A final bit of real estate news to close the week

5 North Ridge

5 North Ridge, Havemeyer, sold for $805,000. It originally asked $898,000, but the owners paid just $685,000 for it in 2011 so assuming the renovations they performed didn’t cost too much, they made out. One bit of historical perspective on prices: This sold for $585,000 in 2002 and $685,000 in 2011, so prices climbed much higher in the past two years.

141 Cat Rock

And once again, 141 Cat Rock is showing an executed contract. Asking $1.295, I thought this property was worth its asking price, but every time I tried to show it I was told it was unavailable to show, there was an accepted offer, etc. Just Wednesday the latest previously accepted offer was pulled and the house was returned to market. That it now has a fully executed contract suggests to me that the parties to the original accepted offer got to dickering, the owner yanked it and put it back up for sale and the buyer backed down and did the deal.

That’s just my guess, of course – I wasn’t involved and have no direct knowledge of the situation. But if I had a hot property and the buyer started being difficult, that’s what I’d do.

Who’d have predicted this?

All of Boston shut down except …

A Newton store manager told BuzzFeed, “There was an automated message going around telling businesses to close, but because we’re Dunkin’ Donuts, we called the police department and they said we didn’t have to.”

 

A reader suggests a poll, and why not?

This is not funny!

And over at the Democrat organ …

Bill Gaston, center

DailyKos: don’t let this little kerfuffle over bombs distract us from the real issue: guns!

This will be short but I am hoping somebody else will pick this up.  I know this is cold and many won’t have the stomach for this.  But the progressive movement must move quickly to take control of the media meme coming out of Boston.  I have seen this happen before, like vultures the right wing moves in with lightning speed to create a meme about any traumatic event that suits their purposes.  It is already happening with Boston as documented by Greg Sargent.  The right wing Boston meme is going to be wall to wall, 24 hours about immigration.  It will be used to destroy what is left of the immigration bill.  It will hit fever pitch when Limbaugh starts his broadcast.  It will become more coordinated over the day.  Many in the mainstream media will take their ledes from these psychopaths.

We have to learn to use the Internet to take control of memes … The question has to be how did we allow these two people to become armed, violent assailants.  They had a shoot out with the police and one of them got away.  Where did they get the guns?  Would they have had the confidence to even plant those bombs if they didn’t have an arsenal at home?  Where did that arsenal come from?  Would people like this have been able to get guns if there had been background checks?  The suspect would have been apprehended easily if he didn’t have a gun and he would not be able to terrorize an entire city.  Guns are ripping out entire social fabric apart.  Again and again talks [sic] about these issues when discussing what is going on.  It is about guns.

(Massachusetts, as mentioned earlier today, has about the strictest gun control laws in the nation and yes, imposes background checks. It has banned large capacity – more than 10 rounds-magazines since 1994).

But do watch for the pressure from Democrats to return the focus to guns. It’s what the people want, damn it!

Oh for Christ’s sake

This just in from Sound Beacher:

The Boston Bombing story has reached our town, the elementary schools have cancelled outdoor recess today and the schools are being extra guarded because there was chatter the suspect may have taken a train to CT. Just got e-mail letter from the school.

Please.

 

Drop that price, quickly

56 Riverside Lane

Word today that 56 Riverside Lane has an accepted offer. It came on at $1.745 but when it hadn’t attracted a buyer after 27 days, the owner dropped it $100,000, on April 16. Three days later, deal done. Moral, I think, is price it (within reason) where you want, but realize that this is a very strong market so if your price isn’t working, drop it now, rather than let it hang around.

This is one of the Riverside Lane houses that backs up to the Mianus River, by the way, which makes it far more attractive, to me, than those on the other side abutting Spezzano Drive.

Electrical grid vulnerability

Eco-terrorists? – Someone, shot up San Francisco power plant Tuesday.

California energy officials urged people in the South Bay to cut back on power use Tuesday after a PG&E substation was damaged by vandals [sic] overnight.

The California Independent System Operator issued a Flex Alert for Tuesday, asking Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley utility customers to cut down their electricity use until midnight, including by lowering lighting, turning off thermostats and powering down unnecessary appliances.

Vandals appeared to have shot up a bank of transformers at a PG&E transmission center just southeast of San Jose, a PG&E spokesman said. Crews were working to clean up an oil spill caused by bullet holes.

Just sayin’ ….

Real estate news (!)

31 Lockwood Rd

31 Lockwood Rd, Riverside, $2.149 million, reports an accepted offer after a month on the market. Listing describes it as having a “luxurious master owner’s bathroom’ no mention of  a family group assembly room, but I’m sure there’s something like that. Owners paid $1.280 for it in 2001, so that’s pretty good.

And 11 Macarthur Drive, $975,000, which was reported as having an accepted offer just two days ago, is back. Don’t know what went wrong.

US Forest Service (!) blamed Boston Bombing on Tea Party

Well it could have been true. What’s disheartening is that these people have infiltrated and now control every facet of our government, from teachers to EPA staff to the Kenyan to, now, the friggin’ Forest Service.

Your tax dollars at work

 

 

You’re saying middle class taxpayers bought me this car? Cool!

Fiskar spent $603,000 producing each of its $100,000 sports cars for millionaires.

