Back from open houses

What looked like a promising day: 68 listings to see, was pretty disappointing. After weeding out the rentals, retreads and hopelessly overpriced, there were just a handful of houses worth driving to.

More on those later; while I was out, two contracts were reported, both in the low range.

11 Mill Pond Court

11 Mill Pond Court, $1.345, has a fully executed contract after just 14 days, which would indicate that a buyer stepped up within just a few days of the property appearing on the market (there’s a time lag between an accepted offer and formal execution of a contract). The owners paid $725,000 for this in 2007 and did a “total renovation”; judging from the mortgage they took out to pay for that renovation, it looks like they really did redo the place. In this market, a house that needs no additional work is a valuable commodity, and the speed with which this one sold isn’t surprising. Besides, Mill Pond is a nifty little street. 0.15 acre, for those interested in saving on lawn care.

29 Riverside Lane

29 Riverside Lane, on the other hand, is not on one of our finer streets in town: it’s busy, but it has also found a buyer after 29 days. Asking $829,000; building lots here were selling for $750,000 just a short time ago. This was improved in 2004, so the buyer may intend to live in it, which would justify paying more than land value.  Just about the same size lot as Mill Pond, 0.2 vs. 0.15. Your kids can still use the yard for play, so long as they play on a pogo stick.

54 Cathlow Drive, Riverside

View from 54 Cathlow Drive (Rat Island, background)

$18.225  million if you want all 4.4 acres, or just $16 if you’ll settle for 3.72. I assume that means that you can pick up a building lot for $2.225 million, which, for Cathlow Drive, is a good deal – I’ll ask at its open house tomorrow.

Cathlow is a wonderful street off Indian Head with some great houses. I won’t pretend to know what this one will sell for, though my hunch is, “less”, but it’s a fabulous location.

UPDATE: Reader “Riverside” (pseudonym of Peter Tesei’s, presumably) points out that the building lot is the land on Highgate discussed here a bit earlier today). So it is.

Former First Selectman Tom Ragland is moving

His home at 2 Spring Street, Riverside, just came on, asking $2.395. No pictures posted yet but it’s always been a very pretty house and looks extremely well maintained. I always thought more of his house than I did his services and talents as our First Selectman, but when he and another First Selectman, the late Bill Lewis (whom I greatly admired) both lived on Spring, there was one street in Riverside you could count on being plowed, no matter how large or unexpected the storm. That was before Cos Cobbers reclaimed the town government, of course, and the decline began.

$2.225 for an undersized building lot in Harbor Point?

Harbor Point Association Mutual Aid Society, Hurricane Sandy, 2013

11 Highgate Road, in Harbor Point, is 0.67 acres (R-1 zone), with a house on it that “was damaged by Sandy and must be repaired.” It’s probably safe to say that a house flooded almost a year ago and left untouched since is not a prime candidate for restoration, so we can treat this as a land sale. Is $2.225 million too much? Probably, but Harbor Point, with its private beach and small, traffic-free network of roads, is one of Riverside’s prettiest neighborhoods, and someone might bite the bullet and build a stilt house here. However, I think there’s at least one other house in this price range that is on higher ground and a much larger parcel, and I’d want to look at that, too, before deciding.

Riverside land for $9.5 million? Maybe

View from 73 Club Road (representative)

73 Club Road, which sold for $8 million in 2010, is back on the market, unchanged, for $9.5 million. This is very nice land with Cos Cob Harbor frontage (and Mianus Bridge highway noise, but that’s a quibble). Its 2.67 acres comprise two separate building lots but to split this parcel would, I think, be a mistake; you’d end up with two narrow side-by-side rectangles and neither would be anywhere nearly so nice as the whole.

2010 was not a great year for real estate, so it’s possible that in this recovered market this price will stick. On the other hand, Club Road sold well even during that period and $8 million struck me then as a very high value.

One way to find out: wait and see.

Sale reported, (limited) open house report

 

140 Indian Head (representative)

140 Indian Head, Riverside, has sold for $11.9 million, which I’m sure is the all-time record for non-waterfront property in Riverside. It’s a spectacular home, custom built for the sellers by Doran Sabag (Sound Beach Partners), I’m not really surprised by this price. But it’s a lot of money.

