422 Riversville Road
Mandy Fry put this house on the market at $1,895,000 and sold it immediately: one accepted offer and a full stable of back-ups. Why so fast? A smart price, of course. This is a beautiful, well built 1948 center hall colonial on three acres of lawn. It has obviously been well maintained over the years and although I think it’s perfect as is, new owners could easily expand it without ruining the original lines (depending on the skill of their architect, naturally). This was a classic, and if you’d like proof that Greenwich’s street scape has deteriorated, look at this one and the beautiful house across the street, then continue along, say, Porchuck or Lake Avenue and see what the building trade has been up to lately.
Time is of the Essence
422 Riversville was not the only new listing to sell quickly. Ninety-eight Round Hill Road, listed for $4,950,000 and described in this column a short while ago went to contract, as predicted, within days. So too did Anthony Place ($699,000), 42 Owenoke ($1,895,000) and, so on. An over-priced house is a delight when representing buyers; there will be plenty of time to bring clients out from New York, look the thing over and then wait, often for months, while the price gradually falls. No competing bids to worry about, no harsh contract terms, no worries. But the well-priced house goes instantly, so if you as a buyer are done looking and ready to buy, get prepared. Line up your financing, list your existing house, if necessary (bridge loans can lessen the pain of owning two houses simultaneously) and stay by your phone. Good houses, by which I mean those in good condition with spot-on pricing, sell quickly, often within hours. That should tell you something, by the way, about pricing your existing house. Fortunately for buyers, the majority of sellers continue to think more of their house than the market does, and cling to their illusion far longer than you might expect.
What’s Up?
Not the high end of the market, certainly. 71 Rock Maple Road, asking $5,995,000, finally has an accepted offer after two years of being on and off the market (original asking price was $7,250,000). New construction on Glen Avon Road in Riverside , asking $3,999,999, also has an accepted offer but that’s about it for new action in higher end of the market during the past two weeks. Big houses are still selling: 58 Dawn Harbor, in Riverside, sold for $12,500,000 so we know that direct waterfront is still popular and 98 Field Point Circle sold for $10,750,000. Still, if I were a spec builder of one of the many 9,000 square foot monsters gracing our town I would be … nervous.
Four Million?
I have great difficulty with this particular segment of our market, I think because it’s in such an awkward place: not quite expensive enough (!) to merit mansion-like amenities but far enough away from three million that something special has to be happening. It is (only) my opinion that many of the houses in this range are over-priced by close to a million dollars. One that is not is Marie Bates’ listing at 25 Skyridge Road, off of Taconic. Set on four acres with incredible views of Long Island Sound far below, this house was completely renovated a few years ago and shows it. Five bedrooms, five fireplaces, heated pool and (unheated) tennis court, this is a very nice house that is fairly priced at $4,200,000. Owners of similarly-priced homes might want to check it out for comparison purposes and then, possibly, lower their own asking price.
Rubik’s Cubes
It isn’t just builders who are ruining our town’s street scapes; they’re receiving help from our Planning & Zoning Board’s FAR regulations. As explained to me by local architect Eris Crist, the P&Z’s latest tweaking of the rules now counts space in attics with seven feet or more of headroom as part of the allowable square footage. On small lots, this makes builders choose between a nicely pitched roofline and a second floor. Not surprisingly, they often choose the latter, so that we’re seeing squat, bulky cubes springing up like deformed mushrooms. Take a look at 43 Lockwood Lane in Riverside for an example. I have not spoken with the architect of this box and for all I know he likes the dwarf-on-steroids look. It’s more likely, however, that his design was forced on him by the FAR regulations. Too bad.

42 Owenoke
This classic house, on a terrific street, was priced at $1,675,000 when David Ayres brought it to the market last week. Every agent with a Riverside customer showed it and, to no one’s surprise, it went to sealed bids four days later. It wouldn’t astonish me if the winning bid is over $1,850,000. Which demonstrates a number of things: the days of a decent house in Riverside for under $1.5 are gone; there is a real dearth of good homes anywhere in town priced at under two million; and there is little danger, in this market, of under-pricing your home — buyers will scramble to get a good house that’s been intelligently priced and will bid it up to and sometimes beyond it’s “proper” price in a heartbeat.
Buyer Agreements?
Suppose for a moment that you’ve gone into a hardware store to get some advice on, say, bolts. The clerk hands you a three page, single-spaced contract and explains that before he can help you you must agree to use his store for all of your hardware needs during the next six months—bolts, garden hoses, mouse traps, whatever. You will be responsible for paying a buyer’s commission of five percent and, should you breach the agreement, you’ll have to pay all of the store’s legal fees and costs of suing you. Sound like a good deal?

