Some real estate news

I understand G Mail was down part of today and perhaps that accounts for the small number of real estate transactions. Regardless, here are four, from accepted offers to price cuts.

326 Cognewaugh

326 Cognewaugh, $1.275 million, the prefab that reported an accepted offer and then lost it, has another. Same buyer or the next in line, I don’t know.

34 Park Ave

In Old Greenwich, 34 Park Avenue, $1.775 million, has gone in just seven days. This is a lovely house, in great shape, but the upstairs is quite cramped (I’d fix that by converting the sun porch/office off the master bedroom into a new bath and making it a suite). The beautiful yard is actually a building lot, so unless the buyer is picking up that, too ($1.2 million), this will feel a lot more cramped in the near future. As an aside, did they ever fix the endemic flooding on Park? I’m not being clever, I really don’t know; the topic used to occupy our local paper quite a bit, back in the 90s.

70 Baldwin Farms So

70 Baldwin Farms So. has cut its price to $2.450 million. It sold for $2.2 million in 2002, and was (unsuccessfully) priced at $3.495 when it returned to the market in 2006. Looks like the mid-country, far from recovering as Old Greenwich has, in fact seems remarkably like the mid-country of 2002.

9 Oakley Lane

9 Oakley Land came on just ten days ago at $2.950 but has already dropped to $2.750 and been added as a land listing in addition to its residential status. That makes sense: it’s 3 acres in the R-2 zone, so the land is good, but the house itself is a 1961 “colonial” – not much value there. Oakley suffers somewhat from Merritt noise, depending on the exact location on the street. I’ll check out this one’s noise level tomorrow, if there’s an open house.

Sometimes, late is no better than never

 

47 N. Stanwich Rd

47 North Stanwich seems to finally be getting serious, cutting $100,000 off its price today down to $2.290 million. Just a month ago, it dropped from $2.895 to $2.399, but it started at $3.925 (just dumb) in 2005, didn’t drop to $2.985 until 2007, and it’s been on and off the market since than at that price.

Now the foreclosure is speeding up, and the owner’s figured out that he ought to sell. Knowledge that a man is to hanged in a fortnight may indeed concentrate the mind wonderfully, as Samuel Johnson observed so long ago, but any chance that this owner could walk away with some portion of his original investment passed a long time ago.

 

Abandoned Ridgeview Ave. house finds buyer and (unrelated), the Synagogue expands its Cos Cob footprint

 

9 Ridgeview Avenue

9 Ridgeview Avenue, placed on the market by its bank-owner at $2.999, reports a contract. The failed developer paid $2.355 for the land in 2008 and took out a $4.7 million mortgage to build this shell. I assume all of that sum hadn’t been advanced before the project went south, but it’s a fair bet that there was a serious write-off here.

I personally would be wary of a house that has sat empty for so long, but I assume an inspector has signed off on the structural integrity.

88 Orchard Street

In Cos Cob, an Irish realtor, Francis X. Fudrucker, has sold a Scotsman’s house on 88 Orchard Street to a Jewish synagogue; are we a multi-cultural town, or what? 88 looked for $2.355 million in 2011 and dropped as low as $1.795 before its listing expired on Halloween, 2011. The treat finally arrived last Friday, when they sold for $1.6 million.

When religion replaces reason

University of California truth squad

University of California San Francisco fundraiser Stephanie Handlerr: Non-believers must die.

“@shandlerr: @BarackObama …deny #Obamacare nonbelievers access to care at all. Let them eat their McDonalds…”

Politicized death panels.

Same church, different pew for global warmers.

Professor Richard Parncutt: “Death penalty for global warming deniers”.

UPDATE: Libertarian Advocate draws our attention to the Sacramento Democrat Chairman and homosexual “civil rights advocate” Allan Brauer demonstrating his feminine side to a Ted Cruz staffer: “May all your children all [sic] die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases”. Apologetic when people objected? Ha – he’s a Democrat, and thus unassailable on moral issues.

Allan Brauer, Democrat Chairman

She keeps selling it because Americans still buy it

Stretching it

On Friday, Nancy Pelosi was in the news for saying that Obama has been “almost apolitical, certainly non-partisan during his term in office”. Yesterday she followed up that preposterous statement with another: “there is nothing left to cut in the federal budget”.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Republican-led efforts to rein in government spending are pointless because there is nothing left to cut in the almost $4 trillion-a-year federal budget.

