Activity report for the day

Here’s a bunch.

226 Valley Rd

226 Valley Road, Cos Cob, sold for $975,000. Cute house, but the owners paid $965 for it in 2008 and, if I read the listing correctly, added on and renovated it, in which case they didn’t make as much on the project as they may have hoped.

8 Bailiwick

8 Baliliwick Woods Circle has a contract after just 14 days on market at $1.395. It last sold in 2002, for $1.115.

70 Gregory, another contract, $985,000, 26 days.

7 Edgewood (over behind the Mercedes dealer), $1.050 million.

12 Circle Drive Extension, land, $695,000, 21 days.

14 Stag Lane

14 Stag Lane reported an accepted offer last July but now has an executed contract. It was asking $1.195, which sounds okay, considering that the owners paid $1.225 in 2003, but Stag’s always a tough sale so they probably are taking less than that ask. Not a bad house at all, by the way.

18 Roosevelt

18 Roosevelt, Old Greenwich, has an offer after 14 days, $1.765. New, it sold for $975,000 in 1999, so some things do appreciate, in the right section of town.

 

475 Round Hill

475 Round Hill Road announces a price cut from $9.750 million to $9.500. The house has been on the market since May and this is its first price adjustment, so if you really wanted to buy it but were holding off because of its price, here’s your chance.

All that’s old is new again

70 Sherwood Ave

70 Sherwood Avenue, way out west, is up for sale at $4.975 million after being purchased in 2010 for $3.375. The house is a 1986 house that was totally, completely redone back in 2007 by a spec builder and put up for sale that year for $5.775.  As noted, it sold three years later for $3.375.

The seller justifies this $1.6 million price jump by citing the renovations that have been done since it was purchased, but the house was essentially brand new back then and in need of no “renovations” – I don’t get it. I’m further confused because, looking at the 2007 listing and today’s, I don’t see much difference in their descriptions, even though they were written by different brokers. Perhaps Joe Biden wrote the second one.

Here’s what the 2007 broker said about the house:

FRENCH STYLE COUNTRY 2 ACRE ESTATE HAS BEEN EXQUISITELY RENOVATED TO REFLECT THE BEST OF THE OLD & NEW WORLD. GRAND INTERIOR OF THE FINEST WORKMANSHIP. JULIET BALCONIES OVERLOOK THE BREATHTAKING 20 FT FOYER. 5 BEDROOMS, FORMAL LIVING & DINING RM. LIBRARY, KITCHEN W/BRKFT RM, FAMILY RM, ELEVATOR, MEDIA & FITNESS RMS. 3 CAR GARAGE & MORE. BEAUTIFUL TERRACES OVERLOOKING PICTURESQUE POND & NEW LANDSCAPING, UNDERSTATED ELEGANCE & EXQUISITE WORKMANSHIP THROUGHOUT.

That certainly sounded nice – so nice, in fact, that the new broker, three years on, seems to have kept everything, including that “understated elegance”. Looks to me that the pool, the gate and the generator are new; not sure they’re worth $1.6 extra, but then, I haven’t seen the gate.

FRENCH STYLE COUNTRY 2 ACRE ESTATE HAS BEEN EXQUISITELY RENOVATED TO REFLECT THE BEST OF THE OLD & NEW WORLD. GRAND INTERIOR OF THE FINEST WORKMANSHIP. JULIET BALCONIES OVERLOOK THE BREATHTAKING 20 FT FOYER. 5 BEDROOMS, FORMAL LIVING & DINING RM, LIBRARY, KITCHEN W/BRKFT RM, FAMILY RM, ELEVATOR, MEDIA & FITNESS RMS. 3 CAR GARAGE & MORE. BEAUTIFUL TERRACES OVERLOOKING PICTURESQUE POND & NEW LANDSCAPING. UNDERSTATED ELEGANCE & EXQUISITE WORKMANSHIP THROUGHOUT. NEW INFINITY POOL. NEW GENERATOR AND ELECTRIC GATE.

Two properties return to the market

And both are at least “interesting”.

43 Richmond Hill Rd

43 Richmond Hill Road is back, now at $3.950 million. It sold new in 2006 for $4.9 million, came back on at $5.495 in 2010, and has been kicking around ever since at successively lower prices. I’m not sure that this is, finally, the right price: as I recall, the land’s a little iffy (not bad, just not spectacular) and, to my taste, the barn silo-thing going on at one end of the structure is sort of silly, but the inside is very nice and the price trend is making it look better all the time.

