Posts Tagged ‘real estate’

Trending: Where the Multimillion-Dollar Homes Are

Friday, May 17, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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A 50-acre estate in Greenwich came on the market this week for $190 million.

A 50-acre estate in Greenwich came on the market this week for $190 million.

When the 50-acre estate with sweeping views of Cos Cob Harbor hit the market with a $190 million price tag Friday, its presence reverberated through the real estate world, taking the title of the nation’s most expensive listing.

“It’s a great property,” said Joseph Barbieri of Sotheby’s International, a real estate firm that had been in the running to represent the estate, which is being listed by David Ogilvy & Associates. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for someone who wants to own acreage. There’s no perfect property in Greenwich, but this is certainly significant.”

Walter Molony, a spokesman at the National Association of Realtors, said 1.8 percent of homes sold across the country in March commanded a final price over the $1 million mark. The association doesn’t even keep track of price clusters any higher than that because “they’re really just outliers,” he said.

But Greenwich real estate is far from a mirror of Anytown, USA.

According to Daisy Kong, a spokeswoman for the real estate website Trulia, eight of the 10 most expensive properties in Connecticut are nestled in Greenwich; the other two are in Old Saybrook and Cornwall.

Currently, 76 percent of the homes listed for sale in Greenwich are asking more than $1 million, and the vast majority are likely to sell over that threshold. According to Trulia, the average sale price of a Greenwich house these days is $1.1 million. Add in 4,000 feet of waterfront, a couple of islands and 12 bedrooms (two of which are oval-shaped), and the ticket price climbs pretty quickly — all the way to a record-shattering $190 million for the property on Indian Field Road, near Greenwich’s Bruce Park.

Before Victorian, French-renaissance mansion, which was built in 1898, made its presence known this week, Greenwich’s most expensive property on the market was actor/director Mel Gibson’s former home, Old Mill Farm. That estate, which boasts more than 15,000 square feet of living space and 75 acres, is listed at $39.5 million, and is represented by Barbieri. Barbieri also holds the title of selling the highest-priced waterfront home in Greenwich: A house on Field Point Road that sold in 2011 for $39.5 million.

But Greenwich’s most expensive sale on the books came in 2004, when an 80-acre mid-century horse farm at 25 Lower Cross Road went for $45 million. While there have been several other eight-figure sales over the years, the nine-digit mark hasn’t yet been hit, despite at least one attempt.

“Take the Helmsley property, which came up on the market for $125 million. That sold for $35 million,” Barbieri said.

The Helmsley estate, a 40-acre property on Round Hill Road, dubbed “Dunnellen Hall,” was once owned by hotel and real estate tycoons Harry and Leona Helmsley, and included an opulent, 28-room mansion. After more than two years on the market, it sold for less than one-third of its asking price in late 2010.

“It’s an honor to sell these kinds of high-priced properties, and the upper end of the market is very saleable, though it does go through cycles. But the one essential thing is the properties have to be reasonably priced. I don’t want to say competitively priced, because some of these properties have no comparable (properties), but they have to be intelligently priced,” Barbieri said.

Even in a town like Greenwich, where median household income is so high that the U.S. Census Bureau can’t quantify it in its typical ranges, listing a property for more than $100 million can be a risk. According to Daisy Kong, a spokeswoman for Trulia, the Greenwich estate joins only four other properties across the nation in that bracket, topping the previous heavyweight title holder, the penthouse at the Pierre Hotel, listed at $125 million and boasting a 360-degree view of Manhattan. Two of the other three nine-figure properties are also in New York, while the fourth is in Miami Beach, Fla.

“I wouldn’t want to be quoted as saying what I think it’s worth. But I think it’s safe to say it’s an ambitious price,” said Barbieri. “It will be interesting to see what happens with that. I’m not quite sure the value is there, but Greenwich is an interesting place.”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

Trending: Where the Renters Live

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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Across the nation, renters account for more than one in three residents of occupied housing units, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. But here in Southwestern Connecticut, the rate is a little bit lower at 28.8 percent.

If we were to compare the national rate of renters with the rate in a local community, Norwalk would be the one town in Southwestern Connecticut that comes closest to sharing the national profile. In Norwalk, 34.9 percent of occupied housing units are home to renters, while 65.1 percent are home to owners, making the city just slightly more renter-heavy than the nation, which hovers at 33.9 percent.

While there’s nothing incredibly out of the ordinary about the number of percentage of renters in Southwestern Connecticut when compared to the national figures, the growing share of renters in towns like Norwalk is climbing at a much faster rate than it is nationally. In 2005, only 38.6 percent of Norwalk’s occupied units were home to renters, but an addition of thousands of units to the rental market between then and 2011 helped push Norwalk ahead of the national average.

Similarly, other local cities have seen their rental rates increase at a faster rate than the rest of the nation between 2005 and 2011, according to census data, including Bridgeport, which has climbed from 51.1 percent to 55.4 percent and Stamford, which inched up a bit more slowly from 42.3 percent to 43.6 percent.

But what is it that keeps the overall share of renters in our area so low when such a large share of residents in the area’s biggest cities are renters? It’s those tiny towns, holding down the fort for owners. Fourteen of the 31 towns in Southwestern Connecticut have an 85 percent share of owners or greater, including the town of Easton, where only 2.6 percent of residents are renting.

