July 30, 2004

Let There be Light
Saw a very nice new listing last week that was well priced, even at four million plus. It has a great location close to town, seems to have been very well built and I liked it. But as I was wandering through the place I encountered Alice Duff, who knows just about everything worth knowing about Greenwich real estate and she pointed out that three of the bathrooms lacked windows. This is not a good thing. People like windows in bathrooms and builders ought to remember this. Especially if, as is the case in two of these bathrooms, fenestration could have been easily achieved merely by switching the position of the bedroom closet. I don’t know if the original builder was trying to save on the cost of two windows or if he encountered some structural/design hurdle when laying out his plans, but I think he’d have been well advised to have tried harder.
Byram Moves Forward
The Whaba brothers have finally received permission from our P&Z to build twenty luxury condominiums and a marina on the Byram waterfront. This after years of presentations, denials and lawsuits shrunk the original proposal for forty-seven units, but apparently the project still makes economic sense and will proceed. This is good news for Byram because the project had huge local support and will, everyone hopes, trigger a renaissance in the area. I don’t fault the P&Z for attempting to ensure that waterfront development proceed according to some grand master plan but, as I understand the situation, there is no master plan, and no particularly sustained effort has been made to develop one. The lack of such a plan, combined with a refusal to approve any waterfront projects until a plan is devised, inevitably invites a process of zoning by law suit. This seems like a peculiar planning strategy to me but then, I’m not a professional planner.
The Booboise Come Calling
A real estate ad I wrote recently drew fire from several (former, I hope) readers who, in a series of phone calls to both me and my employers branded as “racist” my observation that lawn workers in Greenwich speak Spanish. Why does pointing out a simple truth constitute racist behavior? I think my callers are conflicted. As Greenwich liberals (conservatives usually “view with concern” while liberals are “shocked and dismayed”; these were of the latter camp and by their cliches shall ye know them) it must be disquieting for them to realize that they could each sell off their Back Country homes, feed ten thousand African families for a year on the proceeds and go follow Jesus. They don’t want to do that, obviously (if you change your mind, ladies, be sure to call me) and they’re nagged by the uncomfortable feeling that they are exploiting the poor by employing them. This isn’t a feeling I share—as a free-marketer, I strongly support acts of capitalism between consenting adults—but our homeowners are more sensitive than I, so they have created a warm little fantasy in which their yard workers are their friends. The deeply-tanned people who show up to toil under a hot sun are actually their investment-banker neighbors, Yale grads all, gladly embracing the opportunity to hone their masonry skills in case there’s a downturn on Wall Street. They do a spot of work, relax under the shade of old elms while crooning their favorite Whiffenpoof songs and then stroll down the street to rejoin their families in time for poolside cocktails. A nice fantasy now spoiled by mean old me who had the temerity to point out that the yard workers speak Spanish. Spanish! They don’t do that at Yale! How cruel of me to mention it! Since all racists are cruel and I am cruel, I must be a racist. Angry phone calls demonstrating this incredible failure at Aristotelian logic shall be made. Will furious letters to the editor follow? Ones that will showcase our outraged employers as the enlightened, caring personalities that they truly are? The Citizen doesn’t carry any other funny pages, so let’s hope so. The saddest thing about this exhibition of reptilian brain-stem activity is that my callers will slither to a voting booth next November and cancel my vote with theirs. Too bad.
I do realize that this rant has nothing to do with the ostensible subject of this column but what the heck, it’s a slow month for real estate, it is my column and I really, really don’t like idiot people calling me the vilest of names. Say I’m ugly—I can live with the truth—but don’t dare smear me with your own guilty conscience.
Next week: signers for the deaf at rock concerts. If they sign the lyrics, why don’t they also have someone playing air guitar?