I didn’t get to that many broker open houses today – the ones I wanted to see were pretty spread out, but two I thought were of particular interest were 41 Baldwin Farms South and 363 North Street.

41 Baldwin Farms, $4.995 million, surprised me because I’m not a great fan of the French provincial (? Frenchy, anyway) look, but it’s a beautiful home, on great land that abuts the pond running along this road. Open the front door and step into the foyer and even a complete hermit like myself can see its potential for entertaining: the house just invites you in. High ceilings, easy flow, immaculate condition, everything is here. If one insisted on redoing the kitchen, which is in perfect shape, so why bother?, the layout’s there, so you could buy new cabinets and appliance if so inclined. Again, entirely unnecessary. If there’s an objection to the layout itself, it would be the location of the master bedroom on the first floor. For some buyers that’s a turnoff, for others a plus. Your call, but I’ll mention that there’s a newer (1999) addition above the three car garage that presently serves as an exercise room ; with its full bath and separate stair it would be a great nanny suite, and if she’s upstairs dealing with your future New Lebanon students you can be a floor away, happy and contented.

363 North Street

I did expect to like 363 North Street, and I wasn’t disappointed. I mentioned this a day or so ago because it had just been returned to the market after an 18 month renovation and I was curious to see what the owners had done. Just about everything, it turns out, from new wiring, new crown moldings, walls moved, radiant heat installed in many rooms, new baths, new flooring, restored flooring, paint, custom panelling, new kitchen, and on and on and on. New price, too, $5.295 million instead of the old, unsuccessful, pre-renovation price of $3.495. I think the new price is closer to its current value now than the old one was then. Nice house.

Activity, or not

Results of a February bidding war and two more price cuts.

8 Dearfield

8 Dearfield Drive, cheek by jowl to the commercial zone, asked $1.195 last February and promptly entered a bidding war. It closed just now, at $1.4 million.

39 Hearthstone

39 Hearthstone, on the other hand, has cut its price to $1.795 just 59 days after starting off at $1.950 million. It sold for $1.450 in 2009 and when it first came on this time I questioned whether it could really fetch such a premium price for some fairly modest improvements. Guess not.

12 S. Baldwin

And back with yet another broker and a brand new price, 12 S. Baldwin Farms is now looking for $5.295 million.

Jay Silver assembled this spec home in 2007 and priced it at $12.495. That proved to be the wrong price for this French Chateau/farm house/American Eclectic style (the “Dog’s Breakfast Model”, I’d call it) and its price dropped down to $8.995 in 2008, when Patriot Bank started a foreclosure suit. The bank eventually prevailed and brought the house back on in 2011 for $7.499. That price was no more popular than Mr. Silver’s suggested retail so now, another broker, another price.

At $2.975, you might have a deal.

You can’t find this on Hearthstone

Sister Lorin was visiting last week and she took this picture at sunset from our deck.

Ole’s Creek

Ole’s back?

Ole’s Boat Yard

From our Irish correspondent, this Craig’s list ad:

Indoor storage and repair for classic and antique boats (Wood & Fiberglass).
We also have a showroom for small boats for sale and maritime antiques on consignment in a 1890 Stone Boathouse that has offered repair, storage and marine supplies since the 1930’s by the highly respected Amundsen (Ole & Eric) Family. We also have 230 feet of dockage (tidal) for boats that can sit on the hard at low tide.
Presently reserving space for the winter and spring. Please call to discuss our facility and your needs. Varnish and paint work. Major and Minor repair. Boat Designer, Marine Surveyor, Yacht Brokerage and Charter available, all at one location! New owner/operator with over 40 years experience!!! 561-254-4943 (c)

Interior (duh)

This Riverside landmark has sat vacant for quite a while, and so far as I know its owner Erik Amundsen has been unable to find a buyer. Now it appears that someone has leased it (or maybe he bought it; I haven’t seen any record of that, though) and will service boats here again.

That’s great: I wish them all the best of luck and success.

