So says the Wall Street Journal.
If you’re looking for a new 30-year mortgage, last week’s events from the financial markets carry a very simple message: Get ‘em cheap while you still can.
Rates on conforming 30-year loans jumped dramatically in just a few days, ending the week at an average of 5.27% according to Bankrate.com. That’s [...]
Entries from May 2009
May 31, 2009
Low interest mortgages are gone
May 31, 2009
Call me Mr. Blue, but this looks like a better bet than Croation real estate
Black Swan opens fund betting on hyper-inflation.
UPDATE: Then again, maybe Croatia’s safer. The founder of Black Swan seems to be a graduate of the Bernie Madoff School of Accounting.
May 31, 2009
“Range Pricing”
I saw an article in the NYT today on this subject, touting it as a clever, crafty way to move your over-priced, unwanted pile of timber. I wasn’t going to mention it because I remain unconvinced it works but my real estate pal John Schneider in Tucson wasn’t so lazy. Not only isn’t he impressed, [...]
May 31, 2009
Greenwich real estate not panning out? Here’s an alternative
“How much money can you make renting in Croatia?” this site asks. The promoters’ answer, not surprisingly, is “quite a bit.” The place is booming, they say, which is quite a different state of affairs than when I hitchhiked through the area in 1972 and encountered nothing but sullen, nasty people. I guess they were [...]
May 31, 2009
Not quite ready as a stocking stuffer, but wait til it’s armed!
Ember, the littlest warbot. Cool.
May 31, 2009
An interview with Walt
As I passed by 175 Round Hill Road yesterday I spied Walt Noel pushing a hand mower around the front yard. I stopped to greet him but when he saw who I was he looked stricken.
“Holy cow, Chris, if Monica sees you here – whoo boy! Let’s go over to the Club before she comes out.”
“I [...]
May 30, 2009
Walter Noel’s old enough to get this one
The new Vanity Fair article on FGG and the Noels quotes an observer:
[A] well-known investor says, “These [F.G.G.] guys were just a marketing machine.… Walter was just really a customers’ man.… They didn’t even know what questions to ask. It’s malpractice. It’s gross negligence. It’s not criminal behavior, in my view. Nobody would do this. I [...]
May 30, 2009
I’ll take a California on the rocks, please
California’s broke and can’t print money so spending cuts are on the way. One can quibble over some of them: closing 80% of the state’s parks doesn’t seem designed to save money so much as to inconvenience as many people as possible, but if the budget crisis accomplishes nothing else, it’s done this: forced a [...]
May 30, 2009
Who will want a new car?
That question has automakers and the new owner of General Motors deeply worried,according to the NYT. Will there be pent-up demand once the recession ends or have Americans lost their taste for cars?
My money is on the latter – too bad my tax money is already bet on the former. The new CAFE standards and adoption [...]
May 30, 2009
Built in 2004, never found a buyer
Yesterday I mentioned that 11 Quail Road, on the market since May, 2008, had dropped $2 million off its original asking price of $8.875 million. I wrote that it had been a 2004 spec house (built on land purchased for $2.9 million in 2002 – those were the days) that sold that year for $6.450 [...]
May 30, 2009
Vanity Fair makes amends
I suppose that since he was kicked out of Round Hill Club and is no longer welcome at the bar, Walt Noel’s stuck across the street in his cottage, prowling the internet for stories about himself But aren’t we glad he is, because he just alerted me that Vanity Fair, still trying to overcome its [...]
May 30, 2009
Okay, this isn’t funny! Well, perhaps a little
I thought Original Walt was directing me to a parody site when he sent me this link, but it’s true:Fairfield Greenwich Group is suing Fairfield Sentry (or the other way around – who cares?) for failing to detect Madoff’s scam.
Hold it
[the Johnsons load their guns and point them at Bart. Bart then points his own [...]
May 30, 2009
The end is near
Or so some London real estate “experts” say. Prices for luxury homes off only 20% from this time last year which, believe it or not, is a good sign.
The average value of houses and apartments costing more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) in the most expensive neighborhoods gained 1.6 percent from April, the London-based [...]
May 29, 2009
Is a one-year-old new home still “new”?
That’s the question posed by the NYT’s Floyd Norris on his blog yesterday. Good question, but I wonder what Mr. Norris would think of 44 Close Road,built in 2002 and never occupied, or 21 Cornelia Drive, built in 2004 and still vacant and advertised as “new construction”. Cornelia’s builder at least has cut his price [...]
May 29, 2009
Here’s a warm-up diversion while we wait for Madoff/Noel developments
Greenwich’s own Frederic Bourke’s bribery trial starts Monday in Manhattan. His pocket book partner, Peter Dooney, isn’t expected in the court room to cheer him on – Dooney, after Bourke charged he was trying to inject him “with a harmful substance”, said he hadn’t spoken with Bourke in years. Perhaps he’ll show up for the [...]
May 29, 2009
Here’s just what we need
Another rude, obnoxious tennis player who squeals like a pig. I gave up watching girls tennis when they began grunting and over the years, it seems that grunting keeps hitting new crescendos. Simply obnoxious and unwatchable.
May 29, 2009
Connecticut Dems to Dodd: “Drop Dead!”
Connecticut Democrats are rushing through legislation that will strip (Republican) Governor Rell of her power to appoint a replacement if ahem, a certain senator were to quit or something. What could that be about?
May 29, 2009
You want an otter opinion?
This “almost entirely new’ house sold in October, 2002 for $3.459 million. After enjoying it for four years but doing nothing to it the owners put it back up for sale for the remarkable price of $6.750 million. The buying public apparently didn’t perceive the doubling of value that this listing broker did so it hasn’t sold. [...]
May 29, 2009
Back again
This is a perfectly acceptable house – it has a back lot feel going on (probably because it’s on a back lot) but that’s improved since the owner screened off the neighbors. It sold direct (and oh, how we hate when that happens) for $6.450 million in 2004 and came back on for sale in [...]
May 29, 2009
Death by a thousand cuts
This house on Silver Beech was badly in need of modernization back in 2005 when it was listed for $695,000. Naturally a bidding war erupted and the current owners ‘won” with a bid of $727,778. They proceeded to do a very nice renovation and in 2008 they put it back on the market at $845,000. [...]