(Representative)

And 552 River Road (the River Road east of the Mianus, not the one along the harbor in Cos Cob) comes back to us at the same price it wouldn’t sell for before, $1.2 million. This property’s at the southern end of River, a neighborhood of rather rough-looking multi-families and modest single family residences, but it’s zoned to permit at least three, maybe four units, and its acre appears to back up to the river. I’m not suggesting you put up a $3 million home here, but there ought to be a way to make some money on a couple of rental houses, or something. It’s an estate sale, and those are usually tough, because there’s always one heir who lives out of state and is convinced that anything in “Greenwich” must be worth millions. But might be worth taking a run at.

If Bloomberg says it, it must be true

Wall Street money revives Greenwich real estate as prices drop.

Most of it jibes with what I’m experiencing. Just beware of clowns like Raul Vilas who’s touting his John Street farm auction for property “once valued at $36 million”. I’m sure even the original listing broker didn’t value the place at anywhere near that sum, so don’t be suckered into seeing a bargain where there’s been a huge price cut. Hell, by that reasoning, Greenways, now at $140 million, is an outright steal after its $50 million price cut from $190. It is not: watch for the next $100 million cut, and then you (might) have a deal.

Al Gore lives his beliefs

Don’t your DARE do this to me!

You’d think that as the world’s expert on global warming the man would cheer on those who want to shut down the world’s economy and stop further production of CO2, so it is at first blush confusing that he’s so angry about it instead. Here he is just a few days ago:

“Why does partisanship have anything to do with such a despicable and dishonorable threat to the integrity of the United States of America?  It cannot be allowed. But it can only be stopped if people in both parties independents as well say, ‘look, I might not agree with everything that’s in the Affordable Care Act, but it did pass, it was upheld by the Supreme Court, it is the law of the land. You didn’t succeed in the constitutional process by which this was considered, and now you want to threaten to not only shut down our government, but blow up the world economy?….How dare you! How dare you!”

But no, his anger is really just proof that he truly believes what he’s been saying since 2006, when he promised that the world would cross an irreversible barrier in 2016 if we didn’t stop our wicked ways. Irreversible means it can’t be undone, and now, eight years on from his science is settled pronouncement, it’s obvious that nothing has been done or can be done in the next 24 months to avoid terminal catastrophe. It’s over, baby.

So no wonder the guy’s pissed: he wants to spend the declining days of the earth in the luxury to which he’s become accustomed to since discovering the profitability of Cassandraism, and anything that threatens his 110′ houseboats, his private jets and his 15,000 sq.ft. mansions on both coasts is really, really inconvenient. Shut down the world’s economy just as he’s clawed, kicked and bitten his way to the top? As he says, “how dare you!”

The man’s put his mouth where his money is, and you have to admire a politician like that.

Pessimists are usually right

The WSJ’s Daniel Henninger recently wrote an opinion piece urging opponents to simply let ObamaKare collapse under its own weight of failure, but I think this reader from Austin has it right: entitlement programs don’t go away, they just continue to grow. In fact, I’ll go the WSJ reader one better: nothing in the government goes away, ever, no matter how badly it fails. Progressives believe in the perfectability of man and society (see Marx, e.g.), so when a program doesn’t work, they don’t look at the inherent cause and inevitability of that failure, they just tinker with it, pass more regulations and allocate it more money to “get it right, this time”. Witness, just off the top of the head, the EPA, OSHA, Headstart, and the departments of Energy, Education and Homeland Security.

I would like to share Daniel Henninger’s confidence that ObamaCare is a doomed entitlement that will collapse under its own weight (“Let ObamaCare Collapse,”Wonder Land, Sept. 26), but historical precedents for an orderly dismantling of welfare-state benefit programs are very hard to find. Mr. Henninger’s forecast of ObamaCare’s demise hinges on public abandonment of the entitlement as its catastrophic effects unfold. Public disgust is destined to rise, according to Mr. Henninger, because the technological core of a centrally managed health system will be overloaded by a mind-boggling array of parties involved (i.e., federal agencies, state and local governments, employers, insurers, health-care providers and patients).

