent who simply refuses to return calls requesting an appointment, a call to the firm’s office manager produces exactly zero results. That person generally has no information about the property in question, no means of contacting the listing agent and, quite often no discernable interest in addressing the difficulty. That’s exactly the opposite of what you’ll encounter at any one of the independents in town, whose principals have a very direct stake in serving the firm’s listings. Some of the very best real estate agents in Greenwich work for large chains (mostly as the result of the chain’s swallowing of their former employer) and this passage is not meant to detract from them in the slightest. But I am not impressed with the support they get from their offices.

Bad Boys
All over town there are construction projects going nowhere, with big red “stop work” orders stapled in front. This is what happens when builders try to pull fast ones. Jim Maloney, Greenwich’s Zoning Enforcement officer, tells me that we must be the insect capital of the world, because these builders take out renovation permits and then “discover” serious infestation problem requiring them to tear down the structure they claimed they would renovate. I’m reminded of the “two beer defense’ we used to hear in criminal law: despite all evidence to the contrary, every falling-down drunk would swear to the heavens that he’d had only two beers. We didn’t believe them; Mr. Maloney doesn’t believe the arachnophobic builders, and shuts them down when they exceed the scope of the work they claim they’ll be doing. Good for him and good for our town.
Our Building Department is a lot more accommodating to private homeowners who start their own renovation projects without permits: new windows, perhaps. Or, more frequently, hire a contractor to do the work and believe their builder’s assurance that they don’t need a permit. When they go to sell their house, difficulties ensue. We’ll discuss this more innocent activity next week.
Bargain Homes
Here are some surprisingly good deals: An English Cotswald at 14 Dearfield Lane, $595,000; 2 Forest Avenue, new construction, $625,000; 3 bedroom home at 7 Mahr Avenue, $657,000; 14 Nawthorne Road, 5 bedroom Victorian, $940,000; 22 Pecksland Road, $1,375,000; and 1 Deer Park Court, pre-war Georgian, 7 bedrooms, 6 baths, 10’ ceilings, recently renovated, beautiful grounds, 4 car garage, on almost two acres, $3,200,000.
Unfortunately, all these homes were sold in 1989. I remember the time well; people were discussing Greenwich’s crazy pricing and predicting a rapid collapse to more sustainable numbers. Those same people are still waiting, just like the plumber I worked with one summer in the 70’s. That unfortunate gentleman told me that he was still renting a house in Byram because in the early 1960’s, when he could have bought a house for $15,000, he listened to his father and decided to wait for prices to regain their senses.
You don’t have to have grown up in town to value Greenwich real estate, but it helps. Watching my grandmother’s $17,000, 1957 purchase appreciate to $2,000,000 today is a good lesson in faith. A friend of mine’s father sold his home on Bramble Lane in 1973 for $75,000 and felt guilty because he’d paid $14,000 for it right after World War II. That emotion changed to something else when I visited him two years later in New Hampshire and informed him that his buyer had just re-sold the place for $150,000. If he were still alive today, I wonder what his reaction would be to hear of its most recent sale price: $1,500,000. You can certainly over-pay for real estate in town, and you’ll lose money if, having done so, you attempt to re-sell the property within a year or two. But if you work with a competent agent or merely stay put for awhile, you’ll do just fine. Buyers in this town always have and I believe they always will. My plumber friend, on the other hand, never did.
Grand Old Dame
Evan Salamore (Weichert) has a listing at 212 Bedford Road that’s really something. Built in 1840, “Sunset Farm” comprises 9,600 sq. feet (including the 2 bedroom pool house ) on 3+ acres. The last time it was offered for sale it was almost torn down before the present owners bought it and restored it beautifully. There are nine bedrooms in the main house, a dining room that easily holds a twenty-seat table, great floors hallways and public rooms, what appears to be an old tavern, complete with fireplace, in the basement and access to the riding trails of the Back Country. $3.750, asking.
Radio Check?
The other day I heard that the Putnam Trust had just been robbed and I mentioned that news to one of our Greenwich Avenue gendarmes as I crossed the street. He hadn’t heard anything about it even though, at the very second we were having the conversation, that same robber was tooling down the Avenue to pull his second bank job of the day, presumably still wearing his disguise of bandages and a funny hat. I’m no cop and I certainly don’t want to play one on TV, but if we’re going to have trained, armed professionals directing traffic out there, wouldn’t it make sense to keep them in the loop on on-going crimes? Just a thought.

