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Another one bites the dust
Rumors that the Antares project at Putnam Green was in deep trouble have swirled through the real estate community for months but publishing unsubstantiated rumors (as opposed to opinions that are just plain wrong) can cause nasty libel suits, so you didn’t read them here. But now that the news has broken, I’ll give my opinion that failure couldn’t have happened to a more deserving entity. From the start, Antares has exhibited a brazen arrogance unusual even for Greenwich. As you may recall, Putnam Green and its sister development, Weaver Hill, were modestly- priced rental units on the western side of town. Antares bought them for $223,000,000 two years ago (at which time I did mention in this column that, when someone’s eager to sell, you might want to ask why) and almost immediately set about evicting the tenants, many of whom had lived there for years. They set impossibly high “buy-in” prices and imposed a take-it-or-leave-it deadline that many tenants, if their letters to me were representative, found oppressive. So having antagonized the very people most likely to be interested in living in that side of town, Antares set about trying to peddle the units to strangers. Not many bit and now the financing’s been yanked, workers pulled off the site and all sales cancelled. This is the same group that “accidentally” destroyed wetlands off of Langhorne Lane while building a cluster of high end houses and I suspect that neighbors of that bit of vandalism will lose no more sleep over the fate of this company than will the displaced tenants of Putnam Green. In my opinion, of course.

Is there any encouraging real estate news?
Not on the national level, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t panic here in Greenwich, yet. Some houses are selling: sixteen went to contract in the past two weeks, at (asking) prices ranging from $8.5 million (waterfront land) to $760,000, so some buyers are out there. On the other hand, 106 new listings came on, which is normal for this time of year but we’d obviously like to see a better balance between those figures. I’ve laughed at buyers over the years who insist that they’ll wait until prices come down and end up paying more, or never buying in town. For the first time in a long time, I’m not laughing; they just might be right.

But, just to prove I’m often wrong
A new listing on Lake Avenue came on last week priced at $6,200,000. Nice location set far back from the road and wonderful grounds but the house was built in 1965 and, to my eye, looked dated. I figured it would sit six months on the market before its price more accurately reflected my opinion – ha! Gone in just a few days via Ellen Mosher. It’s hard, sometimes, to screen out personal opinions from objective judgment. In this instance, I knew the taste of my clients looking in that price range, knew they wouldn’t like it and, since I didn’t have any other buyers for the property, mentally discounted its price accordingly. That’s a dumb way to price real estate and I try hard not to do it; sometimes I fail.

Making lemonade
The National Association of Realtors is running an ad proclaiming that it’s a buyers’ market because “there’s more choice than ever”. Uh, yeah – that might also be what we refer to as a glut of inventory, but whatever.

Making lemons
A bunch of us agents traveled to the far reaches of Greenwich’s northern border to see a new house that was priced at, for that area, a pretty startling sum. No a bad house but nothing special, no “wow” factor so, considering that and its location, several of us independently concluded that the ultimate selling price would be half of what the builder is asking. We could be wrong – see above – but that’s a pretty large discrepancy between what we see as reality and what the builder is dreaming. At least if we’re wrong it will only cost us a foregone sale. If the builder has mis-guessed his project’s drawing power, he’d better hope he has a more understanding lender than Antares did.

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