March 19,2004
Up, Up and Away!
Two houses that have sat on the market for awhile, unsold, have just raised their prices: 668 Lake Avenue from $4,500,000 to $4,800,000 and 10 Lighthouse Lane, from $5,700,000 to $6,200,000. There could be a number of explanations for this, I suppose, such as oil being discovered on the property, or diamonds, but I always find the phenomenon curious. I have never known a house to fail to sell because its price was too low; the opposite, alas, is all too common.
Riverside Waterfront
41 Miltiades Avenue, on the other hand, has taken the more conventional route and just lowered its price to $2,395,000 from its original price of, I think, $2,995,000. This is a terrific new house, right on the water, with a problem: it’s nestled right under the railroad bridge and has full exposure to the Mianus bridge of I-95—good for history buffs, but troublesome to many buyers. However, it really is a very nice house with wonderful views and it’s quiet inside. I thought it was aggressively priced when it first came to market; it’s approaching bargain status now.
10 Steep Hollow Road
After a full day of touring what were basically cookie cutter suburban homes it was a real pleasure to enter John Cooke’s listing at 10 Steep Hollow Road. It is a well designed, well built house with good living spaces, including what would be a perfect writer’s studio and a two acre yard with pool. Steep Hollow is off the lower end of Cognewaugh, so the job of chauffeuring children up and down that road ten times a day is not the daunting prospect it might be further up. At $1,495,000, I think this is one of the best-priced houses on the market.
One of the best, but not the only one. Bruce Barker’s new listing at 2 Palmer Terrace in Riverside is priced at $1,395,000 and will almost certainly sell via bidding war. Not at all the same yard as Steep Hollow, of course, since this is Riverside, but a decent sized lot for this end of town, with an easy walk to the train and Riverside School. And Russ Pruner’s listing at 42 Tomac Avenue in Old Greenwich, at $1,195,000, is also destined for quick sale. Tomac is a busy street, and the house could use another bathroom, but this house has a big fenced back yard, can be expanded by another thousand square feet and is a good value for a south of the Village location. I liked it.
To Market to Market
Fifty-seven new homes (including rentals) were listed just last week and thirty-one came off via sales contracts. It is a very busy time of year and an excellent time to find buyers. To repeat the adage of the late Betty Mosher, “if you wait for the dogwoods to bloom before listing your house, you’re too late.”
Exclusive Buyer’s Representation, Revisited
A while back I expressed my distaste for the “buyer’s rep” agreements foisted on would-be buyers and suggested that no one should sign such a document without performing some extensive editing. I received a fair bit of negative feedback from some agents; others told me that they agreed with me completely. I am in the process of drafting a less onerous agreement that will fit on one page, satisfy the legal requirements for buyer representation and contain none of the provisions someone in the real estate business stuck in the standard form to trap customers. I intend to pass it along to my fellow Realtors in town when it is completed. Until then, my warning against the standard form is the same: don’t sign the thing unless you strike out, basically, the entire second and third page, and limit the contract’s effectiveness to twenty-four hours. I hear stories of buyers who have called up a firm to ask the location and price of an advertised property and been told that they must come into the office and sign a buyer’s rep agreement before that information can be disclosed. Not only is this not an accurate representation of the law, it can produce the unfortunate result of a buyer being trapped into a relationship with an agent for as long as six months (or even a year, depending on the firm’s persuasiveness and the buyer’s naivete). Don’t like the agent? Too bad; while the contract is almost certainly not binding on you, it may very well bar another agent from working with you and earning a commission. Since few of us like working for nothing, we won’t represent you. That’s unfortunate, and unfair.
Two houses that have sat on the market for awhile, unsold, have just raised their prices: 668 Lake Avenue from $4,500,000 to $4,800,000 and 10 Lighthouse Lane, from $5,700,000 to $6,200,000. There could be a number of explanations for this, I suppose, such as oil being discovered on the property, or diamonds, but I always find the phenomenon curious. I have never known a house to fail to sell because its price was too low; the opposite, alas, is all too common.
Riverside Waterfront
41 Miltiades Avenue, on the other hand, has taken the more conventional route and just lowered its price to $2,395,000 from its original price of, I think, $2,995,000. This is a terrific new house, right on the water, with a problem: it’s nestled right under the railroad bridge and has full exposure to the Mianus bridge of I-95—good for history buffs, but troublesome to many buyers. However, it really is a very nice house with wonderful views and it’s quiet inside. I thought it was aggressively priced when it first came to market; it’s approaching bargain status now.
10 Steep Hollow Road
After a full day of touring what were basically cookie cutter suburban homes it was a real pleasure to enter John Cooke’s listing at 10 Steep Hollow Road. It is a well designed, well built house with good living spaces, including what would be a perfect writer’s studio and a two acre yard with pool. Steep Hollow is off the lower end of Cognewaugh, so the job of chauffeuring children up and down that road ten times a day is not the daunting prospect it might be further up. At $1,495,000, I think this is one of the best-priced houses on the market.
One of the best, but not the only one. Bruce Barker’s new listing at 2 Palmer Terrace in Riverside is priced at $1,395,000 and will almost certainly sell via bidding war. Not at all the same yard as Steep Hollow, of course, since this is Riverside, but a decent sized lot for this end of town, with an easy walk to the train and Riverside School. And Russ Pruner’s listing at 42 Tomac Avenue in Old Greenwich, at $1,195,000, is also destined for quick sale. Tomac is a busy street, and the house could use another bathroom, but this house has a big fenced back yard, can be expanded by another thousand square feet and is a good value for a south of the Village location. I liked it.
To Market to Market
Fifty-seven new homes (including rentals) were listed just last week and thirty-one came off via sales contracts. It is a very busy time of year and an excellent time to find buyers. To repeat the adage of the late Betty Mosher, “if you wait for the dogwoods to bloom before listing your house, you’re too late.”
Exclusive Buyer’s Representation, Revisited
A while back I expressed my distaste for the “buyer’s rep” agreements foisted on would-be buyers and suggested that no one should sign such a document without performing some extensive editing. I received a fair bit of negative feedback from some agents; others told me that they agreed with me completely. I am in the process of drafting a less onerous agreement that will fit on one page, satisfy the legal requirements for buyer representation and contain none of the provisions someone in the real estate business stuck in the standard form to trap customers. I intend to pass it along to my fellow Realtors in town when it is completed. Until then, my warning against the standard form is the same: don’t sign the thing unless you strike out, basically, the entire second and third page, and limit the contract’s effectiveness to twenty-four hours. I hear stories of buyers who have called up a firm to ask the location and price of an advertised property and been told that they must come into the office and sign a buyer’s rep agreement before that information can be disclosed. Not only is this not an accurate representation of the law, it can produce the unfortunate result of a buyer being trapped into a relationship with an agent for as long as six months (or even a year, depending on the firm’s persuasiveness and the buyer’s naivete). Don’t like the agent? Too bad; while the contract is almost certainly not binding on you, it may very well bar another agent from working with you and earning a commission. Since few of us like working for nothing, we won’t represent you. That’s unfortunate, and unfair.
posted by Chris Fountain at 8:51 AM
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