Even the NYT can’t keep its dots and feathers apart

Go ahead, make my day: Sioux me!

The Indian diaspora mostly embraces Mr. Modi without reservations

UPDATE: Neither can Obama, who lays on White House banquet to honor Mr.Modi without realizing that the Prime Minister conducts  religious fast this time of year. “Of course we knew that,” State Department spokeswoman Sandra Fluke told FWIW, “it’s our job to know those kinds of things. Unfortunately, we included the information in the President’s daily intelligence briefing.”

Bottom story of the day

Dan Malloy goes along for the ride

Connecticut’s teachers union endorses Malloy

I was wondering what the correct term was

Residents only

Tom Maguire:

We’ve lost control of the Texas border? Compared to what – the White House border?

No wonder Obama has no confidence in fences or guards. And since you ask, I deplore the criminal characterization of White House intruder Omar Gonzalez; surely he should be described as an “undocumented resident”.

Price cut on North

98 North Street asked $4.850 million when it was listed back in 2013, but has been cut today to $3.850 (there were various smaller cuts in between). Right price? Who knows, but it will certainly make it easier to sell.

Cos Cob bidding war

33 Pleasant Street

33 Pleasant Street, asked $835,000, sold for $850,000 (link is to previous, 2012 sale, for $735,000). Joe Barbieri represented the winning bidder – that Joe: he’s determined to own the Greenwich market, from top to bottom.

UPDATE: Note the Zillow estimate of value in 2012 – take their estimates as a guideline only, sometimes useful, sometimes not.

 

 

 

Across the street, 34 Pleasant Street, asking $1.195million, reports a pending contract. Wonder if the buyer is the disappointed bidder for #33?

Zillow estimates this was one at $825,414, by the way which, while reassuringly precise, suggests that the company doesn’t have a good grip on Pleasant Street values.

While I was out …

One Ginkgo Lane

1 Ginkgo was reported sold (June contract), for $3 million.  Three’s a nice number for this street and this property, but it must have disappointed its owner, who’d hoped for $3.950 million back in 2013 and at various lower prices thereafter. Aspirations and hopes, alas, do not always translate into actual market value.

 

 

Nice profit

Tarzan of the Apes

16 Mortimer Drive, Old Greenwich,$2.999, already has a contract. Builder paid $1.025 for the land in 2013 in a modest bidding war (ask was $1 million), put up this house on its 0.27 acre. Listing claims 4,500 sq.ft., but that must include garage and other non-living spec. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live this high up in the air, and I’d be cheesed that three million bucks couldn’t buy me a masonry chimney, but that’s just me.

Knowledge that he is to be hanged in a fortnight, sir, concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully

30 Stone Brook Lane

30 Stone Brook, née Hooker, Lane in Cos Cob reports a contract, “pending bank approval”. Last asking price, $1.445, probably selling for less.

Owners paid $1.150 for this contemporary in 2002 and have been trying to sell it since August, 2012, when it appeared on the market at $1.775. It dropped as low as $1.549 in 2013, before a new agent raised its price to $1.680. That’s rarely an effective tactic, and the next new broker dropped it back down to $1.549 and, eventually its current price.

Foreclosure initiated in October, 2013, looks like a pending divorce was finalized earlier this year and, finally, this sale.

Nothing particularly wrong with the house, but 1980s contemporaries are a tough sell, and the debt on the house obviously made it difficult for the owners to drop their price to accommodate that.

A savage beheading makes Boston imam rethink ISIS

Muslim child care

So he apologizes for criticizing them.

Suhaib Webb is currently the imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, which is part of the same entity under the same ownership as the Islamic Society of Boston, where Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev worshipped. Webb spoke alongside the late al-Qaida senior operative Anwar al-Awlaki at a Sept. 9, 2001 fundraiser for an Islamic radical who killed two police officers, according to FBI surveillance documents.

The day after Nolen beheaded a co-worker, and the same day that Webb was publicly linked to Nolen’s mosque, Webb apologized to ISIS in an online column he wrote for the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center entitled “Shame on Me: A Commitment to Discourse Instead of Demonization.”

“I woke up the other day and decided to skim through my body of work over the last few years,” Webb wrote. “Boy was I surprised at some of my posts and talks — the tone and the demonization of others — I compared ISIS to Ebola. While I don’t agree with ISIS, al-Qāida, certain progressives and others, I’ve decided to apologize to anyone that I have spoken ill towards or demonized.”

“I ask Allah to forgive me and to guide me to observe better character in the future,” Webb continued. “I asked myself, ‘Suhaib did you forget the 49th chapter of the Qur’an, Surah al-Hujurāt?’ Moving forward, I promise myself to address ideas instead of people, to be critical of thoughts instead of personalities and commit to ethics as best I can. That will create a better climate to unpack and examine current trends in our community, but ensure that I recognize other’s humanity and worth.”

Webb then asked Allah for forgiveness in his column.

As The Daily Caller previously reported, Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and then-Boston Mayor Tom Menino appeared at inaugural events for the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in 2009. The city of Boston gave a “subsidy” to construct that cultural center. The Muslim American Society of Boston, an affiliate of a Muslim Brotherhood front group, runs the cultural center.

Mr. Webb is liked by liberal politicians and the politically correct because he represents the moderate face of Islam.

The more frightening thing is that the idiot resident of the place believes the same thing

“On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m a zero”

White House intruder scaled fence and ran deep into the White House before being finally subdued, but “he did not express any wish to harm the president instead claiming he just wanted to tell him that the ‘atmosphere was collapsing’.

