Cos Cob firemen will give away smoke detectors to residents Wednesday.
Daily Archives: March 6, 2012
I thought caves were fireproof?
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Another drug death, this one marked with a bang
Man kills girlfriend when his homemade cannon explodes.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man was arrested Tuesday after a homemade cannon blasted his mobile home and killed his girlfriend in a remote mountain community east of San Diego, authorities said.
Richard Fox, 39, shot the cannon after loading it with fireworks powder, said San Diego County sheriff’s Sgt. David Martinez.
His 38-year-old girlfriend was found dead from shrapnel wounds when authorities arrived at the home.
Preliminary evidence suggested Fox was under the influence of alcohol, Martinez said.
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From a reader, sign found in the Byram River
Comments Off on From a reader, sign found in the Byram River
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A feeble wind
The windmill solution to our energy woes is dead, but all isn’t lost because shale gas is doing what the wind can’t. Wonder why, then, Obummer and his crowd are trying to stop shale mining and force-feed us windmills? Couldn’t be because they want to shut down the economy so …?
If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often wilfully deaf. The good news though is that if you look closely, you can see David Cameron’s government coming to its senses about the whole fiasco. The biggest investors in offshore wind — Mitsubishi, Gamesa and Siemens — are starting to worry that the government’s heart is not in wind energy any more. Vestas, which has plans for a factory in Kent, wants reassurance from the Prime Minister that there is the political will to put up turbines before it builds its factory.
America is having far better luck. Carbon emissions in the United States fell by 7 per cent in 2009, according to a Harvard study. But the study concluded that this owes less to the recession that year than the falling price of natural gas — caused by the shale gas revolution. (Burning gas emits less than half as much carbon dioxide as coal for the same energy output.) The gas price has fallen even further since, making coal seem increasingly pricey by comparison. All over America, from Utah to West Virginia, coal mines are being closed and coal plants idled or cancelled. (The US Energy Information Administration calculates that every $4 spent on shale purchases the same energy as $25 spent on oil: at this rate, more and more vehicles will switch to gas.)
So even if you accept the most alarming predictions of climate change, those turbines that have ruined your favourite view are doing nothing to help. The shale gas revolution has not only shamed the wind industry by showing how to decarbonise for real, but has blown away its last feeble argument — that diminishing supplies of fossil fuels will cause their prices to rise so high that wind eventually becomes competitive even without a subsidy. Even if oil stays dear, cheap gas is now likely to last many decades.
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The markets dead, the lady Realtors have disappeared. Where’d they go?
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The very rich still seem to have money – maybe you should raise your price?
Although only 5 houses in the $7-$8 range sold last year and only 2 of those in the past six months, the numbers are significantly higher for houss priced above $8 million. In that range, 13 sold last year with 7 of those sales coming in the past six months. Here are those 7 (I’m too lazy to track down the histories of all 13).
Address Orig. Price Sale Price DOM
32 Twin Lakes $14.995 $6.600 1,093
9 Woodside $10.250 $7.730 233 (2008 sales price, $10.950)
50 Carriglia $11.950 $8.500 452
460 North $11.950 $7.987 1,057 (2004 sales price $8.650, $3.0 renov)
1109 Lake $12.950 $9.250 599 (2007 sale price $10.3)
11 Skyridge $13.900 $13.000 129
65 Upper Cross $28.000 $16.000 1,279
No way to make money, but what the heck, they’re out of their houses
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They’re smart not to linger
138 Cat Rock Road has just taken a whack out of its price, knocking it from $4.195 to $3.750 today. I said when I first saw this house a few weeks ago that I thought it was great – beautifully constructed to an interesting design that appealed to me, if not to everyone. But I wondered how it would do with the sale last May of the house next door for $2.3 million. A short sale, conceded, and a different house, but still, $2.3 and $4.2 is quite a distance. Now that distance has been shortened.
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Realtor listing language – it’s a wonder to behold
22 Cherry Tree Lane down at the end of Indian Head is a great looking house and I’m glad to see it returned to the market, marked down to $5.495 from its first asking price last June of $6.995. Better. But I was struck by its description of the property which (because I don’t know how to grab a screen shot) you should Google a bird’s-eye view to most enjoy:
“Watch the sailboats in [did they sink? Ed] LI Sound from your front porch in wonderful Harbor Point”.
Now no one likes Harbor Point more than I and I’ll vouch that you can certainly espy sailboats from some vantage points in that association, but not here: 22 Cherry’s front porch faces the street, the other side of which borders a swamp/tidal pond. You might see an intrepid lad sailing his model yacht, I suppose, and if you were to climb on the roof, stretch your neck and peer west you might catch a glimpse of a real sailboat out at sea, but watching them sail by while you’re sitting in a rocker on this home’s front porch? Don’t count on it.
