Recent program allows home sellers to collect money without listing
Thirteen is the lucky number again for that many new owners of real estate purchased in Greenwich last week. According to our local Multiple Listing Service, those sales totaled more than $33 million, $10 million more than the previous week’s total.
Greenwich, the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut, is roughly twice the size of Manhattan. Almost 30 percent of our 67.2 square miles is water and it’s no surprise to anyone here that our waterfront properties are highly valued. Every time one comes on the market they get a lot of looks.
Last week two shoreline properties sold, one on Mead Point and a second on Lucas Point in Old Greenwich. Taken together their $13.8 million price tag accounted for 41 percent of our 13 sales last week. Both fell short of their owners’ expected value however.
My buy of the week selection was a 2.69-acre land parcel at the end of a cul-de-sac on Mead Point with a tennis court. Pitch a tent and you’re home! No, seriously, I expect to see a sizeable structure added, especially since the sellers have gotten a variance allowing 14,166 finished square feet of construction.
My sale of the week selection is another waterfront property, this one with a six-bedroom shore colonial on it already.
Buy of the week
Listed for $17.5 million nine years ago, this 2.69-acre parcel with a tennis court was sold at a reduction of 63 percent almost a year later for $6.5 million. Marketed at $8.95 million and then reduced by $700,000, it sold last week for $7.5 million. Key to its sale for developing an estate on it was an approved variance for its FAR (finished floor square foot area-to-property square foot ratio) to 14,166. That’s a lot of space to roam about in for a house.
Acquiring this property for $7.5 million (and not $17.5 million) will allow a developer or end-user to build the ultimate shorefront estate. Eventually the market speaks for value if properly exposed. That’s true of shoreline property or a condo far from the water’s edge.
Sale of the week
My sale of the week selection went to contract after being exposed to the market for only 36 days. At $6.3 million, that’s extremely quick and it topped its tax-appraised value by almost 50 percent. Now that’s a tax-appraised value and not a real estate appraiser’s opinion of value. But still, that’s a good indication of the lust for these properties along our shoreline.
This six-bedroom, five-and-ahalf bath Nantucket Shingle Style Shore Colonial was custom-built in 2001 and enhanced recently with a dock, pool and access to the private Lucas Point beach. It doesn’t get much better than that for water lovers.
Originally purchased as new construction in 2002 for $3.925 million, it was resold in 2009 for $6.5 million, and listed last April for a “retail” $7 million ($6.995 million). Moving a property at this price point this quickly was key to my picking it.
Your Realtor purchases the property?
Coldwell Banker has decided to join Redfin, Opendoor, OfferPad, Knock and others in an iBuyer program and pilot it in Atlanta and Dallas. iBuyer programs give the seller a cash offer for their property at the outset and, if refused, their home is then listed in the traditional way by the firm. Is this the wave of the future?
The idea behind iBuyer programs is that sellers can skip the wait and presumably the expense of real estate fees by accepting a “market value offer” and close within 10 days. But wait, how do you know what your home’s market value is before exposing it to the market? Even listing agents are sometimes surprised by bidding wars that pop up at the tail end of a listing period when they couldn’t buy a prospect to even come to their open houses.
The complex sequence of home buying events sometimes includes buyers losing out on another property, the rapid approach of the school year, the end of tax incentives expiring in December and, my favorite, the fear of losing out to another buyer on a property you’ve had your eye on. I call that the “forbidden fruit syndrome.”
The business ethics, to me, are questionable. We have, as Realtors, a fiduciary responsibility to get the best offer possible to our clients, and not front end that with an offer which may not be even close.
Yes, it’s a client service but at what and whose cost? Just sayin’.
This Week’s Success Quote
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
— Winston Churchill