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.
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.
posted by Chris Fountain at 10:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home