July 23, 2004

Conspiracy Theory
An often voiced suspicion among house sellers is that Realtors, in the maddened quest for easy commissions, deliberately suggest an asking price that is far below a house’s actual value. We set the prices low in order to move our inventory, pocket our cash and move on, all at the expense of the seller. We eschew barnyard epithets in this column, usually, so I’ll just describe this bit of paranoid delusion as nonsense. First, Realtors owe their clients a fiduciary duty; we are obligated to always act in their best interest. While not every agent in town is necessarily as fully capable as one might wish there are very, very few crooks out there (of course, I did spend twenty years working with lawyers so my standards in this regard may be lower than yours), and an agent who looks after his own self interest instead of his client’s is a crook. Second, assuming the house is listed on the Greenwich multi-list, there is a built-in remedy to an agent’s perfidy: multiple bids. A house that is under-priced will draw the attention of every astute agent and buyer out there and those buyers’ bids will quickly bring the price up to its proper level. It has been my experience that sellers who rant of conspiracy theories are in fact suffering from that most painful of life’s experiences, coming face to face to reality. Their house simply isn’t worth what they think it is.
But Wait, there’s More!
Saw a new listing the other day that clearly wasn’t the victim of an under-pricing conspiracy. While it is in a very nice location, with a great yard and tremendous views, agents were divided on its appeal. Some hated it, some loved it some of us were in-between. But we were all united (I called around) on one thing: love it or hate it, the agents’ estimates of its eventually selling price ranged from two to three million dollars below its current asking price. If this were a fifteen million dollar home, that might not be significant but it isn’t. If this house is really over-priced by three million dollars, someone has overpriced it by almost twice its actual value. We’ll see; I could easily be wrong, but I’ll keep an eye on it and report back a year or so from now on how it’s doing.
Multi-Family Bargain
Oops—missed it. I had been meaning to mention Paula Waldman’s two-family listing on Le Grande Avenue for a few weeks now and when I went to write it up just now I discovered that it went to contract July 15th. This was a very nice renovated house that I thought was fairly priced at its original asking price of $849,000. It dropped to $739,000 before someone scooped it up and got, I think, a great deal. Le Grande is a street on the way up, and this house is part of that progression.
New Listings
Few and far between these days. On Tuesday, I think, there were three new listings at noon and twelve price reductions. That’s rather slow. But a few houses of note include Curtis Woods new listing at 24 Pleasant Street and Pam Armstrong’s at 7 Orchard Drive.The Pleasant Street house in Cos Cob is priced at $805,000 and I think that’s a good price. Pleasant is a quiet street that runs parallel to Orchard and backs up to Pinetum so the house enjoys quiet privacy in a convenient location. There’s not much a buyer could, or should do to this house, both because of its lot size (0.15 acre) and the current value of other houses on the street but in what passes as the affordable housing section of our market, this is a very nice house in move-in, leave it alone condition. I like it.

A bit further up the price range, 7 Orchard Drive in Millbrook is really special. It’s one of the classic Millbrook Tudors, built in 1928 and updated through the years, set on three-quarters of an acre and set directly on the lower pond. It even has its own stone dock. The rooms are great as is, but a buyer might want to blow out the present dining room to build a new kitchen-dining area towards the pond and build a new master bedroom over the garage. I’d move into it today (won’t the owners be surprised!), but the price is only (I’m not being sarcastic) $4,000,000, and that allows plenty of room to improve like a madman and still have a great investment. This house was hands-down the best valued, most attractive house of the week.
Humor in Advertising?
We in the industry get pretty darn sick of writing about homes “nestled amidst” firs, lawns, boulder, sweeping valleys, whathaveyou so this week I’m trying something different: look for Round Hill’s ad in the back of this paper. I think my client has a good sense of humor. I think.

July 16, 2004

Word of his demise has been greatly exaggerated.
I mistakenly rushed an old family friend, Pyke Johnson, to an early grave last week by mentioning that I’d heard he died. Wrong. Moved from Greenwich is not the same as dying; in fact, some would say it was a rebirth. Pyke, a long time editor at Doubleday, was (and presumably still is) incredibly active in retirement, penning a column for Greenwich Time, volunteering at Perrot Library and (this is where I originally got in trouble) assisting at the Old Greenwich Book Store. I don’t know what he’s doing now but he’s not, as they say of former writers, decomposing.

151 Riverside Avenue
While we’re revisiting past stories, I draw the reader’s attention one final time (until the next time) to the floor area ratio mess by inviting them to drive by 151 Riverside Avenue and observe the new house that’s being framed there. Look at the garage. See the nicely pitched roof over the garage and notice that the space under that roof has been rendered entirely unusable by a forest of braces. Why? Because, under our FAR regulations, attic space counts as part of the calculation unless no one, not even a mouse, can fit inside it. The builder is not “cheating” here, or doing anything unethical. I presume that he wanted a decent design and, in this neighborhood, that usually includes pitched, rather than flat roofs. His choice, then, would have been between sacrificing a garage attic or a bedroom and he made the right choice.