Many of us might agree that ObamaCare’s overreach will force change but question whether dysfunction was baked into a plan to blame greedy insurers and push for a single-payer solution or if the number of voters who have ObamaCare buyer’s remorse will exceed the number who are partially or fully dependent on government benefits.

Many U.S. companies have been rushing to drop bare-bones health plans and to steer employees, particularly part-timers, into insurance exchanges. An employer stampede out of health-care administration means that far more Americans will be dependent on government-sponsored plans in the next year or two. Once dependence and entitlement settle into a nation’s psyche, abandonment of social progress is unheard of, absent impending financial collapse.

As a general rule, progressive steps forward into entitlement minefields are usually followed by stubborn and expensive stomps to the finish line, not by retreats or surrender.

John Gardner

Austin, Texas

 

 

Glenn Reynolds warned of this back in 2009

But I wanna pway!

We’re increasingly hearing that America is “ungovernable”. Is that truly the case, or is the problem that we have an incompetent leader?

Someone on the Sunday talk shows pointed out to Chris Matthews that his old boss Tip O’Neil shut down the government 17 times over legislative disputes yet was never labelled a terrorist, by Mathews or anyone else.

“But those were just for a day or two”, Matthews responded, “it was just about money”.

A day or two, then a deal was struck, and business as usual resumed, unfortunately. Which leads to this point: Tip O’Neil and LBJ and in fact many of the old inhabitants of the swamp were professional politicians and, love them or hate them, they knew how to govern and advance their agenda: cilvil rights, poverty laws, whathaveyou. Obama, an incompetent amateur, does not, and Professor Reynolds predicted he wouldn’t be able to after observing the man for just nine months in office:

SEPTEMBER 5, 2009

A PATTERN OF INCOMPETENCE? “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.” Expect this to play out in thumbsucker columns on whether America is “ungovernable.”

Too bad Hothaus didn’t speak to this guy

We can burn the UN climate report for fuel I suppose, eh Nanook?

MIT scientist: UN report of global warming “hilarious”.

Not all scientists are panicking about global warming — one of them finds the alarmism “hilarious.”

A top climate scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technologylambasted a new report by the UN’s climate bureaucracy that blamed mankind as the main cause of global warming and whitewashed the fact that there has been a hiatus in warming for the last 15 years.

“I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence,” Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot, a global warming skeptic news site. “They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed it was 95 percent sure that global warming was mainly driven by human burning of fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases. The I.P.C.C. also glossed over the fact that the Earth has not warmed in the past 15 years, arguing that the heat was absorbed by the ocean.

“Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean,” Lindzen added. “However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans.”

“However, it is this heat transport that plays a major role in natural internal variability of climate, and the IPCC assertions that observed warming can be attributed to man depend crucially on their assertion that these models accurately simulate natural internal variability,” Lindzen continued. “Thus, they now, somewhat obscurely, admit that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified.”

Scientists have been struggling to explain the 15-year hiatus in global warming, and governments have been urging them to whitewash the fact that temperatures have not been rising because such data would impact the upcoming climate negotiations in 2015.

The Associated Press obtained documents that show the Obama administration and some European governments pressured UN climate scientists to downplay or even omit data that shows the world hasn’t warmed in over a decade.

Good – I won’t have to fear ending up next to him on my next flight

 

But what about his unused frequent flyer miles?

Bawling meteorologist Eric Hothaus swears off flying over concerns about global warming.  He’s already converted to vegetarianism to cut his contribution to methane production and vows, “if this doesn’t end CO2 emissions, I’ll just quit breathing – Mother Gaia, I hear you!”.

I hope he sets an example for all the celebrities, politicians and junket-loving UN staffers who love to jet off to global warming conferences in Bali. Especially the bit about breathing.

Cry me a (chlorine) river

Mr. President, drain this pool!

The NYT is out with a front page story today announcing with great fanfare that half of the 250 accidental deaths of children each year are unreported.

How about what the CPC calls “the leading cause of death for young children?  390 deaths for children under fifteen? If it saves the life of just one child, shouldn’t we ban residential swimming pools? Doesn’t that carnage merit front page coverage on its own?

Or is there some other agenda at play here?

Malloy to shape Supreme Court

The last one had big tits; I don’t think we have to go there this time.