UPDATE: Good history of the building (I thought it was much older than the 1890 age given in this Craig’s list ad, and I was right), and its owners, here.  

Excerpt: 

At different periods in its long history, the building had functioned as Stephen Clason’s blacksmith shop and later as a steam laundry.

The Amundsens, Tina and Ole, bought the waterfront property on a tidal inlet of Greenwich Cove from the Marks family around 1933 during the Depression. Ole Amundsen was a boat builder and used the first floor of the building of 3,135 square feet to build sail boats and skiffs, some of which may still be afloat today.

Many were one-off designs, but he also built 19-foot Hurricanes of molded plywood in the late 40s and early 50s that were sailed out of the Rocky Point Club, according to his son, Erik Amundsen. He also built small cruising boats up to 34 feet but stopped building when fiberglass boats arrived on the scene.

Erik’s grandfather had sailed on tall ships out of Norway, and Ole became a cabin boy at the age of 11, Erik added. After high school, Ole went to sea on tramp steamers all over the world. Later he emigrated to Brooklyn, where he took courses in marine architecture. By 1933 he was working at a shipyard in Stamford but was laid off and lost the sailboat where he, his wife and his daughter were living.

“With his last bit of money, he bought the Riverside building and turned it into a boatyard,” Erik said.

Ultimately, seven Amundsens lived in the 900 square-foot second floor apartment, but it never seemed cramped, according to Erik.

Open House report

Saw two homes of note, one old (1867), one brand new. I mentioned both earlier this week when they hit the market and said I expected them to be exceptional. To my taste, they lived up to expectations.

159 Park Avenue

159 Park Avenue, the 1867 house, $3.595 million, is in beautiful shape and has all best features of a fine house of its era: detailed moldings, great woodwork, high ceilings, decent flow of rooms. It has lost, I assume, much of its original land but there’s enough left to offer a good back yard and it’s on one of the prettiest streets in Greenwich, especially “in-town”. Worth checking out.

7 Hearthstone

And 7 Hearthstone Drive, Riverside, was built by Tim O’Malley of Argus Development (Old Greenwich), so of course it’s well made -Tim builds a great house. The master bedroom is on the third floor, but there are two other bedrooms on that same level (and a fourth one a short flight down), so the squalling infants can be kept close enough to ruin your sleep and the teenaged-drummer will be free to disturb your neighbors, not you.

All that aside, this house is really special, with a great design inside and out, huge finished basement with nanny-suite/bath, excellent kitchen and comfortable living space. At $3.795 it’s priced a little bit above its competition, but not so much as to make you feel foolish for buying the best looking house on the street. Nice job.

(I don’t know when the broker is going to get around to posting pictures of this house, but check back later. Better yet, go see it.

The madness continues

Two sales that have me scratching my head.

78 Havemeyer Lane

78 Havemeyer Lane, bidding war – a bidding war! – asked $609,000, sold for $650,000. Was this the result of an online auction? Could the buyer possibly have actually visited the property and taken in the ambiance of Havemeyer Lane? The mind boggles.

6 Lake Drive So., Rvsd

In Riverside, naturally, another surprising sale, 6 Lake Drive South, pressed up against a cliff and across the street from Riverside train station, asked $2.495 an sold for $2.353 million. This is a tired old house of undistinguished pedigree on a half-acre. It couldn’t sell in 2007, or 2009, so it as rented out; never a prescription for improvement, and returned to the market just a short time ago when, of course, it sold. With a picture that was probably taken in February of 2007. Gosh.

New Riverside listing and 122 Round Hill Road

7 Hearthstone Drive (representative)

Tim O’Malley, a Riverside resident who builds very fine homes has listed 7 Hearthstone Drive for $3.795 ,million; he’ll probably get it. Pictures aren’t up as of this writing but it looks great on the outside and the listing sheet shows all the requirements of a new house today, including a nanny room in the basement. Not much of a yard on this 0.3 acre but these days, buyers don’t care.

Tim played this one pretty smart: he bought the parcel for $1.315 in the slow market of 2008, tore down the exiting house to save on taxes and then let the land lie fallow until the market picked up. Earlier this year he obviously decided that that time had come and commenced building. And now it’s done.