“The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that.”

The Washington Time points out,

The federal budget has doubled in size in 12 years, from $1.9 trillion in 2001 to $3.8 trillion this year.

But who reads the Washington Times when CNN is available to dispense the truth?

Damn I’m sorry he lost, and deprived us of such fun

You. Will. Not. Pee. On. me!
Friggin’ dwarf bastard!

Anthony Weiner can’t keep it in.

The scandal-ridden mayoral primary loser — who reportedly flipped the finger after delivering his concession speech — was spotted at Union Square Park playground with his and Huma Abedin’s son, Jordan Zain, on Thursday when another child had an accident and peed on a swing. We’re told the father grabbed his kid and went to find a napkin to clean up, as Weiner made his way over to the exact swing.

A spy tells us Weiner was heard screaming, “Thanks for leaving this thing soaking wet.”

“The other dad said he was going to clean it up and told him, ‘It’s funny you’re the one talking about other people’s self–control,’ ” says the witness.

He’s back, at least for now

Well I finally learned how to post my finger paintings, so of course I’m back!

Little brother Gideon stopped blogging a few months ago and to punish him I delinked him. He’s apparently hit a spell of boredom, because he’s back to posting the occasional report on real estate. To encourage that faint spark of initiative, I have restored him to the official FWIW blogroll. He slacks off again, I’ll disappear him again.

Fake reviews on line? Who knew?

 

Yes, a five-star review from both the Fountain brothers!

Regulators crack down on fake reviews of businesses and products.

The yearlong investigation encompassed companies that create fake reviews as well as the clients that buy them. Among those signing the agreements are a charter bus operator, a teeth-whitening service, a laser hair-removal chain and an adult entertainment club. Also signing are several reputation-enhancement firms that place fraudulent reviews on sites likeGoogle, Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo.

We get those here, occasionally, from realtors and homeowners unhappy about opinions expressed by both the management and readers of FWIW but usually they’re pretty obvious. For the record, the occasional endorsement of a service provider on these pages is always genuine (although you may disagree with its accuracy). No paid endorsements, not even a free meal from a restaurant, which have been offered, and respectfully declined, in the past.

Russia: fewer guns, more murders

That’s the report from NPR.

Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized President Obama’s plan for a military strike in Syria, and the Russian leader then denounced American “exceptionalism” in a biting op-ed inThe New York Times.

But while Pushkov sneers at U.S. gun laws, how do the stats look in Russia?

According to Gunpolicy.org, Russians have far fewer guns than Americans — and far more homicides.

There are fewer than 13 million firearms in circulation in Russia, compared with an estimated 300 million in the United States. That works out to about 9 guns per 100 people in Russia and closed to 100 guns per 100 people in America.

The most recent homicide statistics for Russia show that there were 21,603 killings in 2009.

According to the FBI, the United States had 13,636 homicides in 2009 with a population that is more than twice as large. More than 80 percent of those killings were gun-related.

Russian Gun Laws

Russia has tough gun laws on the books. It’s illegal for Russian citizens to own automatic and semi-automatic guns. It’s possible to apply for a handgun or shotgun license, though citizens are required to provide reasons such as hunting or target shooting.

Applicants face strict background checks, including criminal history, a full psychological evaluation and a medical exam. They must pass a test on firearm laws and safety.

Each weapon is then registered by the police during a home visit. Police take bullet patterns, test bullets and cartridges so bullets can be matched if the gun is used in a crime. A license lasts five years, after which applicants must go through the whole process again.

In spite of these laws, the country does have periodic mass shootings by people thought to be mentally ill.

Why would a nice, liberal outfit like NPR suddenly admit this?  Professor Reynolds hits the nail upon its top: ” What does it take to get them to depart from the narrative? A jab at President Obama from a foreign leader.”

These facts are not new; they’ve been available, and ignored by the media for years. And attacks on America itself for its “cowboy gun culture” aren’t new. So what suddenly happened to make an NPR editor say “hey, waaaaait a minute, what’s the murder rate look like in this guy’s country?” And of course, that spark was struck when someone was mean to and dared criticize  the medias’ Messiah, Barry Hussein.

Which meant that the lesser narrative had to yield to the greater.