Rush to Judgment?tain
One of the big chain Realtors in town signed a listing contract for a Cos Cob house on September 1 and held it “in house” for twelve days before submitting it to the multi-list (not a nice thing to do, according to our rules). When it did appear on that list it was labelled “no show until open house” meaning that no one could see it before then. It turns out, the agency immediately broke its word and began shopping the house around to a few agents, cancelled the open house and the seller accepted a bid, all without ever exposing the house to the full marketplace. Smart move? Perhaps, if the seller was more interested in keeping strangers out of her house than in receiving top dollar. My own estimate is that asking price was $50,000-$75,000 below what this modestly-priced house might have sold for. I could be wrong, or the few buyers who were permitted to see the house might have bid it up to exactly the right value. But because the seller terminated the process before it really began, she’ll never know.
Buying Trouble
Of all the potential difficulties in owning real estate, shared driveways and wells are two of the most problematic. There is no reason why reasonable people can’t cooperate and live comfortably sharing such facilities but in my experience, reasonable people are often in short supply. I know of two-house, one driveway situations where one neighbor, having nothing better to do, sits on his porch and screams at visitors and residents of the other house to keep off “his side” of the driveway. This is an inaccurate legal position, as tenants in common each have the right to use all of the pavement, but it makes for an unpleasant welcome each evening. Similarly, a shared well in the Back Country led one owner to move the pump controls to his home where he delighted in tormenting his neighbors by reducing their water to a trickle and sometimes shutting it off completely for days at a time. Visits by the police were unavailing; a court ordered injunction finally addressed the problem but again—why bother?

Remodeling for Fun and Profit
When Harry Cohn, the despised head of Columbia Studios finally died in 1958, his funeral was a smash hit, attended by everyone who was anyone in Hollywood. Eyeing the unexpected mob Red Skelton quipped, “See? Give the people what they want and they’ll turn out every time.” I mention this because there are several newly-renovated houses on the market whose builders would have benefited from a conversation with Mr. Skelton. These houses could have been winners, selling for exactly what their builders are asking, but they lack certain features that buyers demand. All are missing master bath suites, for instance, and one has an awkward (and ugly) garage situation that should have been addressed. I spoke to one of the Realtors involved and learned that she had suggested these changes to her client and been rebuffed. Real estate agents are out with clients all day, every day, and really do know what buyers want. Talk to them; you might be surprised what you learn.
758 North Street
Elizabeth Douthit’s (Round Hill Partners) listing at 758 North Street has been reduced to $3,595,000 and is beginning to look like a real bargain. A 5,000 + square foot, renovated center hall colonial originally built in 1937, the house sits way up on four acres of lawns, with great old trees and stone walls, a tennis court and a six car garage (one for each bedroom). I like it a lot. The day I visited, a red tailed hawk swooped in from the adjacent conservation land and perched on the tennis court fence, waiting for tasty ball boys, probably, but adding a nice sense of wildness to the late afternoon. Nice house.
To Market to Market
Very limited inventory these days, which causes consternation to buyers and their agents. What is out there is selling well. Kathy Wasilko’s (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold) listing at One Little Cove Place in Old Greenwich, built in 1999 and brought on the market on a Monday went to sealed bids within five days. No word on what the winning price was, but I assume it was more than the asking price of $3.3 million. Note, by the way, how effective an intelligently-price can be; this property could have been set at, say, $4 million and sat for months as its price was gradually whittled down. Instead, buyers perceived value at $3.3 million, reached for it, and the house is gone immediately. Nice when things work that way.