
154 Cognewaugh
I’ve been busy much of the morning setting up appointments for a client tomorrow and was struck by the number of deals that seem to be in the works. Higher end houses, perhaps because they have so much to give in the pricing department, seem finally to be moving. Not all will sell, as 154 Cognewaugh did yesterday, for 60% of their original asking price ($3 million from a $4.895 price two years ago) but builders are getting flexible (as their banks breath down their necks?) and buyers are realizing, I think, that when this crop of relative bargains goes, there won’t be much new construction for a long time [just try to diagram that sentence, Hiram]. I’m guessing that we’ll see a number of builders disappear who enjoyed a decade or two of prosperity. Their ranks will be refilled, but not for awhile.
We saw the five acre building lot on Meadowcroft go to contract this week at what I’m guessing was close to asking. Another big, beautiful house reportedly has an accepted offer again at a price that surprised me. Other new houses are fielding offers, some “ridiculous” according to their agents (no not all those offers are from me) and others closer to the mark. Hey – start knocking off a couple of million dollars and lots of houses start to look interesting.
My experience right now is that interest is falling on new spec houses at a bargain and low end ($1.5 million and down) older houses that permit people to afford Greenwich for the first time in years. If you have an older house priced in the $3-$6 million range, it had better be in an incomperable location or, at least right now, I don’t see much interest in your offering. Maybe that will change when the new houses all go.
UPDATE: my hope is that, if houses start moving, the logjam will break. No one wants to be the last chump to buy Greenwich real estate or even to go first into a dead market, so if we start seeing some activity, we’ll have comps to show clients that they can base their buying decision on and maybe, just maybe, a little twinge of urgency will emerge. If I think a house is going nowhere for a few months I’ll tell my client that. But if three in his price range sell, then a decision might have to be made sooner, rather than later.