The new logic of Obumpski or, prepare to meet our doom

Walking, talking proof against affirmative action

The Prez: More jobs will be created by extending unemployment benefits than by the Keystone pipeline. See, if you’re on the dole, you’re really on the payroll of your fellow working citizens and that counts as a job. Don’t you get it?

Has reality come to Riverside?

9 Wallasay Way

Well probably not entirely, but I see some signs of it in the fringe areas of this section of town. 9 Wallasy Way, for instance, has just been listed for $2,735,500, a bit less than the $3.1 million paid in 2007. This is a well built house and it is on the water, but Wallsay is that street immediately between St. Catharine’s and Hill House (I’d never known it existed until I saw this house in 2007) and the water, Cos Cob Harbor, is pretty much directly under the I-95 bridge. That passes for fringe in Riverside, in my opinion, and I wondered at the price it sold for back then. We’ll see.

 

10 Normandy

And I suppose we’ll see what happens with this other new listing, 10 Normandy Lane. Normandy’s a dead end off of Indian Head so it’s quiet and has no traffic, which adds considerably to its value. Number 10 was built in, I think, 2002 and these sellers bought it for $4.450 million in 2004. Now they’re asking $5.6 million, after adding unspecified renovations.

Banks don’t want your house

Take that loan away!

I spoke with a reporter from a major paper this afternoon and learned an interesting fact – some months back we had discussed the reluctance of banks to move on defaulted loans and today she had a statistic to confirm my and her suspicions: In 2008 there was essentially no statistical difference between the time it took to foreclose a loan under or above $1 million – 248 days for those under, 260 for those over. Not so now – it’s 600 days for the “small” loans, 920 for the larger.

What’s going on? Probably several factors, and we’ll have to wait for the article to appear to find out but certainly the rich have access to better lawyers with which to stall judicial proceedings, and the banks hate, just hate taking a multi-million-dollar hit to their loan portfolio, so they are in no hurry to add your loan to their collection.

Of more interest to me, however, is what both these numbers tell us about the shadow inventory and the steady erosion of home prices they promise. If it’s taking nearly two and three years, respectively, to move foreclosure cases through the courts and out the door again, we can expect a regular flow of distressed properties competing with regular sales for at least the next decade. That’s a long time, and should serve to keep house prices depressed for exactly as long as it takes to resolve this mess. Worried that the price of that house you want is going to climb? I wouldn’t.

Somulent market

Maybe all the buyers are busy cashing their bonus checks today but they aren’t out there spending – not today, at least. Two executed contracts reported: 109 Dingletown Road, a teardown on a back lot that asked $1.297 and is almost certainly selling for substantially less and 312 Sound Beach Avenue, asking $1.395, selling for less. It last sold in 2002 for $1.220.

Its highest and best use might be leaving it as is

Washing day up on Round Hill

92 Buckfield Lane came up for sale today as a land listing – 2 acres in the 4 acre zone, asking $895,000. Open house isn’t until next week so I’ll reserve judgment but it seems to me that someone might want this place for the 1957 cape that sits on it rather than develop the land. The 4-acre FAR limits on this undersized lot severely restrict the house you can build here – including garage, attic and goat pen – to just 4,791 sq. ft.  That’s huge for (some) Riverside denizens but absolutely stifling for the Blue Bloods of the North. Depending on the condition of that cape, a buyer of modest means and a taste for the wilderness might prefer to fix the place up and move in. He’ll never be invited over to his neighbors’ polo games but then, why would he want to?

Obama going full – tilt boogie for the Green Leftos

No oil for you!

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reports that Obumpkus will kill the Keystone pipeline this afternoon. The man figures, accurately, that he’s got the union vote locked up regardless of how many jobs he kills with this decision, and they’ll vote automatically. And he can count on the press to tilt coverage consumed by the ordinary citizen in the White House’s favor, so all he has to worry about is getting the Greenies to come out in November – he’s been upsetting them, one hopes, with his targeted assassination program, the indefinite detention law and his refusal to close Gitmo. This will cement his hold on their feeble minds.

It’s eleven o’clock; do you know where your real estate is?

Waiting for the spring market

Not being reported on the Greenwich MLS hotsheet. Nothing, and I mean nothing has been reported today. There was a time, maybe pre-2008, when the market started buzzing immediately after MLK Day. Not so now. I don’t care about the lost revenues – as Walt will tell you, I’m used to that – but this is ostensibly a blog about real estate news and when there’s no news well, you get stories about that Stangler kid.

True story: British Air tells passengers they’re all gonna die

Sorry, wrong button

And the pilot does it twice! Hits button on a transatlantic flight and passengers are told the plane’s going down. Especially since this has happened before, perhaps the airline will consider moving that button. Or maybe it’s “tradition”, and we know how the Brits hang onto those.

Former chairman of the Sierra Club: what’s killed manufacturing in the US? Hint: it’s not high wages

Taxes, regulations, bureaucracy.

Police suspect foul play

No, Lassie, I wanted a thigh!

Dog finds human head near Hollywood sign.

But it’s what the mob wants

InstaPundit picks up Megan McArdle’s essay on New York City without Wall Street. Not pretty. The Occupy Wall Street crowd is convinced that by destroying the financial industry there’ll be more room in the city for artistes and bongo players but then, how will those fine people pay for the 1/3 of the city’s population that’s on welfare? Hmm, that’s a poser – pass that bong, dude.