122 Round Hill Road

I did have a chance to see 122 Round Hill Road today, the $16 million, 1923 house that still has 17 of its original 140 acres. The house is fabulous, but needs everything: air conditioning, new wiring, a master bedroom suite, new bathrooms, windows and on and on. But the bones are there, and someone could pour money into this and end up with a spectacular home.

That, alas, is probably not going to happen. I asked another agent, a friend with 40 years in this business and who loves old houses as much as I do, what he estimated it would cost to completely redo: Five million? Nine? “It doesn’t matter,” he said, “this house will never survive – there’s no market for these any more”. I think he’s right, and that’s too bad. Time marches on.

The Board has reopened, so here’s some real estate news

No open houses today of interest – look for that aspect of this scam to resume next week, after school kids get settled in, but we do have two price adjustments reported, one down, one up.

80 Clapboard Ridge

80 Clapboard Ridge has taken the more conventional route and dropped its price, after failing to sell since 2012. Started at $6.495 429 days ago, today it can be yours for just $5.250 million. That wouldn’t seem a preposterous price: looks like the owners paid $2.9 million for the land in 1987 (really? For 2 acres?) and built this 9,500 sq.ft. house on it in 1988, so that must be worth something. I’d guess that the land itself is still worth around $2.5 million, so the house, less that land value, comes in at (gezuntagezunta…) $263 per sq.ft.  That’s below replacement cost.

20 Mackenzie Glen

Just east of 80 Clapboard, the owner of 20 Mackenzie Glen has taken the opposite tack and raised his one-acre building site $100,000 and it will now cost you $1.895 million to wrest this from his grasp. The land has been for sale since before the breakup of gondwanaland, starting at $2.695 in 2007 and remaining at that price for a full year despite the market’s failure to respond favorably, then dropping in 2009 to $1.995 and eventually $1.795 in 2009 and holding there until today when, as noted , you have been punished for your delay.

Mackenzie Glen is a decent street, in a convenient-to-town location, but this particular parcel is comprised mostly of a house on a hummock and some overgrown scrubland down a cliff. A house could be built on the rise, the scrubland cleared (assuming what looks like wetlands aren’t), and you’d have a nice place. The trouble, at least so far as clients of mine and their builders have concluded, is that the cost of preparing that site precludes building a respectable house here for $3 million, if you must pay $1.8 for the land. Now that you’d have to pay $1.9 for that land, the difficulty has increased. But for someone looking to build a $5 million house, perhaps this higher price will make sense.We’ll hope for the owner’s sake that another 1,492 days won’t have to elapse before that buyer appears.

Not much of a house, but not much of a price, either

18 Spezzano Drive

18 Spezzano Drive, Riverside in NoPo, has dropped from $649,000 to $525,000. 840 sq.ft., just 0.1 acre, and looks like it needs a lot of work, but if you can get this for under $5, which you probably can, you could be in town on a decent street for not a whole lot of money. $75,000 would go a long way to making this a nifty little bungalow, I’ll bet.

Price cut on Round Hill, land sale in Riverside

286 Round Hill Road

286 Round Hill Road has taken yet another price cut and is now down to $3.250 million. This is a great house, built in 1900 (renovated and expanded since), on 3.5 acres in the 2-acre zone, and all-in-all, feels like a wonderful place to live. But it was  placed for sale in 2009 at the daunting price of $5.375 and although as the years passed that price dropped, it moved slowly, step-by-step, inch-by-inch, so that now, when it’s probably priced about where it should have been four years ago, a buyer’s response upon seeing it the first time is likely to be “why should I buy what no one else wants?”  Don’t let this happen to you.

12 Long View, Rvsd

Over in Riverside, where people do still want to live, 12 Long View Avenue (the short strip connecting Gilliam and Armstrong) has gone to contract after just two weeks, at $2.9 million. 0.8 acre in the R-12,000 zone and two separate building lots, but this buyer’s taking both, so look for a large house*. This is probably wise, because so much of the property is wetlands that a single house will be easier to fit around them, rather than trying to cram two houses onto what dry land there is.