Fisker Automotive Inc. spent more than six times as much U.S. taxpayer and investor money to produce [in Finland] each luxury plug-in car it sold than the company received from customers, according to a research report.

The Anaheim, California-based company made about 2,500 of its $103,000 Karmas before halting production last year, disrupting its plans to use a $529 million U.S. loan to restart a shuttered Delaware factory owned by the predecessor of General Motors Co. (GM) The Karma was assembled in Finland.

Fisker was allowed to keep using money from its Energy Department loan after violating its terms multiple times, according to a report released April 17 by PrivCo, a New York-based researcher specializing in closely held companies. It said it based its report on documents, including the loan agreement, obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

“They made a mistake” in awarding the loan, PrivCo Chief Executive Officer Sam Hamadeh said of the Energy Department in an interview yesterday. “Should they have fought this sooner? Obviously — as soon as it became evident that they had begun to default.”

Fisker has spent $1.3 billion in taxpayer and venture capital money, or $660,000 for each car it sold, the report said.

Fisker stopped manufacturing cars late last year and fired three quarters of its remaining workers April 5. The company’s first repayment of $20.2 million on the Energy Department loan is due April 22, the report said.

Al Gore, reached on his yacht while vacationing with Leonardo diCaprio, declined to comment.

Don’t worry, be happy, Greenwich Democrat says

Democrat peace sticker, updated

Bill Gaston, chairman of the Greenwich Democrat Peace and Love Committee, spoke with FWIW this morning to reassure all of us that everything is going to be just fine up there in Watertown.

“Massachusetts has one of the toughest gun laws in the country,” Bill tells us, “and they’ve reduced licensed gun owners’ numbers from 1.5 million in 1998, when that law was passed, to just 200,000 today. It’s true that the gun murder rate has doubled, armed robberies increased 20.7 %  and armed assaults are up 26.7%, but the citizens up there live in peace and harmony because they know that they’ve made their children safe. Their love and compassion for all people, especially misunderstood victims of the Bushcheney era, will overcome this poor man’s anger and gentle him down immediately.

“To those cowering behind their doors, hoping the bomber won’t burst into their homes, relax: Democrat party members are fanning out into the neighborhood as we speak, distributing “gun-free zone” posters, written in cyrillic, Urdu and Arabic on bright yellow oaktag to every homeowner who had the foresight to register with our party. Trust me, this is all the protection you’ll need because when he encounters such a sign our brother in peace will be filled with remorse, sink to his knees and apologize for losing his temper.

“I realize that the homophobic, deranged, obsessed faggot racist teabagging members of the NRA are poo-pooing our efforts to end this confrontation peacefully but I ask all of you this: which will make you feel safer, a colorful ‘no-guns allowed’ sign on your door or an AR-15? I think that questions answers itself. Certainly it does for me, and the countless victims of Bushcheney-loving gun nuts.”

Who needs a TV when you have clients who’ll text the news?

One of the bombing terrorists shot dead, hunt’s on for the other.

Greenwich Association of Realtors: racist sexists!

HERE’s your master bedroom, slut!

FWIW’s own, beloved Walt, who’s paid so handsomely to keep an eye on such things, sends along this article about home builders eliminating the term “master bedroom” from listings in order not to offend women and people of color.  So far as I know my own association has shamefully refused to go along with this concession to modern feelings and not only still uses the term but insist that even the most sensitive among us list the location and number of “master bedrooms” on each floor. Oh, the horror!

“While it is certainly true that “owner’s suite” is more appropriate,” Christopher Fountain, chief executive and sole member of Simon Legree Woman Haters and Gun Owners Club in Greenwich, told FWIW, “we have a ton of forms already printed up and we’re loath to just toss ’em out. Call us niggardly, call us Scots, but don’t let the little woman call us late to dinner.”

Fountain’s and the Greenwich Association of Realtors’ intransigence notwithstanding, change is clearly underway in the building industry’s new world order. “Book shelves” are out, Fountain observes, “lest illiterates feel uncomfortable. And we like ‘Owner’s Suite’  because it conveys an air of elegance, of having arrived, of finally being someone, unlike your friggin’ bogtrotter cousin Seamus in the Bronx who your mother always liked best. Your house has an owner’s suite, the  world’s your oyster, I don’t care if you’re an Abe, a curry-muncher, camel jockey, chink, dago or hell, even a cheese-eating surrender monkey: next stop, Round Hill Club.

“We restored ‘powder room’ to the lexicon when we discovered so much of our alligator-bait clientele liked doing coke in a clearly-labelled recreation room but otherwise, we’re doing our best to obfuscate and embellish. You know those windowless little cubicles in the basement we all cram our Filipinos in?” he chuckled, “we call them ‘nanny quarters’ , or even ‘guest rooms’ — doesn’t make the little tailless monkeys any happier, but it pleases their owners, and that’s the point.

“I could go on, but you get it: change is on the way, and change for the better, if you’re a product of our new, sensitive education system. Now excuse me, I gotta go find a loo, or a water closet or lavatory, little boys room, potty, restroom, comfort station, the facilities – you get it; someplace with a nappy-changing table – oops! Can’t use ‘nappy anymore, can we? –  for fathers who take their co-parenting responsibilities seriously.”