What, did Laura Siefert move to Rocky Point?

GAR Proposed Rocky Point Development

Big doings at 36, 40 and 44 Rocky Point Road in Old Greenwich as lot lines are shuffled around to squeeze in another house.

Three related applications are seeking approval for a pair of land transfers and the construction of a new home on Rocky Point Road.

The first application, by Lorraine Slavin, trustee, calls for a land transfer of 6,000 square feet from 40 Rocky Point Road to 36 Rocky Point Road that will see 36 Rocky Point Road increase to 52,117 square feet while 40 Rocky Point Road decreases to 24,444 square feet.

But 40 Rock Point Road will get back 656 square feet in the second application. In this case, 40 Rocky Point Road will receive the extra land from 44 Rocky Point Road, which in turn will be left with 12,464 square feet; on 44 Rocky Point Road, a 3,911 square foot home is proposed.

 

So what’s the evidence he wasn’t a real postman?

 

Costner goes postal

A man “dressed as a postman” robbed two banks today. Well if he was wearing a postal uniform, how do they know he wasn’t in fact a postman?

Just wondering.

Another notch in Obama’s belt

Patriot Coal files for bankruptcy

The trouble with Obamism is that, sooner or later you run out of other fools’ money

Romney collects $3 for every $2 of Obama’s. Even France isn’t enough to close the gap, apparently.

Heck, he’s been pulling this scam since 2008

Obama paying your utility bills? Scam artists bilking Americans.

Old news; just ask Peggy Joseph.

When men have an equal right in deciding to abort a foetus, then let’s talk

NYT Op-Ed: unmarried fathers should be forced to pay child support, maternity costs and compensate women for any financial losses incurred as the result of having their baby. What happened to all that feminist claptrap about “our bodies ourselves”, which postulated that the choice whether to abort a foetus was a matter solely of concern to the person with the womb?

Denial or sheer panic?

 

Bankers see the future

Investors are now paying France for the privilege of lending it money. If the “smart money” thinks France is a safe haven, it’s not so smart but then, it won’t have its money for long, either. Dumb and broke doesn’t sound promising.

I like it

Mark Levin has a modest proposal and it would send this economy through the roof.

Ok, two can play the Obama game.  Here’s the Levin proposal: A one year tax holiday from all federal taxes of any kind (income, payroll, capital gains, and death) for all tax filers with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or less, and all joint and business returns with adjusted gross incomes of $250,000 or less.  The status quo will apply to all filers earning above these thresholds.

DB? Fudrucker? Comments?

Throw them ALL out

House Republicans join Democrats to spend federal tax payers’ money on anti-bullying programs in public schools. Could there be anything more local, of less national significance, than a school yard bully?

These cretins are putting our grandchildren in debt for this year’s campaign soundbites. Out!

47 Sinowoy sale price reported

Cos Cob, $683,000, contract in just ten days. Owners paid $690,000 in 2004 and put in a new kitchen so they didn’t get rich on this but they were smart to price it as they did and move on. Great little house, I thought, and I envy the new owners.

Of course, I really envy Fudrucker, who paid $415,000 in 2001 and got that 2004 sale price. Remember when you could make money in real estate?

Trulia, by the way, has this listing entirely screwed up, missing any improvements since 1920 and giving it just one “partial bath”. Not surprisingly, their computer values it at just $584,000.

World’s smallest violin

 

Seaside vacation off Oslo

Norwegian oil workers on verge of striking. They already work just 16 weeks a year, earn an average of $180,000 for those four months and receive a full pension at 65. They want that pension at 62.

Calling 3DB

From InstaPundit:

Related: Timothy Carney: Building The Free-Market Case Against Big Business. “The research Mitchell brings together helps show why government-granted privilege is so important to big business and so costly to the rest of society. In one key finding, he highlights research indicating that free markets, with fewer barriers to entry and fewer bailouts to prop up failed giants, make it harder for dominant businesses to maintain dominance. . . . Big business wants safety, but big-business safety hurts the rest of the economy. Disdain for bailouts and corporate welfare has resided primarily in the populist corners of the Left and Right. But the scholarly case against systemic privilege is strong and growing, too. The subsidy sucklers, bailout barons and regulatory freeloaders may soon face a challenge on a broad political front.”

Don’t fall for a bargain price

336 Stanwich Road in happier times

I see that 336 Stanwich Road has reduced its price again and is now asking $2.095 million. It’s now been for sale for 1,100 days, a fate I’m sure the owners didn’t expect when they bought it back in 2006 for $2.738 million, because it had been originally priced at $3.5 million and $2.7 must have seemed a relative bargain. It wasn’t.

This 1850 house was ruined – “remuddled” long ago, with all of its original charm destroyed and nothing good added, unless you consider the nonsensical modern wing, unconnected to the main house, an improvement.  I see this as land value only (2.24acres in the R-2 zone) with perhaps a few thousand dollars thrown in for the salvage value of some of the floor boards and beams. Too bad.

