Deer Park
There are still a few classic houses in Greenwich that haven’t been torn down and replaced by builders’ specials or “renovated” beyond recognition. Sharon Fogarty’s new listing at 70 Midwood Road, in Deer Park, is one of them. Deer Park was one of the first Rockefeller subdivision projects, and the houses that date back to that period (1930’s) reflect the charm and grace of you would expect from homes built for people untouched by the Depression. 70 Midwood has been modernized with a new kitchen and baths, but in a manner in keeping with the original excellence. My favorite feature: a reading nook in one of the children’s bedrooms. I don’t know how many kids still read but if you have one, this would be better than Disneyland. Two acres with a heated pool and a beautiful lawn. It is priced at $7,750,000 which, compared to recent sales in Deer Park of houses that will need a lot of work before they approach this one, is a very fair price.
Vinyl Shingles
Okay, I wouldn’t necessarily use this particular product on a Deer Park home, but I was attending open houses the other day and noticed a crew working on the house next door nailing up the best-looking vinyl siding I’ve ever seen. I realize that that doesn’t sound like too high a bar but I abandoned the open house (an over-priced, under-maintained junker) and introduced myself to the crew’s boss, a very nice, competent fellow named Eddy Olson, of Olson Contracting (914) 235-7316. It turns out that the product I was admiring is a vinyl shingle made by Nailite Industries. Although made up in short panels, this “Rough Sawn Cedar” looked very much like the real thing. This isn’t the thin, brittle stuff that looks so bad; these are solid shakes and they aren’t cheap. Mr. Olson tells me they cost about $220 per square (100 square ft.) versus $160-$175 for natural cedar shingles. But if you have priced paint jobs recently or, like me, spent your summer weekends staining your house yourself, you might consider these a bargain. The multi-million dollar house shouldn’t use these; it confounds buyers’ expectations, but if you have a more modest house, or, for you do-it-yourselfers, an area of your house that’s high off the ground and hard to reach with a bucket of stain, I think these are an attractive alternative to cedar. What’s the price threshold where you can feel comfortable using this material? I don’t know, but I just saw a house in Riverside asking $2.1 million with plastic, hollow-core doors—if you can get away with those, these shingles should be no problem.
What Are They Smoking?
There are some new listings on the market with what I think are just plain crazy prices. My philosophy in this column is to avoid mentioning specific addresses of over-priced houses, both to avoid embarrassing the owner and to protect my own pride when the house sells in a bidding war. With that caveat, someone around here is nuts. For instance, a well built home on Winthrop Drive, new construction, just had an accepted offer somewhere near its asking price of $2.5 million. I have no problem with that. Winthrop is a great street, this looks like a good house and several other homes nearby are also asking or have sold in that range. But not far away, on a far less desirable, busy road, a butt-ugly builder’s project is asking $3,000,000 plus. Only in his dreams. On the other side of town, a house asking more than $900,000 was, in the general consensus of a number of us “experts”, over-priced by at least $150,000. These examples may not sound all that far off in total dollars but if your house is actually worth, say, $750,000 and you price it at $950,000, you scare off the $750 buyers while going head-to head with houses that are really worth their asking price (like 31 Stonehedge , at $995,000). The point is this: Greenwich real estate is not, yet, the equivalent of internet popcorn dot.com, and sellers who price their product as if it were are in for disappointment. I hope.
And What the Heck is This?
One house currently for sale and asking perhaps six million more than it’s worth just reduced its price by fifty thousand dollars, two weeks after it was first listed. I don’t think that’s going to do the trick, but if the owner keeps it up at the same pace, fifty thousand off every second week, its price ought to be just about right after one hundred and twenty such reductions, or July 1, 2008. Stay tuned.
There are still a few classic houses in Greenwich that haven’t been torn down and replaced by builders’ specials or “renovated” beyond recognition. Sharon Fogarty’s new listing at 70 Midwood Road, in Deer Park, is one of them. Deer Park was one of the first Rockefeller subdivision projects, and the houses that date back to that period (1930’s) reflect the charm and grace of you would expect from homes built for people untouched by the Depression. 70 Midwood has been modernized with a new kitchen and baths, but in a manner in keeping with the original excellence. My favorite feature: a reading nook in one of the children’s bedrooms. I don’t know how many kids still read but if you have one, this would be better than Disneyland. Two acres with a heated pool and a beautiful lawn. It is priced at $7,750,000 which, compared to recent sales in Deer Park of houses that will need a lot of work before they approach this one, is a very fair price.
Vinyl Shingles
Okay, I wouldn’t necessarily use this particular product on a Deer Park home, but I was attending open houses the other day and noticed a crew working on the house next door nailing up the best-looking vinyl siding I’ve ever seen. I realize that that doesn’t sound like too high a bar but I abandoned the open house (an over-priced, under-maintained junker) and introduced myself to the crew’s boss, a very nice, competent fellow named Eddy Olson, of Olson Contracting (914) 235-7316. It turns out that the product I was admiring is a vinyl shingle made by Nailite Industries. Although made up in short panels, this “Rough Sawn Cedar” looked very much like the real thing. This isn’t the thin, brittle stuff that looks so bad; these are solid shakes and they aren’t cheap. Mr. Olson tells me they cost about $220 per square (100 square ft.) versus $160-$175 for natural cedar shingles. But if you have priced paint jobs recently or, like me, spent your summer weekends staining your house yourself, you might consider these a bargain. The multi-million dollar house shouldn’t use these; it confounds buyers’ expectations, but if you have a more modest house, or, for you do-it-yourselfers, an area of your house that’s high off the ground and hard to reach with a bucket of stain, I think these are an attractive alternative to cedar. What’s the price threshold where you can feel comfortable using this material? I don’t know, but I just saw a house in Riverside asking $2.1 million with plastic, hollow-core doors—if you can get away with those, these shingles should be no problem.
What Are They Smoking?
There are some new listings on the market with what I think are just plain crazy prices. My philosophy in this column is to avoid mentioning specific addresses of over-priced houses, both to avoid embarrassing the owner and to protect my own pride when the house sells in a bidding war. With that caveat, someone around here is nuts. For instance, a well built home on Winthrop Drive, new construction, just had an accepted offer somewhere near its asking price of $2.5 million. I have no problem with that. Winthrop is a great street, this looks like a good house and several other homes nearby are also asking or have sold in that range. But not far away, on a far less desirable, busy road, a butt-ugly builder’s project is asking $3,000,000 plus. Only in his dreams. On the other side of town, a house asking more than $900,000 was, in the general consensus of a number of us “experts”, over-priced by at least $150,000. These examples may not sound all that far off in total dollars but if your house is actually worth, say, $750,000 and you price it at $950,000, you scare off the $750 buyers while going head-to head with houses that are really worth their asking price (like 31 Stonehedge , at $995,000). The point is this: Greenwich real estate is not, yet, the equivalent of internet popcorn dot.com, and sellers who price their product as if it were are in for disappointment. I hope.
And What the Heck is This?
One house currently for sale and asking perhaps six million more than it’s worth just reduced its price by fifty thousand dollars, two weeks after it was first listed. I don’t think that’s going to do the trick, but if the owner keeps it up at the same pace, fifty thousand off every second week, its price ought to be just about right after one hundred and twenty such reductions, or July 1, 2008. Stay tuned.
posted by Chris Fountain at 10:34 AM
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