The house it will be replacing, by the way, is the ugliest house I have ever seen, anywhere. The Fountain boys grew up just a few doors down on Gilliam Lane and have watched in wonder as over the decades owners came and went while the structure remained. Back in the 50s Popular Mechanics awarded it a prize for requiring the least maintenance of any home in the country, but it looks like a slate-sided outhouse and aside from the nostalgia of it all, I don’t think the neighborhood will miss it.

* it occurs to me that a builder may have bought both lots with the intention of building two houses. In my opinion, this would be the wrong choice, regardless of the presence of those wetlands, because there’s such a shortage of large (by Riverside standards) lots, a builder can expect a premium for building on one. Look at Kali-Naggy’s experience on Marks Road, also in Riverside. He took a lot of, I think, 0.6 acres, split it in two and tried selling the resulting houses for $4 million each. He never got it.

Here’s one that got away

275 Riverside Avenue

From me, at least. 275 Riverside Avenue, $3.495 million, has gone to contract. Owners paid $3.5 for this in 2006 and put in a ton of money – I heard over a million, certainly lots and lots. They added on, built dormers in the third floor to create entirely new space, built a new kitchen, redid the baths, etc. etc. etc. I thought its price of $3.850 back in October was a fair one, but it languished; probably, it seems silly to say this, because it lacks airplane-hangar-sized master closets. Whatever the reason, when its price hit $3.495 it was a screaming steal, and someone has grabbed it. You’ll find other Riverside homes coming on at this price range, but none with an extra million of homeowner improvements thrown into the deal. All that money may not have made this a $4.5 million home, mind you, but it put it light years ahead of the next crop of $3.5s to hit the market.

Real estate news reported

Some sales, an accepted offer and a new listing.

55 Lockwood Ave

55 Lockwood Avenue, Old Greenwich, asked $1.695 million, got $1.275.

49 Lockwood Lane

49 Lockwood Lane, Riverside, asked $1.350 and found a buyer almost immediately at $1.291 (where’d that last thousand come from?)

5 Keofferam

5 Keofferam. OG, finally has an accepted offer. It’s been asking $3.310 million these days and I really can’t understand why it’s stayed on the market so long – 382 days. Great house, recently updated, wonderful road and location. People have been paying more for far less, which just shows something about the quirky nature of real estate.

40 Winthrop Drive

And 40 Winthrop Drive, Riverside, a so-so house built in 1996 on what was the Berrizzi’s property, is new to the market and asking $3.495. I don’t see the value here (the listing makes no mention of improvements made since it was constructed 18 years ago) but Winthrop’s a popular street, so who knows?

The death of suburbs?

What will the Back Country smell like in 2019? Depends.

As boomers age, suburbs lose their appeal.

While much of this smacks of the usual liberal, “force people back into the cities where we want them to live”,  some of the author’s points do reflect what we’re witnessing here in Greenwich, as demand for the Back Country wanes and compact (or “congested”, your choice) neighborhoods like Riverside are increasingly popular.

And then there’s this whole set of demographic changes that we’re going through: an oversupply of large, single-family houses in conventional suburbia and an undersupply of what the next generation and aging baby boomers are going to want, which is more walkable communities.

What does “the end of the suburbs” mean for boomers who own homes there now?

It’s funny. The boomers even more than the Millennials are the big question mark. Everybody in the housing industry is dying to know where the boomers are going to live as they get older.

Many of them want to age in place, whether that’s because of the financial crisis or because they’ve built strong ties to their community. That’s all well and good until they ultimately vacate their home. With so many boomers, there’s not going to be as big a market of people interested in buying their houses.

In a blog post I wrote about how boomer home sellers can hook Millennial buyers, I quoted a housing analyst who warned that “the great senior sell-off” later this decade could cause the next housing crisis. Should suburban boomer homeowners be scared that the end of the suburbs is coming?

It depends on the kind of suburb they’re in. What people are looking for in single-family homes in the suburbs is changing, and if your house doesn’t meet the desires of future buyers, it might be a tougher sell.

Let’s talk about different types of suburbs. You draw a distinction between outer-ring suburbs and inner-ring suburbs. What’s the difference, and why does it matter?