Governor Dannel Malloy is set to make a third appointment to the Connecticut Supreme Court and he already knows what he’s looking for: “A colored person, ” Malloy told FWIW. “I did the gay guy first, then a Hispanic chic, now I need a genuine Affffricaan – American, or that’s what my staff tells me. They’re still checking on whether that gay male was counted as a male or something else, but if it was ‘something else’, then I can probably use a male for this slot. Or a transgender carpet-muncher, I suppose – I’m waiting to hear.”

Asked about the qualifications of the jurist he’d select, Malloy smirked: “I just listed the qualifications.”

TV “news” doesn’t include coverage of IRS

Not when it involves the crushing of dissent. 

“We do, however, provide 24/7 coverage of the important stuff citizens should know about”, boasts Deborah Turness, British flack and newly installed director of NBC entertainment news division. “We had the Royal Baby story absolutely saturated, and next week’s five-day profile of Miley Cyrus will leave our audience simply gobsmacked!”

Wall Street Journal: IRS documents show agency flagged groups for “Anti-Obama rhetoric” – Big Three won’t touch it.

ABC, CBS and NBC have so far refused to report the latest bombshell in the IRS scandal – a newly released list from the agency that showed it flagged political groups for “anti-Obama rhetoric.” On September 18 USA Today, in a front page story, reported the following: “Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their literature, raising concerns specifically about ‘anti-Obama rhetoric,’ inflammatory language and ’emotional’ statements made by non-profits seeking tax-exempt status.”

Not only have ABC, CBS and NBC not reported this story they’ve flat out stopped covering the IRS scandal on their evening and morning shows. It’s been 85 days since ABC last touched the story on June 26. NBC hasn’t done a report for 84 days and CBS last mentioned the IRS scandal 56 days ago on July 24.

Going up?

(Greenwich Time photo)

Greenwich Time profiles Old Greenwich couple who raised their storm-damaged home on Heusted Drive. Nothing wrong with the idea of lifting one’s skirt to avoid an inrushing tide, but those considering buying down in the flood zone of Old greenwich might want to consider the ten-foot climb from the car to the kitchen with groceries and infants (and for God’s sake, don’t break a leg next time you’re in Gestaad). I have a friend who built new along Pine Creek in Fairfield a decade ago and even back then the code required a house on stilts. She dealt with the long climb upstairs, loved her views across Long Island Sound, and reported after Sandy that hers and the other homes on that Road that were elevated did fine, while the original beach houses were wiped out.

So that’s all good – just don’t plan on an enclosed, lockable garage or storage area, or easy access to the living quarters of your home.

Two investment firms in one, and in just one week! Goldman Sachs: sell J.C. Penny short. Goldman Sachs: sole underwriter for 84 million new shares of J.C.Penny. I realize that Goldman’s not a retail broker for little old ladies and thus has no particular fiduciary duty to buyers of its new issue, but wouldn’t it be difficult to do this with a straight face?

No wonder the pros use computer terminals to communicate these days.

The bad news just doesn’t seem to stop for J.C. Penney. The embattled retailer saw its shares fall dramatically in afterhours trading on Thursday after the company announced plans to issue 84 million shares, with Goldman Sachs as the sole underwriter. Goldman, whose own research department caused a massive double digit decline in the stock a few days ago with a scathing research report that called for shorting the company, has the option of selling an additional 12.6 million shares within 30 days. Hours before, the company’s controller had announced he was resigning.

And this distinguishes him from a “real” federal agent how?

Man posing as a federal agent stealing from citizens.

Key fobs that look like scary guns, no; heroin, okie dokie

Walter Olson, Overlawyered.com: Great moments in Teacher Tenure

Whether or not the Drug War counts as an irresistible force, it seems to have run into an immovable object in the form of New York City teacher tenure [New York Law Journal]:

Termination was too harsh a penalty for a tenured teacher who created a spurt of news stories after he was found with bags of heroin when trying to enter Manhattan Supreme Court, where he was serving on jury duty….

“There is no evidence that the conduct with which petitioner was charged affects his performance as a teacher or that any publicity would impair his capacity to discharge his responsibilities as a teacher,” [Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Manuel] Mendez wrote in Matter of Esteban v. Department of Education of the City School District of the City of New York, 651904/13.

Anything to distract from poor teaching

 

Gunplay at the Obama Corral

Rhode Island student suspended for key chain fob that looked like a gun.

A 12-year-old boy was suspended from a Coventry middle school after his parents said he brought a small gun keychain to school.