Well that’s what the Connecticut legislature has foisted on real estate customers in the name of consumer protection. What purports to be a remedy for an agency law problem —real estate agents were deemed to represent the seller and thus unable to tell buyers their opinion of, say, the value of a particular house—has instead been converted into an oppressive, one-sided agreement that binds buyers to a particular broker and offers nothing in return. I wouldn’t sign anything like the Realtor approved ,“Exclusive Agency Right to Represent Buyer” contract without having its terms reviewed and negotiated by a lawyer. If you are presented with such a contract (and by law, you must be) you should, at the very least, limit the geographical area to Greenwich, the duration date to six hours and refuse to agree to pay either a “professional service fee” (Paragraph VII) or attorney’s fees. After making those changes the agreement will be basically worthless, which is exactly how it should be.
Oops! He did it again!
I see that a house under construction on Lockwood Road in Riverside has once again been shut down by the building inspector. The earth moving equipment is idled, the workers are gone and a fat red “stop work” order is nailed to a doomed tree. The first shut down cost the builder six months; how long this one will last is anyone’s guess. While the laid-off carpenters may be grateful to get out of the cold, this “I did it my way” business plan has a number of flaws. The goal here, as I understand it, is to build a house and sell it, rather than squandering capital on carrying costs and legal fees. Second, if you tick off the Building Department by trying cheesy evasions of their rules, they’ll keep a sharp eye on you for the duration of your project, as this second stop order shows. And, finally, an inability to abide by those rules creates an inference that the builder doesn’t know or care about what he’s doing. Those of us who will be trying to sell this house, if and when it is ever completed, will have serious questions about its builder’s integrity and the quality of his creation. Dealing with the Building Department can be exasperating, but if you aren’t up to the task, perhaps you should find another line of work.
Where’s Waldo?
Home buyers who have children already enrolled in our public schools are understandably reluctant to uproot them, and a new home’s assigned school can be a critical element in deciding whether and where to buy. Beware: school assignments are a moveable feast, and just because a listing says that a home is in a particular district, does not mean that it really is — the agent may have copied the information from an older listing and missed a reassignment. A new feature of our Board of Education’s web site should eliminate these errors, but readers who want to confirm the information for themselves can go to : Greenwichschools.org/schoolfind/, type in their prospective house’s address and see where they belong.

