Again With The Bidding Wars

17 Roosevelt Avenue (corner of Irvine), Old Greenwich. Asked: $1.050M
Sold: $1.4M
List: Ann Simpson
Sell: Sheila Starr

17 Roosevelt only has .23 acres, but the existing house was shoved over into the corner, resulting in this (relatively) huge side yard.

Can there be a situation where you have a bidding war on a property but it doesn’t necessarily suggest a blazing hot market? Yes, in the case of 17 Roosevelt Avenue, a cute, charming little tear-down bungalow that, at $1,050,000, was about the cheapest thing you could buy in this neighborhood, the bidding war that erupted was not caused by an excited, possibly over-heated market.

In this case, the neighbor did it (they paid $1,400,000). And that is a very, very common story around town. Neighbors buy an adjoining property for various reasons, including as a defensive maneuver, to prevent builders from erecting a giant mansion looming over the backyard.

Needless to say, at $1,050,000, there were plenty of bidders, including some builders, but no one was going to pay as much as the neighbors! So this price, as in most cases of neighbor-purchase, is probably not all that useful as a comp for near-future appraisals.

I’ll talk more about this on tomorrow’s radio show, WGCH.com or 1490 AM radio, 11:00 AM – Noon (or listen later to the damned pod-cast!)

Fountain, on the right. Wilcox on the left (not politically!)

Tune In To Today’s Show At 11:00 AM!

The dapper, some would say “debonair” developer Tom Rich, President of FD Rich.

Today we have, in-studio, the President of Stamford’s FD Rich Company, Tom Rich, for the full hour. Tom, the handsome, vivacious (if that’s the word I want) man-about-town has been conceiving and building some of Stamford’s and surrounding area’s most impressive buildings for decades. He’s credited with turning around the company after a (yet another) government-caused economic catastrophe nearly sank FD Rich back in the 1990’s.

My suspicion is that ol’ Tom is a Democrat and a liberal, so the challenge will be to get him to say mean things about Guv Malloy and nice things about Prez Trump. In any case, I assure you it will be an amusing interview, don’t miss it (or at least dig up the %#@&-ing podcast and listen later).

Here’s Tom, dishing the dirt with the future President of the United States, many years ago.