But how does losing an attic accomplish FAR’s stated objective? Actually, I’m not sure that an intelligent objective for FAR has ever been stated but, as I understand its proponents, we impose these bulk limitations in order to preserve our streetscape, to keep all houses in a given area roughly the same size and height. And building an attic, then filling it with braces accomplishes this how? Viewed from the exterior, the house is exactly the size, height, shape, etc. it would have been in the absence of FAR regulations. The only difference is that, inside, someone can’t use an attic. A triumph of something, I suppose, but of what? Not logic. Perhaps RTM member and FAR advocate Franklin Bloomer should hop on his bicycle, take a look at this house and then explain to us all, once again, what exactly FAR is for and how it is preserving our town. Because I don’t get it.
To Market to Market
Regardless of the dormancy in most of the market, some properties are still being snapped up as soon as they hit the MLS hotsheet. Jane Basham’s 46 Terrace Avenue in Riverside, which sold just a few months ago for $902,042 in a bidding war was fixed up over the spring and returned to the market at $1,825,000. There were those—I was not among them—who thought Terrace couldn’t support that price range. They were proved wrong when this house went immediately to contract. Ledge Road, on the other hand, is one of the best streets in Old Greenwich so no one was surprised when Rose Mary McMullen (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold) priced the tiny two bedroom cottage on 10 Ledge at $1,299,000—bigger houses on Ledge can easily command four million and up. I really liked this house, even though it backs up to wetlands which will constrain expansion but I was a little surprised to learn that it had drawn at least six offers by the end of the first weekend. It was gone by Sunday night. Also gone is Carolyn Anderson’s (Anderson Associates) 11 Relay Place listing. The original house, built in 1919 as a honeymoon cottage (gee, thanks, Dad) perches on Mill Pond and has just a great view of the water along with a fieldstone fireplace that must have provided a nifty ambiance for the newlyweds. Three bedrooms up, one in-law bedroom, bath and door in the cellar. $1,135,000 and, as I mentioned, gone instantly along with, I believe, the two building lots spun off the original homestead at $700,000 (0.22 acre, also on Mill Pond) and $625,000 (0.17 acre, interior lot) respectively. I’m glad for Carolyn’s success, naturally, but I’m also grateful for her establishing some fresh comparative prices for those of us who trying to evaluate Cos Cob lots. When the market keeps going up it becomes difficult to take a sale from, say, ten months ago and try to extrapolate. I hope we don’t have to ever try extrapolating downward over the months but, right now, as theses sales demonstrate, that’s very much not a worry.

July 9, 2004

Dog Days
School ended and the town emptied, leaving those of us with nowhere better to go feeling distinctly underutilized. Thirty-three new residences were listed for sale during all of last week (a single busy day in April might see that number and more). Seventeen houses went to contract and eighteen lowered their prices, an interesting balance. And that was it. Ho hum. But this is a good time to be a buyer. There are some good houses still out there (insert plug for my six bedroom colonial on Weaver Street here) and less frenzied competition from fellow buyers. If you’re in town, have your agent take you out looking. She won’t have anything better to do, and, if you find something you like, you can probably get away with a lower bid than will be accepted next fall. Houses worth looking at? At random, 97 Shore Road in Old Greenwich, 8 Meadow Road in Riverside and 43 Hunting Ridge Road in Greenwich. Each is different from the other, all are interesting. Go see, and treat your agent to lunch while you’re at it.
Rentals
There are two hundred eight-three active rentals available in town (and five hundred thirty-seven residences for sale, but this is about rentals) and almost three-quarters of them (one hundred ninety-three) are asking less than $4,500 per month. Fifty-eight below $2,000, one hundred thirty-five between $2,000 and $4,500. As any landlord will tell you, rents are down significantly from, say, 1999. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be any panic selling by landlords; land values keep rising and even if they’re losing money on rents, the appreciation of their properties makes up for it. Of course, sooner or later these owners might grow tired of making money only on paper and will cash out but, for now, they seem to be hanging on. The rising interest rates, we Realtors speculate, will slowly make renting look more attractive to some people and if that happens, look for rents to go up. That hasn’t happened yet and I’ll repeat the advice I mentioned a few months ago: if you’re considering a major renovation of your house, this would be a good time to find a low-cost rental to live in while the demolition dust is clogging your old kitchen.
Who Buys these Things?
Just toured one of those houses that are blighting our town. You know the type: stark, forbidding stone exterior, huge, cold rooms and bedrooms so large that the happy couple will never find each other to say goodnight, let alone throw things at each other. The rooms go on and on with no discernable purpose except perhaps to stroke the ego of the purchaser (“wow, Huntley, I didn’t realize you were this important! Three billiard rooms! Sixteen home entertainment centers! And not a single book—good on you!”). Completely lacking in grace, charm and proportion, these houses sell almost as quickly as they pop off the assembly line. I just can’t figure out why. The other question I toy with is what will happen to these monsters when fuel prices soar, Wall Street stops generating multi-million dollar bonuses for each junior Vice President and no one wants them (the houses and the junior vps). Will we have condominiums in the Back Country? Rows of plywooded empty mansions on Round Hill Road? I am not predicting imminent doom but I do remember that Wall Street does not rise in a straight line forever; I wonder whether some of Greenwich’s younger citizens do. And I don’t begrudge the kids their toys, I just wish they had better taste and weren’t littering the landscape with huge, awful examples of the worst that architects and builders can produce. Of course, it’s an uncooperative attitude like this that prevents me from selling the damn things, all to my creditors’ dismay.
Oh, that Guy
A reader has pointed out that I conflated the name of the former owner of the Old Greenwich Book Store, Van Messner, with the long-time assistant there, Pyke Johnson, and came up with “Van Johnson”. That’s a good theory. More likely I was thinking of the actor. Who could forget “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”? The bookstore is gone now and Pyke passed away recently, I was sad to learn. On a brighter note for the eastern end of town, Just Books Too is flourishing in its location next to Arcadia Coffee House. Go buy a book.

