Nature red in tooth and claw

Can’t have this without …that

Or, when coyotes attack  – video sent by a reader up on Quail Road but I warn you – graphic. And I mean, really graphic, Alice’s Restaurant, Natalie Jarnstedt, who likes deer to die this way, graphic – coyote ugly:

 “Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead, burnt bodies, I mean kill, Kill, Kill, Kill.” And I started jumpin’ up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL,” and he started jumpin’ up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL.” And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, said, “You’re our boy.” 

Okay, you’ve been warned!! Proceed at your own risk. (Okay, not really so bad, but I don’t want tender souls to be shocked or offended).

One open house today

18 Pinecroft, before renovations

But it was a doozy, the mansion at 18 Pinecroft Road. 9,000 sq. ft. up, another 4,000 underground, $7.250 million, this place has so much space, so much of everything in fact that I asked the nice fellow checking hats at the door, Eric Bjork, whether I could come back and show it to some of my $3.5ish clients the next time they complained that a house we were viewing had too small a master bedroom/bath/closet etc. You want that? Pony up and I’ve got it for you.

This is not my kind of house, obviously, but I have clients with large, extended families, a squad of nannies and a phalanx of armed security guards, the whole thing – picture a Saudi Princess’s entourage descending on Paris and you’ll have the idea – and I listen to what they want. 18 Pinecroft could probably meet those wants. Looks like superb quality of finish and has a nice layout. My quibble is that the lawn’s somewhat confined (1.6 acres, with most of the yard to the side) for this price range and the houses leading up to this one are far more modest in scale. You can’t change the size of the lot, but Pinecroft is really well located, off Parsonage, close to town and yet a dead end, so there’s no traffic. I’m sure that the next building boom will see those tiny gardner’s hovels  replaced by mansions, and when they are, you’ll be nestled right in with your neighbors instead of looming over them. Why you’d want to lose that lord of the manor feeling escapes me, but Greenwich is known for its down-to-earth, unpretentious residents so I’m sure most buyers don’t want to be the biggest frog in the pond, right?

But here’s a puzzlement, one that perhaps Fudrucker can answer upon his return from the SOTU tonight: this lot is 1.61 acres in the R-2 zone, which has a FAR of 0.09. By my math, the maximum allowable house size is 6,312 sq. ft,, so how were 9,000 squeezed in here?

18 Pinecroft, as renovated

But they were, and they’re for sale. It’s quite a house, and if that bonus finally vested and is now burning a hole in your (crocodile) money belt, here’s a place to spend it.

It may be February, but the market’s heating up

As it almost always does this time of year. If you’re planning to list your house this year it should be on the market now, not three months from now when the flowers are out but many buyers have already found what they wanted. In any event, as of 2:30 today, there are eight accepted offers reported. Two of interest are 11 Broad Road, “in the Belle Haven ‘neighborhood’ “, which usually means close but no cigar, asking $5.299 million, and 8 Bradbury Place, Riverside, asked $2.850 and gone in just four days.

11 Broad Rd

11 Broad Road never dropped its price during its time on the market – it didn’t sell last fall but it has now, after 155 days. That’s back to normal for this price range.

8 Bradbury

8 Bradbury sold for $2.875 in 2008 and is gone this time, as I said, in just days. Asked $2.850, but did it go in a bidding war? I don’t know because I wasn’t involved, but that’s exceedingly quick even for Riverside. Highway noise, too!

Deferred bonuses vesting, pent-up demand; something’s stirring out there, but I’ll say it here for the first time: don’t overprice your house, because buyers are no longer counting on a rising market to bail them out of overzealous bidding, and they’re being cautious.  Price it right, sell it fast. Otherwise, you’ll sit. The good news for sellers is that the right price seems to be going up.

An open and shut case of discrimination against the handicapped

There’s always a career in politics to resort to

Crazed Lehigh student Megan Thode sues university for the C+ she received and the subsequent ruination of her life. I understand her complaint: the ADA mandates A’s for all education majors, so what the heck happened here?

Enemy of the people

A crazy gun nut friend of mine sends along this poster – clearly, he should be arrested for the safety of the rest of us everywhere.

Another buyer for 17 Sherwood

17 Sherwood Ave

17 Sherwood Avenue reported an accepted offer back in September but it must have fallen through, because it returned to the market awhile back and has been available since. But no longer; it is reported as “accepted offer” again today. I really liked this house – it’s an old antique, 1787, that’s pretty much sacrificed most of its historical significance to modernization and expansion, but it has charm (and the original main room, which is about 5′-10″ high) and still retains just over 2 acres of its land. The former owners paid $3.150 for it in 2007 – bad timing – did some decent renovations and then tried to get $3.495 in ’09 before losing it to the lender two years later. The bank’s been asking $1.899, which seemed a good deal to me, if not to actual buyers.

A tough layout for most people, including clients of mine who I showed it to, but a lot of very nice house for under $2 million.

Not much on the open house tour today because of school vacation, but I’ll poke around what is out there and report back.

By God, here’s a campaign promise he kept!

Charity begins at home: Sasha and Malia admire new phone from the taxpayers

WSJ: $2.2 billion spent providing Friends of Barry with free cellphones. No word on mortgages and birth control pills but surely if we can buy folks phones ….

Was it because he doesn’t play football or because he deserved a stupidity premium for jumping subway turnstile while armed?

Seven years imprisonment for carrying pistol in NYC

A Manhattan PATH rider was sentenced yesterday to seven years in prison — and another 3 1/2 years’ parole — after cops stopped him for fare-beating and discovered an illegal handgun.

Ruben Sanabria, 37, was caught with a loaded .40-caliber Smith & Wesson at the 14th Street station March 30.

Two cops grabbed him after they saw him hop the turnstile, and quickly found the weapon in his waistband.

Sanabria was also carrying extra bullets and a holster.

He pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, which has a maximum sentence up to 15 years.

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. said Sanabria got what he deserved.

“This defendant illegally carried a loaded semiautomatic firearm into a public transportation system used by thousands of people every day,” Vance said.

“Preventing gun violence is one of my top priorities as district attorney, and I will make sure that this office continues to seek strong sentences for crimes involving firearms.”

Uh, Mr. Vance? The crime here was fare beating, and didn’t involve a firearm. I’d like to think there was more to this case than merely carrying a gun “in a place used by thousands of people every day” an act that can be done with impunity in most other states at, say, shopping malls. That football player, Plaxico Something, was sentenced to a year in prison for the same crime, and the public was told he’d received such a harsh sentence ‘to send a message”. What makes this poor jamoke a better poster child?  Is the back story here a prior history of violent crime convictions or is it Newtown? It makes a difference; to me, if not to NYC’s publicity-crazed district attorney.