Movin’ On Up!
The Greenwich Board of Realtors, having labored hard, has produced a beautiful new map of Greenwich for distribution to customers. It’s colorful and vibrant and quite detailed but I notice that Millbrook and its country club have been moved to Cos Cob. There’s nothing to be said against trying to improve one’s house value, but I wonder whether Cos Cob’s residents were consulted about this move and whether they approved?
The Houses are Coming, the Houses are Coming!
Historically, January sees about one hundred twenty new houses placed on the market, December just thirty-five. This year is living up to that average and a number of very nice houses have made fleeting appearances. 12 Taconic Road, three acres in the two-acre zone, was a perfectly nice ranch that came and went almost immediately—I’m told that building inspections are being done, which is ordinarily an indication that an offer has been accepted. But check with your agent; if it’s still around, it is a real bargain at $1,750,000. And, while I have difficulty writing “bargain” and $4,500,000 in the same sentence, 98 Round Hill Road, is certainly fairly priced. It is a really nice brick colonial set high on a hill overlooking the road. Built in 1934, beautifully maintained, seven bedrooms, six baths and a pool, all close to town. As of this writing, it is still available, but not, I suspect, for long. Nice house.
Who Knew?
The market continues to speed along. I just had a listing that, against my advice, was priced twenty-percent higher than it sold for three months ago. Shows what I know. We had an accepted offer within twenty-four hours and have two back-up offers waiting in the wings. Now before the reader looks at his own house and calculates its value according to that same formula, understand that: (a) this house was bought, I think, at a real bargain price; and (b) there is nothing else available in its price range. If your own house is one of the dozens of $4 million + homes presently on the market, your results may vary. Still, an impressive gain, and one that surprised a number of agents, including me.
Sales Pitch
I recently had occasion to peruse a stack of solicitation letters sent by agents to the owner of a house and passed along to me. Every agent offered different reasons why the expired listing should be revived and turned over to them. Those reasons included a deep interest in skiing, sailing, a Harvard education and even, sadly, a handicapped child. All notable distinctions but neither the owner nor I could see what exactly they had to do with selling real estate. If you need a skiing companion so badly that you must buy one, I suppose you could proffer your house’s sale commission, but you could more cheaply just travel to Vail and hire a professional instructor for the day. And, while I hesitate to insult anyone who spent four years in Cambridge, I have known and worked with a number of such people and was never struck by their particular, special knowledge of Greenwich or its real estate market or, for that matter . . . .
Through the Looking Glass
One quandary that confronts owners of older homes is what to do with the windows. Unlike modern double-glazed thermopanes, old windows tend to leak cold air, rattle and display a vexing tendency to stick. Replacing them will save fuel, but it’s a long payback period: in addition to the cost of the new window itself, you’ll pay for its installation and the extra labor, in an old house, of customizing the trim on the interior and exterior to compensate for the uneven settling of the house over the years. To these costs can be added the intangible one of esthetics: old windows are often beautiful; modern ones usually aren’t. A company called The Greenwich Window Doctor promises to repair old windows so that they operate as they were originally intended. I have not done business with this firm but it’s been in business for over a decade , and its principle , Andy Coviello has provided case histories demonstrating that he saved homeowners tens of thousands of dollars by providing a alternative to complete replacement. This makes sense to me; years ago, when I was renovating an 1838 farm house in Maine on a very limited budget I spent a great deal of money on new windows, money that might well have been better spent on, say, a working furnace. I wish I had had someone like this around to call on then. The phone number is (203) 531- 4485.

Hurry, Watson, the Game’s Afoot!
This week should mark the resumption of the real estate market, with new listings beginning to appear after the holiday hiatus. We’ll see of surge of new homes in the coming weeks, with more each week until we hit the peak in April-May. As always, many of these homes will be over-priced and will sit for long months before a rising market and a falling asking price meet in happy harmony. Sellers do not have to go through that agony; the right price will produce a buyer (or even buyers) immediately; show the house, sell the house, move on. It’s far more pleasant, I think, than keeping your house in pristine condition and your personal schedule disrupted for months and months. But then, I don’t find the prospect of strangers traipsing through my house at odd hours especially appealing; some people do, apparently.

Unlike our housing inventory, house buyers did not disappear at the end of the year. Every agent I know has a least one client who couldn’t find what they wanted. Some of these folks are seriously out of whack with the realities of the market and will never find the one acre, with swimming pool, in Riverside, for under a million dollars that they seek. They will move on to other towns. But most buyers are genuine and will be buying something, soon. If you are considering putting your house on the market this spring, you might be better served doing so now. Inventory is lean, buyers are ready and your house will be the subject of intense interest. It is always nice, from a seller’s perspective, to have two people want the same thing. Right now, a well-priced house in almost any area of town will have a surplus of buyers.
What To Do
Someone has written to ask whether he and his wife should undertake a major renovation of their home. The house is, in their description, on one of the “best streets” in Riverside, and has been cared for, but not updated since it was built in the late Twenties. It needs new plumbing, electrical service, baths, kitchen and, it has been suggested, a “family room”. Someone has apparently given them an estimate of a million dollars for the work which means either that they are contemplating far more renovation than just described or they need to get another bid. Regardless, what should they do?

Go for it. I don’t know the exact street they are referring to, but assuming that it is south of Riverside Avenue: Club Road, Gilliam Lane, Indian Head Road, for example, there is almost no possibility of over-improving the property. While there is always the danger of making a house so personal that no one else wants it, good design and decent taste will eliminate that problem while moving the house from the “project” category to “move-in condition”. Buyers pay a large premium for the latter, far more than the actual cost of construction.

