New Houses
Janie Galbreath (Round Hill Partners) has just listed 3 Woodside Drive in Milbrook for $4.795. A fabulous house, built in 1930 and completely renovated, from wiring to baths and kitchen without losing any of its original grace. Sited on a huge (for Milbrook) yard of 1.65 acres.
Not in Milbrook but overlooking its golf course, Marshall and Mary Ann Heaven are building a house at 35 Morningside Drive that I thought was very nice. It’s on a half-acre lot and is being built to a top-end level of finishing. Four bedrooms, six thousand square feet of house which includes, I believe, the huge finished basement. It’s been withdrawn from the market but I assume it will return soon.
I also liked Carolyn Anderson’s $859,000 listing at 8 Kent Place in Cos Cob. This is a smallish older house in great shape with a decent yard and nice location (Kent is a dead end off of Orchard). Original doors and moldings from 1928, lots of light and, probably, room to expand on the third floor.
Gary Silberberg (Intriguing Realty) coaxed me into driving over to the west side of town to look at his listing at 8 Seton Lane and I’m glad he did. A confession: fifty years in town, and I’d never seen this particular subdivision. I like it. There is a series of quiet, lightly-trafficked streets, many of which, like Seton, are dead ends. Some of the houses back up to the Byram River and all are modest, but in good condition. 8 Seton Lane is priced at $875,000; if that’s representative of the neighborhood’s pricing then the whole area looks like good starter home territory. Obviously all this is not news to its residents but it was to me.
A Hunting We Will Go
A joke circulated through Wall Street years ago which, because this is a family newspaper, I can only paraphrase: the basic story line involves a bear hunter who keeps returning to the woods despite a worsening infliction of indignities by a bear. On the hunter’s final expedition Mr. Bear sneaks up behind him, taps him on the shoulder and asks, “you didn’t really come here to hunt bears, did you?” I’m reminded of this joke because we Realtors often encounter people who “bid to lose”. These are clients who, time after time, bid enough on a house that they look like serious bidders but always fall just short of submitting a bid large enough to actually buy the place. This quirk of human nature is not restricted to house buying. I observed the same thing when I was a trial lawyer – a case could be settled at a price that screamed out in economic sanity yet one side wouldn’t budge. Always, it was because there was some non-economic issue in play: figure out what that was, and, sometimes, the case could be resolved. Of course, legal cases had an obvious way to end these ambiguities: try the sucker and see what a jury had to say. In real estate, the matter usually dies a slow, whimpering death. The house goes to a higher bidder, the buyer is priced out of the market by rising prices and he disappears. So the moral of all this, I suppose, is that you’ve been trying to buy a house and keep getting shut out, do a bit of internal examination and determine if you’re really bear hunting or just out for a nice stroll in the woods.
Wall Streeters
At the risk of offending my core clientele, the worst offenders of the “bid to lose” game are Wall Streeters who are convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that the market will soon drop and fear that they’ll look like chumps for paying anything close to the asking price. I made a comfortable living for a decade inflicting financial punishment on these people for pushing high-tech stock companies on widows and orphans as “can’t miss” investment opportunities. Had I limited my practice to suing real estate agents who recommended Greenwich real estate as a good investment I’d have starved. Greenwich real estate appreciated 24% last year and has been going steadily up since approximately 1880. So when somebody who thought that companies with no earnings were worth fifty times the market value of General Motors now tells me that he’s too smart to buy Greenwich real estate, I don’t necessarily listen.
Fair is Fair
I enjoy poking fun at our town’s police department from time to time—a holdover from a rebellious youth, probably. But we recently had a medical emergency in my household and had to call 911. The responding officer and two EMTs couldn’t have been more competent, reassuring and caring. We’re fortunate to have such high quality people working in town and I am aware of that. But really, arresting a guy for cross-country skiing on a golf course?
Janie Galbreath (Round Hill Partners) has just listed 3 Woodside Drive in Milbrook for $4.795. A fabulous house, built in 1930 and completely renovated, from wiring to baths and kitchen without losing any of its original grace. Sited on a huge (for Milbrook) yard of 1.65 acres.
Not in Milbrook but overlooking its golf course, Marshall and Mary Ann Heaven are building a house at 35 Morningside Drive that I thought was very nice. It’s on a half-acre lot and is being built to a top-end level of finishing. Four bedrooms, six thousand square feet of house which includes, I believe, the huge finished basement. It’s been withdrawn from the market but I assume it will return soon.
I also liked Carolyn Anderson’s $859,000 listing at 8 Kent Place in Cos Cob. This is a smallish older house in great shape with a decent yard and nice location (Kent is a dead end off of Orchard). Original doors and moldings from 1928, lots of light and, probably, room to expand on the third floor.
Gary Silberberg (Intriguing Realty) coaxed me into driving over to the west side of town to look at his listing at 8 Seton Lane and I’m glad he did. A confession: fifty years in town, and I’d never seen this particular subdivision. I like it. There is a series of quiet, lightly-trafficked streets, many of which, like Seton, are dead ends. Some of the houses back up to the Byram River and all are modest, but in good condition. 8 Seton Lane is priced at $875,000; if that’s representative of the neighborhood’s pricing then the whole area looks like good starter home territory. Obviously all this is not news to its residents but it was to me.
A Hunting We Will Go
A joke circulated through Wall Street years ago which, because this is a family newspaper, I can only paraphrase: the basic story line involves a bear hunter who keeps returning to the woods despite a worsening infliction of indignities by a bear. On the hunter’s final expedition Mr. Bear sneaks up behind him, taps him on the shoulder and asks, “you didn’t really come here to hunt bears, did you?” I’m reminded of this joke because we Realtors often encounter people who “bid to lose”. These are clients who, time after time, bid enough on a house that they look like serious bidders but always fall just short of submitting a bid large enough to actually buy the place. This quirk of human nature is not restricted to house buying. I observed the same thing when I was a trial lawyer – a case could be settled at a price that screamed out in economic sanity yet one side wouldn’t budge. Always, it was because there was some non-economic issue in play: figure out what that was, and, sometimes, the case could be resolved. Of course, legal cases had an obvious way to end these ambiguities: try the sucker and see what a jury had to say. In real estate, the matter usually dies a slow, whimpering death. The house goes to a higher bidder, the buyer is priced out of the market by rising prices and he disappears. So the moral of all this, I suppose, is that you’ve been trying to buy a house and keep getting shut out, do a bit of internal examination and determine if you’re really bear hunting or just out for a nice stroll in the woods.
Wall Streeters
At the risk of offending my core clientele, the worst offenders of the “bid to lose” game are Wall Streeters who are convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that the market will soon drop and fear that they’ll look like chumps for paying anything close to the asking price. I made a comfortable living for a decade inflicting financial punishment on these people for pushing high-tech stock companies on widows and orphans as “can’t miss” investment opportunities. Had I limited my practice to suing real estate agents who recommended Greenwich real estate as a good investment I’d have starved. Greenwich real estate appreciated 24% last year and has been going steadily up since approximately 1880. So when somebody who thought that companies with no earnings were worth fifty times the market value of General Motors now tells me that he’s too smart to buy Greenwich real estate, I don’t necessarily listen.
Fair is Fair
I enjoy poking fun at our town’s police department from time to time—a holdover from a rebellious youth, probably. But we recently had a medical emergency in my household and had to call 911. The responding officer and two EMTs couldn’t have been more competent, reassuring and caring. We’re fortunate to have such high quality people working in town and I am aware of that. But really, arresting a guy for cross-country skiing on a golf course?
posted by Chris Fountain at 10:21 AM
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