Joseph Lyssikatos said the keychain was in his backpack at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School on Thursday when it fell out. A classmate picked it up and started showing it to other students.

A teacher confiscated it and before Joseph knew it, he was suspended.

Speaking to talk host Matt Allen, on 630AM/99.7FM WPRO, Joseph’s father, Keith Bonanno, said that school officials have not been anxious to speak with the family.   The school’s behavioral specialist told Mr. Bonanno that Joseph is “lucky that he didn’t get suspended for ten days, or even worse expelled.”

According to data provided by the state Department of Education, only 68% of students in Joseph’s class are “proficient” in math.  Just 26% achieved “proficient with distinction” on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) tests conducted last year.

The militarization of our police forces, XXXIIII ….

 

Hunting nudists on Miacomet beach

$600,000 armored vehicles are being passed out like candy to any police force that wants one.

This phenomenon is spreading as quickly as SWAT teams. Up in New Hampshire, Concord’s police chief wants one to combat libertarians and (hey, Dollar Bill, listen up!) Occupy New Hampshire “terrorists”. 

Jacksonville, North Carolina (wherever that is) has requested one.

In fact, the wind up of the Iraq and Afghanistan was has freed up thousands on now-surplus vehicles and if a police force wants a couple, they’re there for the taking. This has some people worried.

These days, everyone who opposes the government is a terrorist. Just yesterday, for instance, Harry Reid called Republicans who oppose ObamaKare “terrorists”. So it should give civil libertarians of all stripes pause to consider what’s going down. The left was silent when the IRS targeted Tea Party groups because the Tea Party is the Left’s favorite enemy, but as the song goes, “it can happen to you” – in Concord, New Hampshire, it already has.

The news never stops in the whacky world of Greenwich real estate

Two sales reported.

104 Old Stone Bridge

104 Old Stone Bridge sold for $1.750 million. This sale should come as a relief to its neighbors in this development, because two recent distress sales – estate in one, bank trouble in the other, had been in something like the $1.4 range. $1.750 isn’t as high as the low-$2 sales we saw at the peak, but it does mark a bit of firming in this area. A good house, in excellent condition but for all that, not so different from its peers that you couldn’t use it as a comparable.

4 Cedar Hill

4 Cedar Hill, that little spur off North Maple, sold for $2.390. That’s pretty good for a dated house. It sold for $1.845 million in 1999, so appreciation over 14 years hasn’t been great, but any gain’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Representative only: coal slag not included

We also have 313 Stanwich Road, lot “5”, back for another try, still priced at $1.695 million. That’s a more attractive price than the $3.6 asked in 2008 and most of the prices attempted in the succeeding years, but this 4-acre lot is: (a) behind the main house it was stripped from; (b) on a driveway shared by two other homes; and (c) not much of a lot to begin with. Four acres, yes, but much of that is swampland downhill from the building envelope, and not particularly attractive to anyone but mating tree frogs.

The seller paid $3.250 in 2007 for this lot and the 2.8 acres next door. The smaller lot is under contract, last asking price of $1.350. If you discount the value of an extra acre of wet muck, I’d think that sister’s price would be a fair starting point for this one.

313 Stanwich hasn’t had notable success in predicting prices, for some reason. The original house in front started at $6.495 in 2009 and finally sold just last month for $3.255.

Activity reported

One sale, four accepted offers.

35 West Brother

35 West Brother Drive, Milbrook, sold for $2.950 million, after starting off at $3.795. It last sold in August, 2001, for $2.715. Milbrook can be a tough sell.

72 Stanwich Rd

72 Stanwich Road, on the other hand, has an accepted offer after just a short time on the market. Asked $1.590.

40 Lincoln

40 Lincoln Avenue, the Greenwich Lincoln, not the Old Greenwich one, asked $2.385 and has an accepted offer after 21 days. It sold for $2.350 in 2007.

211 Otter Rock

211 Otter Rock Drive, Belle Haven, found a buyer quickly, even at $5.4 million and being offered “as is”. 2008 price, same house, same condition, was $5 million even.

28 Bonwit Road

And 28 Bonwit Road is going, which is not surprising since it asked $899,000, a sweet spot in the market. Buyers paid $555,000 in 2010 but did, according to the listing, “a complete renovation”. I didn’t see it but from its pictures, it looks as though they did.