99 Husted Lane
This was a nice old (1935) house renovated in 1997 and listed for sale in May of last year for $5.250. Sold today for $3.9 million which is respectable and evidence that there are indeed buyers out there. Over an acre of land, with a pool, on an excellent street, the assessed value was just $2.013 which just shows you that some of these assessments are nuts. Even I could have managed to sell this for $2 million.
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so the low assessment means the owners weren’t paying their fair share of taxes
Do you have the price/transaction date of the previous sale?
I toured this house. $3.9 seemed high to me at first, but it makes sense as I think it over. Most of what’s on the market right now is either (I’ve made this point before) a spec-built monstrosity on lousy land or a tired old house with a weird layout that it would take substantial amounts of time and money to rectify. 99 Husted has good location, good land, the house is not brand-spanking new but it is roomy, well-laid-out and in good shape. It felt like a real home, not the Bates Motel or something in the Frontgate catalog. It went for a premium over similarly aged and sized houses, I’m sure.
It sold for very little, Jane, in 1994 ($940,000 or something) but given the complete make-over it underwent, plus the long time since that purchase, I thought it was of little relevance.
anon, tax assessments are funny because they can be spot on, way too low or way too high. There’s a house on Old Mill, that’s been on the market seemingly forever, that when I first saw it, I thought was priced at least $1 million too high (perhaps it was priced at $4, and I thought high 2′s – something along that magnitude). As I toured the house I noticed that the owner had left ut a notice of rejection of his tax appeal – the town insisted that the proper value was $4 million! If I’d been that owner, I’d have tried to get the town to buy it for that amount, if it liked it so much. I think, averaged over the 15,000 or so residences, the assessments are okay, but individual prces can be weird. I’ve been mentioning the assessed values lately because, in the past, the average sale was 2.2X the assessment, on average. Now, most of the sales are selling at or below that average. The exceptions now would probably have been exceptions before, i.e., the assessment was too high or too low.
What Helsa, you are leaving me too?
Tell me you went browsing in mid-country strictly for perspective and design ideas. Mostly to see first hand ideas that don’t work. Ideas that shouldn’t be brought back the Cob.
After the library, I must be the only one left in the Cob with a computer.
assessments are meant to be 70% of market value at the time of assessment, but if the assessor does not actually walk the property or go into the house they can be way off (I live in one of those, thankfully)
BTW zillow estimate on 99 husted is 3.9 miliion – I have noticed that they do a pretty accurate job these days
helsa I agree, what is selling now are reasonably priced AND SIZED houses on good land – I would guess less than 20% of the inventory qualifies…
It seems like everyone wants to move up/over to mid-country these days, Cos Cobber.
Accolay, “moving over” perhaps, but not “moving up.”
They’ll be back. They’ll realize the folly it is to move to mid-country. The larger lots, the in-ground pools, the higher stone walls; it all sounds good on paper until you realize how out of touch you become. The Cob is the hub and spoke of the greater greenwich community. You need to be here in order to be on top. Mid-country is for going out to pasture.
No one moves “up” to mid-country, Accolay, it’s either down or a lateral transfer – if you’re moving from Byram, for instance, or Port Chester.
Meant moving up/over as in directions–latitude and longitude–from Cos Cob, but I like the unintentional double entendre. Not all of us can live in the Beverly Hills-esque neighborhood of Cos Cob.
Quite right Accolay but fortunately, when Cos Cob is out of reach, Riverside offers her welcoming bosom.
this is hardly good land
re tom at 1:25,
I too live in a house that has an incorrect appraisal value. The county (not in CT) thinks the house has only 3/4ths of the heated-and-cooled square footage that it actually has. Somehow they missed the two-story addition the previous owner put on in 1997.
I tell this tale not because it’s so fascinating, but because of its cautionary value; if you feel outraged by your latest tax appraisal/assessment value, do your homework before you squawk.
I was considering some mild squawking about an alleged 6.4% increase in value from Jan 06 to Jan 09 (… not a lot of money, I know, but any post Jan 06 gains certainly evaporated by Jan 09), but I changed my mind right quick when the assessor I spoke to on the phone started to tell me the property info he had on his computer!