Even an Old Greenwich address can’t save you from a peak-market purchase, it seems

 

349 Sound Beach Avenue

349 Sound Beach Avenue is back on the market today asking $3.575 million (no pictures posted yet, so I’ve used one from its previous listing). This is a terrific house; in fact I intend to send the listing to one of my clients as soon as the pictures are up, but it sold, almost immediately, for $3.775 in 2004, then failed to fetch $3.980 in 2007 or $3.761 (huh?) in 2008. It’s been off the market since then until now, and this price may do it.

But as its price history illustrates, not every Old Greenwich property has fully recovered from the crash.

Listings by Ogilvy, sales by Barbieri

Two houses I made runs at, long ago, have now sold, and Joe Barbieri had the buyers for both.

39 Birch Lane

39 Birch Lane, listed 302 days ago at $2.1 million and which dropped its price only to $1.725, sold for $1,477,500. I’d figured $1.450 way back when, but the owners disagreed.

28 Gatefield Drive

28 Gatefield Drive was listed at $4.650 702 days ago in March, 2011 and just sold for $3.5 million. I believe we did not make a formal offer on this one because we assumed, I’m sure correctly at the time, that the owner wasn’t ready to hear that he’d missed the market by $1,150,000.

Joe Barbieri is a great guy and has a ton of credibility because of how much real estate he’s sold over the years. So when Joe, aided by two years of failure by the homeowner and his agent, tells that unhappy person what the price should be, he’s listened to.

I hope that by the time I’m as old as Joe, I’ll have the same street cred.

The science is unsettled

What happened to the hurricane season? It was a complete bust, despite dire predictions from the “experts”.

Over here on the rationalist side we’ve always thought that weather was weather and questions about long term warming were an entirely different matter. But in the Church of Gaia, every weather phenomenon is global warming – related, if it’s bad, and unrelated if it’s good. So when Al Gore, among other profiteers, states that global warming is directly responsible for the severity and frequency of hurricanes, it’s fair to point out this season’s lack of storms as a direct contradiction, indeed disproof of what he and his media friends claim are settled truths.

Same thing for tornadoes, which the media promised would be horrendous this year because of global warming,then completely dropped the subject when the tornadoes disappeared.

Storms and hurricanes will be back and when they are, Al Gore and company will be too.

Three bits of real estate

A sale, an accepted offer and a price cut

37 londonderry

37 Londonderry Drive, which was a teardown even before one of our storms (Sandy? Irene?) put a tree through it, asked $1.380 million and got $1.150. Interesting example of how real estate markets can work: brother Gideon, whose listing this was, tells me that after sitting unloved and unwanted for a loooong time, two buyers turned up simultaneously with offers. The higher of the two got it. That happens more often than buyers think, and often they accuse their agent or the seller’s of some sort of conspiracy but (with the exception of a couple of agents I know), it’s not a scam. I showed this property to several clients and all were turned off by the noise that rushes unimpeded from the Merritt across the Burning Tree golf course greens that offer such a pretty view and buffet the house. Obviously, at least two buyers decided they could put up with that.

5 Marin Dale (per PhotoShoppe)

5 Martin Dale, $3.2 million, reports an accepted offer. Just like Londonderry, I showed this to two buyers who rejected it because, they felt, it was a half-done renovation of a low ceilinged, outdated house. I didn’t disagree, and thought it would fetch about what I sold the 0.6-acre house and lot down the street for last year, $2.250. Again, someone apparently doesn’t share that opinion, and more power to them. It’s a great piece of land on an excellent street, so I’m sure they’ll make out okay.

217 Taconic

And 217 Taconic Road is back, now asking $14.5 million. Eleven acres, 17,000 sq.ft. of custom-built house (including horse barns, I presume), it’s pretty damn nice. Too bad the owners started at $24 million seven years ago in 2006 – they could have sold it long ago and gotten about their lives.

Corcoran Group goes the extra mile

“The sale is just the beginning of our relationship”
David Kim, Corcoran

Their ( now former) agent sells a $7.6 million townhouse, then returns to loot it. “We were wondering what to do with all our unwanted art work and antiques,” owner Tina Kim told FWIW, ” but our agent solved that for us – what a nice guy!”

So long, it’s been nice to know ya

A friend of mine sends along sad news of the VW bus’s demise. He and I had many adventures in mine, from camping on the Vineyard to D.C. protest marches to … well I don’t remember all that much but he apparently retained more brain cells and tells me we had a great time.

I looked for a photo taken when I was on my way to Vermont, tipi poles sticking out the back, me in my buffalo-hide pants, hair down to my shoulders and flashing (ironically, I assure you) the peace sign, but couldn’t find it. My kids probably hid it out of embarrassment.