Nothing fishy

Fjord Fisheries has expanded in its new location in downtown Cos Cob and now sells Niman Ranch beef and other good meats. I just purchased three pork chops cut from, I think, a Berkshire pig (he wasn’t around to ask) but wherever it came from, it was “heritage” pork – from old fashioned breeds that haven’t had all their fat and flavor bred out of them. These creatures are said to have been raised humanely, an odd choice of words, perhaps, for something that is destined to end up as supper but, if I’m going to continue to eat meat, and I plan to, I’d just as soon not have it tortured during its brief lifetime (try diagramming that sentence). So net net, the chops, grilled outside to a medium rare, were delicious. The stuff isn’t awfully cheap at $9 lb but $13 produced three thick chops that fed all three of us diners. A reasonable luxury, I think.
The fish is still great at Fjord – I had monkfish from there just last night – but now they have meat, too. I tend to resist change and I liked the funky old building where Fjord was based for so many years but this move has resulted in better things, for the owners and for customers. A nice place to shop.

Don’t tell OwlGore

Average temperatures in U.S. drop

Mars Lander bites the dust

It was cool while it lasted, and it lasted much longer than it was designed or expected to, but the Lander’s batteries have succumbed to the Martin winter’s diminished sunlight. Great job by NASA.

Update: Right planet, right outfit (NASA) wrong robot! The two Mars Rovers, which were not intended to lst more than 3 months, landed on Mars in January 2004 and are still going strong. Neato.

The Fall of Richard Fuld

As related by Bloomberg. Good reading while waiting to testify?

Moving up the price scale

16 Hurlingham
So how are the rich faring? We’ll find out, I suppose, when this place in Conyer’s Farm sells. Built in 1986 on 10 acres of lakefront it sold for $5.1 million in 1998. The buyer tried reselling it a year later for $7.875 and when that didn’t work seems to have yanked it off the market and put some cash into some serious renovation work. At least I think he did because it reappeared on the market in 2006 and sold for an even $12 million. It resold again in 2007 for $12.4 and now, yet another year has passed so it’s back on again, asking $13.750 (don’t the wealthy ever stay put?). There’s no mention in the current listing of any work that has been done to account for a $1.350 million jump in price, but maybe someone famous lived in it during the past 12 months. The owner shows as Berkeley Real Estate LLC which suggests that this was not, say, Eliot Spitzer’s home away from home, but you never know. There’s a broker open house tomorrow so I’ll go up there and ask.

2 Old Stone Bridge

This is a nice house with good street presence – by which I mean it sits up high on a hill and is nice to look at – yet hasn’t sold since it came on the market in the spring. Originally priced at $2.595 million the relocation company that owns it has grudgingly dropped it a couple of times and today reduced it to $1.995 million. I thought it wasn’t a bad value at $2.1, but the buyers out there obviously disagreed. The last time it sold was in 2000 for $1.150 but the place was renovated and expanded in 2004 so the new price doesn’t really represent a straight 9% interest appreciation. But how much are those renovations worth in this market? We’ll find out, eventually. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a farmhouse style, decent house with a separate bedroom bath over the garage, you might want to look at this. It’s a Raveis listing but regular readers here know that doesn’t effect how I call things (in fact, at least one posting today, not nearly so positive, is also a Raveis listing. So there.)

New Canaan Chateau Auction?

266 Michigan Rd. I wrote about this property a couple of months ago as it came up for auction and suggested that a couple of Greenwichites could pool their resources to buy it and convert it into an aging-hippie sort of commune. Far out, man! Apparently you didn’t listen because, so far as I can tell, the auction didn’t work and the place is still for sale. Funny how these auctions generate a blizzard of press releases before they take place and then whimper off into the darkness afterwards. Remember that Taconic Road auction that made the New York Times? Last I heard, the few bidders who showed up all presented personal checks, against the stated rules of the auction, and the first couple of them bounced. The sellers are said to be regrouping.

Why I detest the Republican Party

They’re a bunch of whining babies. That’s in addition to them spending the last six years trying to outspend Demmerkrats and demonstrate that they can be as compassionate as Teddy Kennedy. What a bunch of yo yos.