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What are the prospects for selling that $7-$8 million house? Pretty dim.
Having looked at the 29 houses priced between $7 and $8 million that are currently for sale, let’s look at the five in that price range that actually did sell last year. How’d they do?
Address Original Price Sale Price DOM
396 Round Hill $11.500 $7.000 1,365
84 Butternut $ 7.950 $6.300 406
124 Chimney Cor. $ 8.500 $6.950 244
36 N. Stanwich $10.300 $6.600 1,038
17 Wynwood $ 9.995 $6.500 712
That’s a total of $48,245,000 in asking prices and $33,350,000 in sales, or 69% of the ask and 753 Days on Market.
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Just because I’m bored
I looked up the histories of the 29 houses currently for sale in the $7-$8 million range. More time consuming than you might think because of the clever ways the GMLS rcords things like original asking price and days on market (DOM) but here they are:
Address Orig. Price Current Price DOM
7 Little Cove $7.695 $6.995 664
487 North $6.995 $6.995 218
12 Taconic $6.999 $6.999 08
85 Butternut $10.500 $7.195 751
38 Cedarwood $7.750 $7.250 106
17 Woodside $7.295 $7.295 174
29 Pecksland $5.275 $7.300 539
36 Dawn Harbor $7.350 $7.350 15
8 North Baldwin $7.900 $7.390 141
29 Beechcroft $7.950 $7.400 363
14 Hycliff $7.400 $7.400 127
11 Winding $9.975 $7.450 1,052
504 North $11.795 $7.495 1,161
78 Doubling $7.495 $7.495 50
55 Burying Hill $8.750 $7.495 261
Address Original Price Current Price DOM
186 Lake $7.500 $7.500 144
1 Farwell $12.650 $7.500 1,469
25 West Way $7.695 $7.695 173
170 Old Mill $7.795 $7.995 01
548 Stanwich $7.900 $7.900 08
449 Round Hill $7.950 $7.950 375
26 Broad $9.250 $7.950 487
78 Mayo $9.375 $7.975 613
10 Lighthouse $9.950 $7.995 1,107
47 Round Hill $8.995 $7.995 531
27 Midwood $12.750 $7.995 738
2 Walsh LN $10.300 $7.995 343
822 North $8.450 $7.995 267
141 Taconic $9.995 $7.995 139
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Better than owning a Volt!
Broker open house Tuesday is upon us once again and as has been the case recently, there’s no need to waste gas to see the handful of houses being shown. In the Back Country there are three repeats, one 2006 house coming back on and that’s it – 4 houses, total. Below the Merritt, there are just six single family houses to see, all repeats, and with the exception of a Belle Haven house @ $8.995 million, the highest price asked is $2.995 (one of those), one asking $1.995 (down from $3.2), one at $1.295, a $799,000 and bringing up the rear, $534,000. Phooey.
The new listing in Back Country, 170 Old Mill, is of some interest if only because it’s coming on asking $7.8 million after selling new in 2006 for $8.850 million. It now joins the other 28 houses asking between $7 – $8 million, for a total of (drum roll) …29! Five houses in the $7-$8 range (asking, not getting) sold in all of last year, with just two finding buyers in the past six months. I keep asking what’s going to happen to this part of our inventory and so far, can’t see an answer. The houses are just sitting on the market gathering dust and presumably something’s got to happen, either they’ll be withdrawn or some owners will chop their price. Depending on what percentage of owners decide to throw in the towel and move their property down a few notches, those houses below them are going to get hammered.
Or everyone will just decide to stay home. Hey, it’s Greenwich, and real estate values always go up, right?
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Who is Lee Whitnum?
Some Demmerkrat from Greenwich who’s running for Senate, apparently, and enough of a nut job, according to our current (Demmerkrat) Governor, to justify a restraining order against her. Hey, I’ve never heard of her – don’t much follow the Demmerkrats except when they’re digging in my pocket, but she’s got quite a history, according to Wikipedia. This should be fun – I hope she wins the senatorial election, just so we can balance out Feinstein and the other kooks.
Here are some biographical notes as culled from Wikipedia:
Was dorking John Kerry back in 1990 and was his main squeeze until he dumped her in favor of the very wealthy ketchup lady and thereby gained access to enough cash to run for president (while “he still has the hat”, he did not win the election itself, you may recall).
Has sued our town, the same one she lives in, and Peter Tesei for allowing a Bar Mitzvah to be celebrated in Town Hall.
No fan of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby here in the United States, she said of Dannel Malloy, our dyslexic Governor, “you have to be able to read to learn about AIPAC’s unchecked power – it is not discussed on television” (now that’s funny!) .
Darling of the Occupy Wall Street movement, naturally.
Like I said, this should provide some grand entertainment in the upcoming political circus. You go, girl!
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