Police ActivityU.S. Custom agents, acting in conjunction with the Greenwich Police and the U.S. Treasury, raided a broker open house last week when they learned that it was serving as a sales outlet for counterfeit Gucci purses. After bashing in the door with a mechanical battering ram the agents chased the broker from the house and down the long, ice-covered walkway. She almost made it to her Mercedes and escaped but one of her high heels caught in a snow bank and she fell to the ground, where she was seized, hog-tied and perp-walked off to jail. The owner’s house was forfeited as the locus of illegal sales activities.
All right, that didn’t actually happen—too bad, because the week was pretty dull—but it could have. My previous comments in this column about “Tupperware Sales” during open houses were incomplete, it seems: I have since learned that, not only are agents selling gift baskets and the like when they should be selling their listing, some are peddling counterfeit merchandise. Perhaps, as the owner of a few copyrights, I’m overly sensitive to this issue but I draw no distinction between selling stolen intellectual property and physical goods. The criminal code of the United States joins me in this position. If your agent proposes using your home as a distribution point for cheap knock-offs, I suggest you pull a Nancy, and just say no.
Bidding Wars
They’re still going on. A house on Mallard Drive recently came on the market at $888,000, a price that I, in my wisdom, thought a bit aggressive. Wrong. It went to sealed bids and sold for $906,888.88. Why the odd bid? To prevent a tie. Better to lose a bidding war than to tie, because you are then forced, if you still want the house, to engage in a second round of bidding at a still-higher price. So throw in an odd-dollar bid; win or lose, at least the odds are against a tie.
Gone to Contract
Sixteen houses sold in each of the past two weeks, all under four million. Some of those of note include : 15 Pilot Rock Lane, Riverside, $3,775,000 (asking); 36 Lismore Lane, Greenwich, $2,595,000; 50 Hidden Brook, Riverside, $1,585,000; 30 Jeffrey Road, Greenwich, $1,550,000; 9 Grimes Road, Old Greenwich (mentioned in this column) $1,250,000; 77, 81 and 85 Sherwood Place, Greenwich, for $1,250,000, $1,350,000 and $$1,290,000; respectively and, finally, 640 Lake Avenue, a wonderful house that obviously needed the right buyer, $2,995,000. It is a difficult time to represent buyers as there is so little left in most price ranges. There is nothing available in either Riverside or (south of the village) Old Greenwich for less than $1.5 million, very little in downtown Greenwich—condominium or single family—under a million, and so forth. We hold out hope for January. Until then, be assured that there’s plenty of inventory in the $6-20 million range, so if you’re preparing a Christmas wish list . . . .
In Town Luxury
Dianne Orlando of William Pitt has just placed the first of what will be ten condominium units located at 90 East Elm Street on the market, at prices starting around $2.3 million. While that kind of price would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago I predict that these will sell quickly. They are exceptionally well made, beautifully designed and, with an elevator in each unit and a location just two blocks from the Avenue, should appeal to those mid and back country folks seeking to downsize. I bet they’re sold out before construction is completed.
This Won’t Work
Saw a new listing the other day with a really stupidly price—about a third higher, in my opinion, than it will sell for. That’s not all that unusual, but I was impressed by all the other negatives the seller and broker tossed in just to make certain that no one will want the house. The place was just completely crammed with “stuff”—it looked as though the seller is engaged some kind of Ebay auction business and uses her house as a warehouse. Any spare space not filled with inventory was cluttered with clothes, dirty dishes, unmade beds and so forth. During the open house the broker sat in the kitchen and made aggressively hostile comments to those of us agents who took the trouble to find the house (no open house sign was posted) and braved the elements to come out and look the place over. So: dumb price, incredibly off-putting appearance and nasty broker. That’s a trifecta guaranteed to keep the house on the market for a long, long time.
All right, that didn’t actually happen—too bad, because the week was pretty dull—but it could have. My previous comments in this column about “Tupperware Sales” during open houses were incomplete, it seems: I have since learned that, not only are agents selling gift baskets and the like when they should be selling their listing, some are peddling counterfeit merchandise. Perhaps, as the owner of a few copyrights, I’m overly sensitive to this issue but I draw no distinction between selling stolen intellectual property and physical goods. The criminal code of the United States joins me in this position. If your agent proposes using your home as a distribution point for cheap knock-offs, I suggest you pull a Nancy, and just say no.
Bidding Wars
They’re still going on. A house on Mallard Drive recently came on the market at $888,000, a price that I, in my wisdom, thought a bit aggressive. Wrong. It went to sealed bids and sold for $906,888.88. Why the odd bid? To prevent a tie. Better to lose a bidding war than to tie, because you are then forced, if you still want the house, to engage in a second round of bidding at a still-higher price. So throw in an odd-dollar bid; win or lose, at least the odds are against a tie.
Gone to Contract
Sixteen houses sold in each of the past two weeks, all under four million. Some of those of note include : 15 Pilot Rock Lane, Riverside, $3,775,000 (asking); 36 Lismore Lane, Greenwich, $2,595,000; 50 Hidden Brook, Riverside, $1,585,000; 30 Jeffrey Road, Greenwich, $1,550,000; 9 Grimes Road, Old Greenwich (mentioned in this column) $1,250,000; 77, 81 and 85 Sherwood Place, Greenwich, for $1,250,000, $1,350,000 and $$1,290,000; respectively and, finally, 640 Lake Avenue, a wonderful house that obviously needed the right buyer, $2,995,000. It is a difficult time to represent buyers as there is so little left in most price ranges. There is nothing available in either Riverside or (south of the village) Old Greenwich for less than $1.5 million, very little in downtown Greenwich—condominium or single family—under a million, and so forth. We hold out hope for January. Until then, be assured that there’s plenty of inventory in the $6-20 million range, so if you’re preparing a Christmas wish list . . . .
In Town Luxury
Dianne Orlando of William Pitt has just placed the first of what will be ten condominium units located at 90 East Elm Street on the market, at prices starting around $2.3 million. While that kind of price would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago I predict that these will sell quickly. They are exceptionally well made, beautifully designed and, with an elevator in each unit and a location just two blocks from the Avenue, should appeal to those mid and back country folks seeking to downsize. I bet they’re sold out before construction is completed.
This Won’t Work
Saw a new listing the other day with a really stupidly price—about a third higher, in my opinion, than it will sell for. That’s not all that unusual, but I was impressed by all the other negatives the seller and broker tossed in just to make certain that no one will want the house. The place was just completely crammed with “stuff”—it looked as though the seller is engaged some kind of Ebay auction business and uses her house as a warehouse. Any spare space not filled with inventory was cluttered with clothes, dirty dishes, unmade beds and so forth. During the open house the broker sat in the kitchen and made aggressively hostile comments to those of us agents who took the trouble to find the house (no open house sign was posted) and braved the elements to come out and look the place over. So: dumb price, incredibly off-putting appearance and nasty broker. That’s a trifecta guaranteed to keep the house on the market for a long, long time.
posted by Chris Fountain at 10:06 AM
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