Here’s a conundrum

8 Bailiwick Road, on the western side of town, sold for $2.075 back in July 2007, and I thought the seller got a lucky break. The new owners rehabbed it and put it back on the market eight months later for $3.250 million. Bailiwick is always a tough sell, notwithstanding its nice community pool and rec center, and this house didn’t sell. Now the contractor has reduced it 23% to $2.495 million and I truly have no idea: did he really put a million bucks into this house to justify his first price, in which case he’s about to take a very serious bath, or is the new price more reflective of the value he added? If the answer is the latter, then what the heck was he thinking back in March? If the answer is the former, then a buyer may have a deal on his hands, if he wants to live in Baliwick Bailiwick.

Going Up!

“Come visit this exciting property and imagine the possibilities”, tomorrow’s open house list invites for this particular listing. I’m familiar with the place so I don’t need to visit to see possibilities. One possibility is that, with 4,573 sq. ft. on a half acre where only 3,000 sq.ft. are allowed, expansion is not going to happen. Another possibility is that the place won’t sell at its new price because it failed to sell for $200,000 less just last week, when its original listing expired. With all due respect to the value real estate agents bring to a transaction, I suspect that price, rather than the broker, kept this place from finding a buyer. I’d love to hear the sales pitch that agents use when persuading a seller to both switch brokers and raise their price. I’m just not imaginative enough to even attempt that but then, I have so many failings, I won’t let this one worry me.

Will a 10% price reduction be heard in the forest of unsold homes?

Here’s a perfectly nice house on Round Hill Road that sold for $5.7 million back in February 2006. The new owners “renovated’ it, according to the listing (aside from redecorating it and transforming it from a casual farm house feel to a typical Back Country frump palace, I don’t notice any difference) and placed it back on the market this past May for $7.250 million. Now it’s been nibbled down 10%. Enough? I sort of doubt it.

Once in a …

Postal Service seeks cuts of 40,000 workers.

Bail out GM and Ford?

One reason I love the Internet (besides that it provides column fodder when there is absolutely no real estate news to report) is the thoughtfulness of (some) of the postings on almost any subject imaginable. Here’s an example: Professor Bainbridge thinks we should let the car makers suffer the consequences of performing so miserably over the past decades. At least one of the comments below the professor’s thoughts offers a good refutation. Make up your own mind, (it won’t have any effect either way, of course) but there’s useful material to be found here.

One thing the Professor touches on but doesn’t really discuss is the protection of car dealers by state legislatures. When car manufacturers tried to streamline operations or, in the case of Porsche, vastly improve customer service, the independent dealers flocked to their state capitals and got relief. Connecticut is just one of many states that prohibit any interference with the operations of car dealers by manufacturers. Folks who opposed this legislation many years ago pointed out that it shielded dealers from responsibility and prevented car manufacturers from rationalizing their distribution system. No one said, “if you pass this legislation, you’ll bankrupt the industry over-night”, but the underlying premise to the opposition was that interference with the workings of a free market served as a drag that would weaken companies, not help them. The trouble, as I see things, is that we’ve been dicking around with the economy for decades and, because nothing collapsed, we saw nothing wrong with our tinkering and stepped it up. Now some chickens are coming home to roost and we all wonder what happened.

UPDATE:
Here are still more discussions and links on the subject. As someone who grew up with Chevies, switched to Datsun when I was 19 and never seriously looked at a Detroit car again, I’d say the car makers have had it coming for a long, long time. See ya.

Buying a foreclosed house – one man’s tale

Here’s an interesting article from the L.A. Times about one of its business writers (eventually) buying a foreclosed property. I wouldn’t think things are much different here in Connecticut so have at it (the article, if not the actual process).

12 Chieftans

The listing for this house tells us that it was the original carriage house for the Gimbel estate and that its name was “Wentworth”. I rather suspect that Wentworth was the chap you called to muck out the stalls, not the actual hovel he lived in but legends are just that, and one hates to loosen anyone’s grip on history.

And this listing does indeed have its own history, because it was first put up for sale in 2002 for $2,595,000 and expired unsold a few months later. The owners tried again in 2003 with the same price and the same lack of results. In October, 2007, back it came, this time asking $2.995 and, wouldn’t you know it, pfft.

That listing expired last month so here we are, in a different market, asking $3.1 million. God does so love an optimist!

Why wait for him to accomplish anything?

Start the National Holiday now!
This is all a little sad, given the disillusionment that’s going to settle in beginning January 20. But it’s also very funny – we’re in for an amusing four years.