There are still more buyers than sellers in Riverside and Old Greenwich

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Reported pending today:

3 Gisborne Place, Old Greenwich, $4.9 million, 6 days.

And is this the same house? No, it’s 28 Verona Drive, in Riverside, $5.250 million, but also pending; 8 days, for this one

And continuing in Riverside, there’s 7 Willowmere Avenue, $3.8 million. This one’s an older house — 1933, and took longer to find a buyer, but for all that, its stay of 28 days on the market is still quick.

Well, wasn't that nice of them?

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The owners of 802 Lake Avenue purchased it from its builder for $5.7 million in March 2023, did quite a bit of finishing work*, and then put it back up for sale in October for $6.395. A nice couple from Scarsdale came to see it and they must have had quite a heart-warming story to tell, because yesterday the owners sold the house to them for the same $5.7 they’d paid.

So nice when that happens, and so rarely seen.

*802 LAKE AVE, GREENWICH, CT 06830

LIST OF IMPROVEMENTS

From Spec House to Chic, Design-Forward Home

LANDSCAPING/HARDSCRAPING:

- Installed all landscaping including trees, shrubbery and flowering plants

- Installed Irrigation System

- Fenced in property, hid pool equipment

- Added outdoor pergola on back patio with auto blinds

- Added pool deck, redesigned and installed wider stairs from kitchen to patio, added large

stepping tiles along entire back to pool and at front and mudroom doors

-Installed driveway with asphalt and gravel combination

-Removed dead trees

KITCHEN/FAMILY ROOM/ETC

-Replaced countertop with Kilimanjaro granite and backsplash with gray high-gloss tile

-Replaced kitchen island light fixtures with Tom Dixon designer lights

-Installed fireplace mantel to finish space

PAINT, DESIGNER WALLPAPER, ETC

-Painted all first floor rooms to create a dramatic and chic decor

-Installed designer wallpaper in first floor office, powder rooms, primary bathroom, etc.

LIGHT FIXTURES

-Replaced all original lights with designer chandeliers including Tom Dixon light fixture over

kitchen island and dramatic Hubbardton Forge chandelier in entry foyer

-Added dimmers to all recessed lighting

-Replaced all exterior lights with Hubbardton Forge fixtures

WINDOW TREATMENTS

-Installed window treatments throughout the home

PRIMARY BATHROOM

-Added marble tiles around double vanity and in water closet

-Installed designer wallpaper

FAMILY BATHROOMS and POWDER ROOMS

-Replaced all vanities in family bedrooms to create more storage

-Replaced all mirrors with LED medicine cabinets for brightness and storage

-Replaced all toilets to skirted design with strong pressure/minimal water-usage features

-Added wall tiles to all family bathrooms and pebble floor to one bathroom shower

-Added all towel racks, toilet paper holders, etc.

-Replaced vanity in powder room

-Installed designer wall paper in two powder rooms and lower level full bathroom

GARAGE

-Installing epoxy flooring and industrial shelving to finish garage (Oct 26-28)

-Added electric car charger

SECURITY SYSTEM

-Installed wireless ADT system with motion sensors (ground floor).

or disarmed via the ADT app which also provides access to system settings

WATER SOFTENING SYSTEM

System can be armed

-Installed state of the art water softening and filtration system

Thank goodness for newcomers — they bring such a refreshing antidote to our old, immoral thinking and ideas.

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now that’s a pow wow!

One Allison Hope, arrival date 2018, and living on stolen land, is shocked and dismayed at the inherent racism being displayed by the Cos Cob PTA. Here’s her letter to the editor of the Greenwich Free Press; you may think I’ve invented it for submission to the Bee, but no, I assure you, try as I might, I could never reach this level of idiocy and trite repetition of every liberal trope.

Enjoy.

LETTER: Can’t we have fun without being offensive?

Submitted by Allison Hope, Greenwich

Not long after I moved to Greenwich in 2018, I came across an advertisement for the North Mianus Pow Wow and got excited, thinking it was similar to the Pow Wows I attended growing up in New York City, which were organized by and highlighting inter-tribal Native Americans. The tribes would travel from all over the country and gather at the only working farm in New York City for a weekend of drumming and dancing, native food and crafts, and education about Native American history and culture. It was always a beautiful event that I had the privilege to attend as a child and learn about Native American culture and tradition, and then, decades later, to return with my own child.

I arrived at the North Mianus event with my family only to see that it was not in fact a Pow Wow, but a carnival fundraiser for the school’s PTA, with no evidence of any Native American culture or tradition or people.

I was confused, then concerned. I sat on the observation for a long time, and then realized maybe the event organizers didn’t realize they were using a term that was coopted from Native American tribes and might not know that it was offensive to use it to describe an event that wasn’t organized by Native Americans.

Pow Wows are defined as gatherings of Native American nations, often a celebration filled with dancing and singing ceremonies, sometimes bringing together diverse indigenous groups.

I wanted to engage the event organizers, but I also recognized that I did not identify as Native American and did not want to speak for that community. [Then maybe you should shut up —ED] We have a phrase in civil rights movements, “nothing about us without us,” and I knew that I needed to include Native American perspectives and voices in my query.

As a non-Native, I reached out to a Native American advocacy group based in Connecticut to gather some resources, and they affirmed that the term Pow Wow was in fact not something they encouraged non-Native American communities to use, and were kind enough to share information about how best non-Native communities can be respectful and engage.

…. I reached out to the North Mianus PTA equipped with this information and shaped what I believed was a thoughtful note. I never heard back. [hahahaha! Good for them — ED]

Every year I see the signs for the Pow Wow and I cringe. I know I am not the only one who has raised the concern. There is no good reason why this should fall on deaf ears.