Inner-ring suburbs tend to be a little bit older, with smaller lots that are closer together and where people walk more. Plus there’s some place to walk to.

But valuations in those types of communities are coming back up now. And many people think that’s where the Millennials are going to want to be, rather than outer-ring suburbs, because they’re closer to downtown, houses are a little smaller, you can walk around more, and it’s a little livelier.

So are you saying the further out someone lives in the suburbs, the more financial risk they’ll be taking when they want to sell?

Yes.
….

Are suburban boomers who’ll want to sell their homes going have to accept bargain-basement prices due to a lack of buyers?

Look, the housing market’s coming back. But I think if you own a home in the suburbs, selling sooner rather than later is probably better. The prospects for selling to Millennials in the future aren’t good, unless you’re living in a place with a really, really good school district.

Won’t Millennials move to all types of suburbs once they have kids?

Everybody says wait till they have children; then they’ll do what their parents did and just go right back to suburbia. But there are going to be plenty of other options for them. And a lot of Millennials don’t like to drive — they’re not getting their drivers licenses as frequently as in the past.

What will the end of the suburbs mean for boomers who want to move for retirement?

It depends. If they want to go to a Sunbelt place, there are lots of bargains to be had there now.

But if not, what they’ll want is a community that offers some pedestrian activities and some sense of liveliness without a heavy reliance on a car.

That’s what you say Millennials want, too.

Right. And if you jumble those two groups up, that produces something that sociologists and urban planners say is really good.

One of the things about the suburbs people complain about is that they’re so homogenous — not racially (although they are), but in terms of age and life purpose. Everyone is in their 30s to 50s raising young children.

In the old days, what made a vibrant neighborhood was having young people and old people, rich people and poor people living together in different shapes and sizes of houses and from different walks of life. Maybe the walkable community of the future will combine the old and young.

85 Indian Head Road, Riverside

85 Indian Head Road (as proposed)

A reader asks if I know what’s happening at 85 Indian Head Road, which sold at full asking price, $3.195, last month. He and his neighbors have received notice that the new owners intend to build a 10,000 sq. ft, house on the property’s 1.79 acres – “is that true?”

Yes it is. In fact, the listing notes that:

ALL SITE WORK & ARCHITECTURAL PLANS FINALLY COMPLETED. PERMITS & APPROVALS PENDING FOR AN ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS 10,000 SF HOUSE (INCL FULL BASEMENT) WITH DETACHED POOL/ENTERTAINMENT HOUSE ON 1.79 FLAT MAGNIFICENT ACRES WITH A LONG, SWEEPING DRIVEWAY IN A LOVELY AREA OF RIVERSIDE.

I was going to write on this earlier, because it shows the importance for sellers to remove as much of the uncertainty about what can be done with their property as possible. This land sat, unwanted, for at least a year (maybe two), priced at less than it eventually sold for, because all the sellers had to offer was a 1903 carriage house on land encumbered by wetlands. The owners proceeded to get a house, septic system and drainage plan approved, then put it back on the market. Gone in a bidding war.

Currently there are several houses for sale that, because of the new FEMA regulations, can’t guarantee a buyer that any improvements can be made to the exiting house. Deal after deal has been reached and then fallen apart as the magnitude of the uncertainty becomes clear to potential buyers. If you have a similar property and you’re thinking of putting it up for sale, I’d advise dealing with that uncertainty now, rather than leave it to the buyer. If you find a buyer at all, he’ll demand a huge discount to compensate for the risk. Spend a little up front now or lose a pile later.

Market adjustments

12 Loading Rock Road in Riverside (north of Post Road) is owned by a builder who’s changed his mind about proceeding. It was first offered for sale in April for $1.275 million, expired unsold and today has returned at a 30% mark-down, $899,000. That’s not a price that will tempt another builder, I wouldn’t think, because he’d have to get well over $2,000,000 for his finished product and, these days, a 0.30 acre lot with water views but no waterfront would have, in my opinion, difficulty achieving that price. It might make sense for a homeowner who plans to stick around for ten years.

Or not. Stay tuned.