Real estate news

420 North Street

420 North Street price reported: $2.745. Asked $2.795, under contract (some months ago) in just 17 days. This house was an excellent value; it last sold in 2003 for $2.862 million and though the new owners didn’t seem to have done too much except maintain it in its then newly-renovated condition, it felt fresh, and priced as it was at a pre-2003 level, appeared to be a bargain.

Which it obviously was, as its brief stay on the market demonstrates. Compare that to its earlier history, if you like, when in 2002 it was priced at $3.295 and only sold for that $2.862 price in 2003 after 524 DOM. Yes, there’s a lesson here.

11 Serenity Lane

While 420 North’s quick sale didn’t surprise me, 11 Serenity Lane in Cos Cob did, selling for its full asking price of $1.695 in mere days. There are other Cos Cob homes – 21 Cat Rock comes to mind – that I would have thought offered more but clearly someone disagreed, and why not? It’s their money.

We have 1.76 acres of land at 76 Stanwich for sale, across from Central Middle School. Asking $1.6 million. I haven’t seen it yet but I hope to walk it soon. Depending on what’s there, this might be a good price for such a relatively large piece of land.

(My psychiatrist uncle, Uncle Gary, would have enjoyed this picture)

4 Middle Way, Lucas Point in Old Greenwich s new to the market at $5.150. Open house is Thursday, but its listing says it’s a 1901 home renovated eleven years ago on a half-acre. I like Lucas Point but I’d expect this price to include waterfront. Then again, I haven’t seen it yet.

And 2 Owenoke Way in Riverside is back, now at $2.075 million. It sold in September, 2010 for $1.7 million and you get nothing for this additional $475,000 other than the owner’s hope that the market has improved that much in the past 22 months. Maybe it has, though when I last saw it it had been used as a rental, ridden hard and put away wet. The listing makes no mention of anything done to it since then but perhaps its listing agent just failed to notice any improvements.

Better to cut swiftly and deep

21 Cat Rock Rd

The owners of 21 Cat Rock Road have nibbled at their price again and reduced it today to $1.649 million from yesterday’s price of $1.695. This house started off at $1.985 in 2009 and is now on its seventh price. It reported an accepted offer earlier this year when it was still at $1.799 so I understand the owners’ reluctance to cut still further but face it: an accepted offer is not a sale, and little bites off a price aren’t going to give the impression that this house is now a bargain.

Which it might well be, by the way, but had this been cut to $1.649 directly from $1.985 back there in 2009 buyers might have seen it as a deal, instead of just a distressed property that hasn’t sold in three years.

None of which is to suggest that this house is not well priced now – if you’re looking in this price range, check it out – but other sellers, at all price ranges, might want to take a lesson here.

 

Not that he’s the first president to lie to the American public, but how come there are never any consequences for doing so?

Mickey Kauss (discussing the pending bankruptcy of Obama-subsidized electric-car battery maker A123)

P.S.: Here’s a nagging question Obama chronicler Jonathan Alter may be able to answer: In his 2011 State of the Union address,  Obama laid out a plan to have “a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” a goal that now looks increasingly unrealistic insane. Did Obama know the million-EV goal was BS when he announced it? Was he misled by advisers? If the latter, have any suffered adverse consequences ?  Was he too inexperienced to know the extent to which bureaucracies tend to tell the boss what he wants to hear, even if it’s a fantasy? Or did he not care?

America’s best-selling plug-ins, the Volt, the plug-in Prius and the Nissan Leaf jointly sold 2,990 units in June. They were out-sold by a small sports car targeted at drifters, the Toyobaru hachi-roku, which sold 3,502 units in June.

Accepted offer

23 Dorchester Lane, Riverside, asking $1.295, less than 30 days on the market. Couldn’t fetch $1.1 in September, 2001 but that horrible time was good for nothing anyway. Given what’s currently available in Riverside this now seems like a decent buy.

This technique is (rarely) endorsed by the Greenwich Association of Realtors

Neighbors drive down value of house so they can buy it cheap.

A Queens couple are accused of being the neighbors from hell, scaring away potential buyers of the home next door just so they could snatch it up on the cheap, according to a lawsuit filed last week.

Ozone Park homeowners Charles and Karen Neglia say their neighbors, Guido and Milagros Florentin, are spreading lies to keep rival buyers at bay.

“The people who lived in the house were dirty,” Guido Florentin allegedly told potential buyers, according to the papers filed in Queens Supreme Court. “The house was in disrepair.”

In April, the Neglias put a for-sale sign in front of the home they purchased in 1985. They had an asking price of $317,000.

Florentin immediately made a lowball offer of less than half that amount, the lawsuit alleges, and when the Neglias refused, the abuse started.

Florentin allegedly staked out the house and pounced on brokers and home browsers with tales of woe.

He called it in “need of repairs” with “structural problems” and even blocked a shared walkway with garbage, the suit says.

The family that lives there is “dirty,” and the place is “falling apart, needs a lot of work, and it’s old,” he allegedly told one potential buyer and broker on May 23.

Florentin also defaced the vinyl siding of the house with tar, the suit claims.