Another day for dozing

Another failed contract: 249 Riverside Avenue, asking $1.895 and recently reported as an accepted offer is back. Some land on River Road (the other River Road, running north/south on the east side of the Mianus from Sheephill) has an accepted offer: three lots, asking $2.1 million for all three, I’d imagine they’ll sell at a discount from that; 351 Taconic, almost in Banksville also has an accepted offer. It’s got a house and land that backs up to the Stanwich golf course and was last asking $2.3 million, down from the $3.1 million it started at a year ago. Hey, what’s a million bucks?

And that’s about all she wrote. If you were hoping to sell your house this spring, I think you’re too late. That’s not to say that there aren’t still buyers out there but they’ve probably already considered your house earlier this year and rejected it so absent a significant price cut you aren’t going to get them back. And no one cuts their price significantly in Greenwich because, just like our children, every one of them is unique, precious and practically priceless.

This will lose her every vote but Obama’s

 

If you’re sitting around the dinner table and you can’t figure out who’s the dinner, you’re the dinner

Elizabeth Warren submitted dog recipe to canine  cookbook, “Pow Wow Chow”

Is Joe Biden going to be retired before the convention?

 

Hussein muzzles his pet VP

In a development that worries everyone who enjoys a good belly laugh, the White House will no longer allow Joe to speak with the press.

Fools rushing in or a genuine market recovery?

 

Waiting out the market

Luxury homes are selling again in California.

Bidding wars are breaking out for luxury homes in such wealthy Los Angeles enclaves as Brentwood, Beverly Hills and Bel Air as an increasing number of buyers bet on rising home prices and investors return to the market. Even properties in need of extensive renovation are being fought over by shoppers who expect to resell them for more after a remodel or rebuild.

“The percentage of people who think prices are only going to go up is the greatest I have ever seen in my career,” said Syd Leibovitch, president of Rodeo Realty Inc. in Beverly Hills.

Sales of Beverly Hills homes priced at $2 million and higher climbed 11 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 39, according to DataQuick, a San Diego-based provider of property information. In Brentwood, whose residents include actress and singer Julie Andrews, they increased 56 percent to 25, and in Malibu they gained 64 percent to 23.

I’m surprised: California’s debt ($875 billion), current budget deficit ($16 billion) and oppressive taxes and regulations would deter me from spending big money on a house there but perhaps these are buyers with a short-term perspective. I’m more long-term, but that’s not necessarily a good thing: I predicted that the Euro would fail even before it was adopted and continued to predict its demise as it climbed for ten years and, finally, began its return to the mud where it was spawned. A currency trader who shared my opinion and acted on it would have gone bust many years ago.

I do notice that the houses in this article are mostly in what here in Greenwich we’d call the “moderate” range: $3.5 – $4 million, and that bracket hasn’t suffered too much here, either. Our market is dead for just about anything above $5 million and for al I know it’s dead in California too.

But it’s an interesting phenomenon, and might at least bring some sense of (probably false) hope to owners of  =our $5 million + class.

Yesterday’s news sold to Greenwich Time as new

A pleasure to show (although not to Jews)! This one won’t last! Convenient to transportation!

“Most expensive house in Greenwich!” blares the headline in Greenwich Time and its subsidiary the Stamford Echo. $33 million dollars! ($32,995,000, actually, but why quibble?). Wow!

Hell, this is just Mel Gibson’s old place at 124 Old Mill Road which sold less than two years ago for $24 million after sitting on the market for 1,018 days since early 2007, when it started at $39,500 million. I haven’t bothered to check but it’s likely GT wrote about it then, but how can they be expected to remember what happened two years ago, let alone five?

It’s a nice house and a large amount of land – 75 acres, fronting on the Merritt, but although its sellers claim to have “renovated” it, I doubt those renovations cost $9 million ($8,995,000). They could have, of course, who knows? The house is certainly large enough and old enough to absorb that kind of money.

I certainly don’t fault the listing agent, Joe Barbieri for working the public relations angle – that’s what a great agent does – but a real paper would do a little investigating of history and facts before merely reprinting a press release. A real paper.