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.
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.
posted by Chris Fountain at 10:30 AM
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