July 2, 2004

Modern Art
My reference recently to bland, cookie-cutter colonial-style houses brought an anguished email from a reader who has loved living in her own contemporary house but is now having a difficult time selling it. Her plight rings true. In Greenwich, it seems to me, there is less and less room for any departure from “traditional” architecture which, these days, I’d define as a massive, stone and shingle pseudo-colonial with fifteen foot ceilings on both floors and a master bathroom large enough to accommodate an Olympic-size swimming pool (and a shower for eight). Cold, gross and impersonal sells very well today, and wise builders are obliging the market.

If you don’t want to live in a mausoleum and are tempted to experience the wonderful light, views and openness a good contemporary design can provide you should probably move out west. Failing that, there are some great houses for sale right now in Greenwich that I think are excellent buys. For instance, Jean Ruggerio has 40 Sumner Road listed for $4,299,000. The house is spectacular, built on over five acres just three years ago. It is large: 10,700 square feet, but it doesn’t feel particularly over-sized and somehow feels warm and inviting. Great views, the best lot on Sumner and constructed to the very highest standards. If you figure that the land it sits on is worth $2,000,000, the house itself is selling for about $200 a square foot. You can’t build a doublewide for that. Moving down the price ladder, Joyce Somm is asking $2,180,000 for a great contemporary masterpiece at 6 Upland Road. I’ll confess that I didn’t get this house, at first. It was designed by its owner with certain windows purposely directed toward the sky, rather than the yard, a decision I initially considered to be a mistake. My fellow Round Hill agent Mary Crist, who has somehow endured twenty years of marriage to architect Aris Crist, opened my eyes, showing me how the space worked and how the windows let light sweep around and through the rooms. She was right, I was wrong, and this is now one of my favorite houses. Finally, Amy Zeeve’s listing at 31 Glen Ridge Road for $1,360,000 is also appealing. Just under three thousand square feet on over an acre, it’s set high on a hill and offers those views I thought were lacking in the Upland house. Any one of these houses would be a terrific place to live; my own clients won’t look at “contemporaries” but perhaps you should.
Wipe Your Feet!
No sane homeowner would welcome a hundred agents with muddy feet wandering through her house during an open house, and we Realtors understand that. On rainy days, a polite request to remove our shoes is acknowledged, usually gracefully, and acceded to. What frosts some of us (me, anyway) is when that same request is made on a perfectly sunny day when shoes are dry. We’re in and out of as many as thirty houses on any given day in the circuit and stopping to remove shoes (well, flip flops) is a pain. But what’s really annoying is when, having complied with the request we step onto the kitchen floor and find the soles of our feet sticking to a disgusting mess of grease and cooking oil. If you insist on making agents partially disrobe before entering your house, won’t you please mop the floor? But don’t do so on my account; I won’t enter a house with a no-shoe requirement in clement weather. I’ll come back when it’s raining, thank you.
Beach House Café There’s been some flack recently from Old Greenwich shopkeepers about this restaurant’s outstanding success or, more accurately, the parking problems engendered by such success. While it is true that finding a parking space on Sound Beach Avenue during lunchtime is more difficult these days, that seems a fair trade off for the vitality the Beach House has restored to this section of town. Some years ago, when the Grand Central Market folded and CVS was kept from occupying the space for over a year (two years?), there was almost nothing going on in Old Greenwich. Van Johnson, then proprietor of the Old Greenwich Book Store, said he didn’t care what went into the space just as long as someone did so that it would draw foot traffic back. I think he’d repeat those sentiments today. As an aside, I highly recommend taking the trouble to find a parking space (try behind CVS) and picking up a pizza from Beyond Bread, right next door to the Beach House. Friday and Saturday nights only, it’s the best thin-crust pizza I’ve ever had, with the possible exception of that served by Andy’s Hideaway, in St. Barts. But Andy has the advantage of offering St. Barts as a condiment. If you’re stuck here, try this one.