The Jets should fire whoever they’ve got now and hire this guy as offensive coordinator

Junior high football at its finest 

The play, called “The Ugly Kardashian,” consist of the young quarterback taking the snap before passing the line of scrimmage to act as if he’s pointing to a referee.

The defense is clearly confused and believes that the play hasn’t started. Before the defense can realize what has happened and get back in position, the quarterback makes his way into the end zone.

Cos Cob contract reported

15 Lia Fail Way

15 Lia Fail Way, asking $2.295 million. While (the exterior of) this house isn’t to my taste, the street itself is a beautiful little enclave off Valley Road and is in fact my favorite neighborhood  in Cos Cob. Certainly there’s no other neighborhood with its own marble amphitheater.

The listing describes the house as a “classic Colonial”. Give that agent a prize.

Sad, cautionary tale

From trader to “trading coach” = probably a different pay scale

Former high-flying (literally) SAC trader Kenny Lassik  loses it all to Oxycontin addiction.

Since then, his wife has left him. He doesn’t get to see his four kids as much as he would like.

“Now being here, you know, the house is for sale because we are getting a divorce. We are basically liquidating. I guess we are liquidating our life. The hardest part for me is that I destroyed it myself.”

I know far more people than I wish I did who could tell the same tale. Addiction – booze or other drugs, honors no class or income barriers, but unfortunately, often help is sought only after the wealth that shields an abuser from his reality is gone. It doesn’t have to be that way (if you’re curious, write me, confidentially).

Here’s his house on Candlewood Lake – asking $6 million, which I doubt he’ll be seeing.

I don’t see how this makes economic sense

14 Cat Rok Rd

14 Cat Rock Road is on the market today asking $965,000. A local entrepreneur paid $796,000 for it this past April, refinished the floors, repainted the walls, and “replaced” – an undefined term – two bathrooms. Even assuming all that was done on the cheap, is the mark up here worth the risk? After commissions and taxes there isn’t that much to go around, and if he’s overestimated the value of his efforts (which he may well have done), he’s pocketing even less.

Whatever – I suppose if he can do a dozen or so of these a year he’ll make a decent living, but I’m not sure there’s enough low end inventory to support that business model.

And you certainly couldn’t find these in Alpine

11 Joshua Lane – “Le Petite Maison dans la Prairie”

11 Joshua Lane has hit the market, 3,400 sq. feet, an acre of land, asking $3.095, after selling for $2.550 in 2009. I’m always wary of the term “recently refreshed” where “renovated” usually goes – brings to mind sweeping dust bunnies from under the beds and a quick flush and a spritz of Glade in the powder room – but I was particularly attracted to its claim to “separately situated staff quarters”.

It’s a friggin’ run of the mill suburban pseudo-colonial on an acre of land, for Chrissake – you wanna stick your Filipino baby sitter in a windowless cubical in the basement, fine, but that’s not “staff quarters”, and you still won’t live in a manor, no matter what you call it. Get a grip.

Somehow, I don’t think this will affect Greenwich’s prestige among those who care about such matters

Mind you, Alpine houses and Greenwich’s are now almost indistinguishable

Alpine, NJ is declared nation’s richest zip code.

With houses well over the price point of $2.5 million, and celebrities living there like: Sean Combs, LL Cool J, and Jay Z, this area of New Jersey is shaping up to be the place to live for people with money.

New Jersey may be a nice place – I’ve never noticed – but it seems to be loaded with non-clubable denizens. That may be a very good thing, attractive to many people, but it’s not Greenwich.

 

Another politician dodging blame

Tragic day at the zoo

Mayor de Blasio is still refusing to take responsibility for the tragic death of “Charlotte”, the groundhog he dashed to the ground in a fit of pique last February. Echoing Obama’s usual defense in these types of matters, Hizzonor said,

“I found out as all of you found out,” de Blasio said Monday. “I had no idea previously.”

It’s true the mayor didn’t kill the poor beastie on the GW Bridge and tie up traffic for days – at least he didn’t do that – but his denials and evasiveness set a poor example for the city’s schoolchildren.

Shocking.

New Listing in God’s armpit

25 Richmond Hill Rd
(photo by Barbieri Productions)

Oh now, that’s just mean, but 25 Richmond Hill Road has come on, asking $7.195 million. There’s no public listing online, yet, but Joe Barbieri’s got it, so ask him.

If anyone can sell a house on this street it will be Joe, but recent sales histories up here are discouraging for would-be new construction buyers.

95 Richmond sold for $8 million in 2005, but resold in 2009 for $5.9.

85 Richmond sold for $7.1 that same year, 2005, and just sold last year for $4.825, after years of trying.

Bloom’s off the rose on the northwest border.

New broker, another price cut

24 Khakum Wood Road

24 Khakum Wood Road is back on the market, this time with Steve Archino and now priced at $8.650 million. That may or may not be the right price, finally,* but time did tell us that David Ogilvy’s original price of $14.5 million in 2008, and the other prices he tried in the ensuing six years, eventually down to $9.6 million in 2014, did not do the trick.

*Given what’s out there currently in this price range, this house, in Khakum Wood, seems very competitive.

Real estate activity

11 Flower Lane

11 Flower Lane (April contract) closed at $1,631,250. This property was originally listed as one of those “expand or renovate” estate deals in 2008 for $2.7 million, and stayed on the market through 2012 at various prices until it was pulled in 2013 nd renovated. Once that was done, it came back on at the beginning of this year priced at $1.7, and  contract followed soon after.