In addition to the added monetary value this proposed renovation will bring to the owners, there’s also the enjoyment they will get from a modernized house. We all get used to the quirks of old houses but a clean new kitchen, spacious master bath and more living space aren’t all that bad, either. The only real downside to such a project is living through it. Given the rather depressed price for rental housing these days, I’d suggest moving out for the duration; at, say, $4,000 a month, that’s not a huge percentage of the renovation budget and is far cheaper than a divorce.
Tarred!
Here at Round Hill Partners we just had our parking lot repaved. While you’d think that this kind of excitement merits front page coverage my editor disagreed so I’m reporting it here. Why? Because the company that performed the work, J. Potter, did an excellent job at a very fair price. They’re out of Westbrook, Connecticut but do a lot of work in this area and respond promptly. (860) 304-4065. Asphalt driveways are rather fragile things; once they begin crumbling, they deteriorate rapidly and no amount of sealing will save them. They need a new layer of asphalt before completely deteriorating to the point that they must be replaced. So some maintenance now, or larger costs later. If your driveway is failing, you might want to have it fixed now, before winter rips it apart. The asphalt plants are, I am told, still operating —once they shut down for the winter, you’re stuck.

Through a Glass, Darkly
There was just about zero real estate activity to report on for the week between Christmas and New Years (in part because the Greenwich MLS, our central data bank, was off sipping spiked eggnog) so let’s look ahead, instead, and make some predictions that will probably look foolish a year from now. First, I think that the hot market of the fall will resume in mid-January and roar right through spring. The diminished inventory this fall left a lot of buyers still looking for homes and the combination of new listings, continued low interest rates and a fat year for Wall Street will combine to keep things hopping. There will be a bare handful of houses available for under a million dollars in Riverside and Old Greenwich south of the Post Road and, south of the village, nothing under a million – five. In Central Greenwich, the last house under a million sold last fall, for $950,000. That should mean good news for sellers in other areas of town and bad news for buyers everywhere. Prices for houses under three million (he said, pulling a figure from behind his ear) will be twenty percent higher by spring than they were the year before. I confess to a complete inability to predict the high end of the market, because there is still so much remaining inventory and more new construction being added all the time.

Rental rates will continue to fall, putting added pressure on home-owner investors. So far, this decline has not affected sale prices; I think that this lacuna between rents and prices will continue unfilled, for awhile, anyway, due to the huge demand for owner-occupied homes. But a tough year ahead for landlords.

Houses will continue to be torn down and replaced, all to the great consternation of long-time residents. There was a thoughtful letter to the editor of Greenwich Time recently complaining about just this process — thoughtful, but only half-right. The writer complained about the disappearance of one house on Pell Place (off Arch, over-looking Binney Park) that he must not have seen in its glory. I did. It was a 50’s ranch, in very poor condition, perched on a great piece of land. It sold in a bidding war in the fall of 2002 for, I think, $1.1 million and was replaced by a very nice house that sold this year for $3.4 million. I don’t think the town will miss the first house, and its replacement is a huge improvement to the neighborhood. But the writer also was miffed at the scheduled destruction of a house just two doors down, an 1855 farmhouse on Arch Street, and I join him in his sorrow. It’s a great looking house that, from the outside, at least, looks as though it could be restored and even expanded while preserving its lines. But I wasn’t inside it, so I don’t know what structural problems might have existed. The letter writer blamed the “real estate industry” for all this; as though we don’t live in town ourselves, or are greedy enough to destroy our own town for the sake of a commission. In fact, Greenwich has never valued its older housing: I can think of no other town, settled as early as ours was, that has so few old houses. That’s regrettable, but it reflects a process that was going on long before we agents got involved. The real reason for the present day phenomenon is the scarcity of land. There are few, if any buildable lots in town anymore, so prices rise and, as they do so, buyers build more expensive houses to justify the expense of the land. The logical end to this, of course, is high-rise apartment buildings. It may relieve that preservationist letter writer to know that, if it comes to that, most of us agents will flee town ahead of him.
Stone Deaf
One of the worst developments of the past few years and something that increased in 2003 is the popularity of dressed stone. This taste for masonry has been a boon to the Mexican economy — I have no doubt that Greenwich is responsible for at least half the twenty-three billion dollars repatriated to the stone cutters’ homeland each year — but it comes at a high price to residents. In years past, once a house’s foundation was laid and the walls were up construction activity moved inside and quiet would be restored to the neighborhood. No longer; the masons are kept busy outside until the house is completely finished, sawing and splitting granite for walls, facing and stairs and making a racket that rivals fingernails on chalkboards for pleasantness. Only leaf-blowers can drown it out. Perhaps 2004 will see a new fad: origami houses. Until then, hold onto your earplugs.