Is it child abuse to raise a 6-year-old this way? Asking for a friend.

My almost seven-year-old said it best. “This is like Mount Rushmore,” he said. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“They took the mountain away from the Native Americans and turned it into Mount Rushmore. And the parents took the word Pow Wow away from the Native Americans and are using it for their carnival.”

…. I stared in awe at my first grader and wondered why he seemed to espouse more empathy and understanding than the parents planning the school fundraiser. Imagine clinging to something that isn’t even yours? The fear of losing notoriety or money greater than doing the right thing.

What sort of lesson are we teaching our children? [Exactly what I’m asking — ED] What sort of moral compass are we using to steer our own decisioning, and if we do some soul searching, where does our conscience guide us?

This is not the thought police trying to ruin another good thing in this town. [No, not at all – Ed] We can have our cake and eat it too. We can have the best carnival fundraiser with no loss of joy or dollars and change the name so we’re not offending an important minority group [rude of me to ask, I’m sure, but what’s “important” about a long-defunct stone age culture whose remnants have retreated to casinos and discount tobacco stores? — Ed] a that has long been wronged by others coming in and taking everything that they have created and hold sacred. Let us break this heinous tradition.

To be clear, I still plan to go to the carnival. My kid wouldn’t let me decide otherwise. I am not a boycotting kind of person. I am a link arms and engage and let’s go on this journey towards greater humanity and ethics together kind of person. I support North Mianus and all that the school community is trying to do. I support more resources for our children. I also support inclusion and ensuring that we’re not trampling on anyone else while we lift ourselves up, especially not communities that have been long marginalized.

We have an opportunity to make this right. Let’s enjoy ourselves this weekend and then roll our sleeves up and get it all the way right next year.

My child even had some great suggestions for alternate names for the carnival, and would be happy to set up a meeting to discuss with the PTA parents at North Mianus.

Dear Anshu: are you aware that some awful person has hijacked your facebook page and is posting horrible things in your name?

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Perhaps he is, because Anshu Vidyarthi, owner of Greenwich restaurants Le Fat Poodle, Le Penguin, and the soon-to-be-opened Juju Cantina has removed all posts from his web page. Unfortunately, FWIW’s New Mexican forensic expert, with assistance from our Greenwich intern, has uncovered many more of the undoubtedly fake postings still remaining on the Internet, and those may deter diners from booking reservations at Vidyarthi’s multiple enterprises — who wants to give money to someone who — they may think — considers them pieces of excrement and hopes they die?

Sad.

See what I mean, Anshu? This person is calling half of your customers vile, pieces of shit, which will probably annoy them, and may cause them to look elsewhere for their dining.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards the closing table to be born?

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20 Langhorne Lane, currently priced at $5.495 million, is reported as pending. It’s been a long road.

Way back in 2006, that spectacular failure of a would-be developer, acupuncturist/(horrible) artist/dancer Tsoi Jianhua paid $1.9 million for this lot, and in 2007 somehow persuaded Patriot Bank to loan him $6,025,000 so that he could - he promised he would — build a 19,000 sq.ft. house that would sell for $14.9 million. I wouldn’t want to besmirch the name of the individual who was the senior loan officer at Patriot back then, but almost every Patriot loan that went bad in Greenwich when the bust came, including huge loans to a ex-con who was on his way back to prison for bank fraud, had been personally approved by this man. Mark it off to coincidence, I suppose.

Mr. General Tso Sauce did at least come up with a design for his monstrosity, and did list it for the aforementioned $14.900 million in 2008. Neither the house itself nor a buyer appeared in following years as the price slowly dropped to $9.998 in 2009, and was then offered for land again at $2.995 until eventually Patriot had worked through the legal morass that is the Connecticut judicial system and foreclosed on the property in 2010.

The end of a dream, 2009.

Our tale resumes in 2012, when Patriot sold their regained property for $1.1 million to the current owners (that loan officer who approved the $6,025,000 loan in 2006 was long gone, having departed for a better job at another Greenwich financial institution). The buyers went to work, built a 7,227 sq.ft. house in 2013 and listed it for sale that year for $5.995. Over the years, that price hasn’t budged much, but nether has the house; so the would-be sellers have rented it out, off-and-on, and collected nice rents; even, perhaps, enough to keep pace with inflation.

Somewhere along the line, the listing’s given date of construction was changed to 2016, not doubt to keep that fresh look, and the claimed square footage was expanded to 9,000, presumably by the owners remembering that it had basement, too. Whatever the reason: the newer construction date, the larger square footage, or even its new lower price of $5.495, a buyer has appeared, and this chapter of the Saga of Langhorne will end, and a new one begun.

Stay tuned.

Price cut on Finney Knoll

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3 Finney Knoll, “new” construction, from $3.999 million to $3.795. This was a 1840 house in deplorable condition when a local builder purchased it for $800,000 in 2006. He proceeded, verrry slowly, to add on a modern house attached to the original, but by 2023 that project was still unfinished — I believe the builder was living and bathing in the kitchen, for example, and there were numerous code violations in the work that had been done. A years-long effort to complete a short sale failed and the title was eventually turned over to the lender.

That bank put it on the market in January 2023 at $750,000, a low price designed to attract higher bids, and it did. Two of my clients looked at it separately and passed; they were each of the opinion, as was I, that the property was fairly priced at $750,000, especial;y given the unknown of how much of the original builder’s work would need to be replaced and redone (almost al of it) and neither wanted to play a part in a greater fool adventure.

But many did, and this owner was the lucky winner. He might get this price — it’s a frenzied market, and the ability to hop over the fence and shop at Balducci’s may prove a strong draw — but I’m guessing somewhere closer to $3.2’s going to take it, eventually.

January, 2023: “Needs some TLC”