Trending: Where the Old Houses Are

Friday, April 19, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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This 15-bedroom, 17-bathroom home with 15,826 square feet of living space on Old Mill road in Greenwich was built in 1926. It's currently on the market for $32,995,000./Stamford Advocate File Photo

This 15-bedroom, 17-bathroom home with 15,826 square feet of living space on Old Mill Road in Greenwich was built in 1926. It’s currently on the market for $32,995,000./Stamford Advocate File Photo

The state of Connecticut has the 10th oldest housing stock in the nation, with 23.3 percent of houses here being built before 1939, according to data from the American Community Survey.

But here in the Southwestern corner of the state, we have even more old homes than the rest of Connecticut, with a little more than one in four houses having been built before 1939. And in Greenwich, 30.9 percent of the town’s homes were built in the 30s or before – that’s more than twice the density of old homes as the national average.

Across Southwestern Connecticut, the town with the highest percentage of super-old homes is Ansonia, where 39.9 percent of the houses were built before the start of World War II. Derby and Bridgeport also have slightly higher percentages of old homes than Greenwich, at 38.1 percent and 35.6 percent, respectively. At the bottom of the list, Brookfield has the lowest density, with fewer than 5 percent of homes built before 1939.

Wondering where else you can find old homes? Check this Top 10 list for states with the highest percentage of old homes:

  1. Massachusetts – 35.4 percent
  2. Washington, D.C. – 34.7 percent
  3. Rhode Island – 34.5 percent
  4. New York – 33.7 percent
  5. Vermont – 28.5 percent
  6. Pennsylvania – 27.8 percent
  7. Iowa – 27.8 percent
  8. Maine – 27.5 percent
  9. Nebraska – 23.4 percent
  10. Connecticut – 23.4 percent

 

Buying 45% cheaper than renting in Fairfield County

Friday, April 5, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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A new report by the real estate website Trulia found that across the nation it is 44 percent cheaper to buy a home than it is to rent one. In Fairfield County, it’s a bit cheaper still, at 45 percent, while house hunters in the New Haven metropolitan statistical area can enjoy a 47 percent break if they buy.

Of course, that bargain fluctuates depending on who you are and what you’re looking for. The Trulia team had some pretty strict guidelines for the analysis:

To compare the costs of owning and renting, we assume people will get a 3.5% mortgage rate, reside in the 25% tax bracket and itemize their federal tax deductions, and will stay in their home for seven years. We also assume buyers get a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and put 20% down. Under all of these assumptions, buying is 44% cheaper than renting nationwide, taking into account all of the costs and proceeds from buying or renting over the entire seven-year period. We also look at alternative scenarios by changing the mortgage rate, the income tax bracket for tax deductions, and the number of years one stays in the home.  Our interactive map shows how the math changes under alternative assumptions. And if you’re interested, check out our detailed methodology which explains our entire approach, step by step.

Looking for the perfect spot to claim as your own? We did a little house hunting of our own and found the most recently reduced prices on homes for sale in every town in Southwestern Connecticut. Check out the slideshow above to see what we found.

Trending: Where Southwestern Connecticut’s Oldest Population Lives

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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The game was Crazy Ls — a variation of bingo that requires the player to form an “L” shape along the outer edges of the bingo board to win.

“Don’t worry about any of the spots on the inside. Just focus on the edges,” said Eleanor Suarez, 80, who had generously loaned one of the several boards she had situated in front of her last Thursday to me, a bingo novice, during the weekly round of the game at the Orange Senior Center. “It’s easy.”

Easy, perhaps, for Suarez, whose eyes darted over about a half-dozen boards on the round table in front of her. But the pace picks up pretty quickly, and it becomes mind-boggling to watch her fingers flick from one board to the next.

But even with her expert scanning skill and laser focus, the game was won by the woman sitting to her right, Pat Moccia. Bingo is, after all, a game of odds, and Moccia, 81, had three rows of five bingo boards in front of her.

Moccia and Suarez, who were accompanied at their table by Renee Testani, 85, were just three of several seniors gathered last Thursday, enjoying a round of the game, where the winner took home a pot of $2. It’s a popular event in Orange, which has the highest percentage of citizens over age 85 of all towns and cities in southwestern Connecticut, according to census figures.

With 4.2 percent of Orange’s population age 85 or older, the town has a higher concentration of such residents than even the Sarasota, Fla., metropolitan statistical area, where 3.8 percent of residents fit that bill, making it the densest MSA in the nation for that age segment.

Here in Connecticut, a total of 2.4 percent of the state’s residents are 85 or older, the second highest density for any state in the nation, following North Dakota, where 2.5 percent of the population are in that age bracket.

“One of the things that drive the state to be so old, is knowing that baby boomers overwhelmingly stay in the same county and home as they lived in during their working lives, because of the social attachment, community investment and deep roots people put down here,” said Claudio Gualtieri, associate state director for the AARP Advocacy Group in Connecticut.

“There’s little incentive to move, and so since our population in some states in the Northeast had more robust populations early on, before the Sunbelt developed more recently as a hot spot, those populations have stayed basically where they were during their working lives,” he said.

According to census data, each of the New England states has a higher percentage of people over age 85 than the national average of 1.7 percent, with Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts all in the Top 10. Here in southwestern Connecticut, more than 75 percent of local towns are above the 1.7 percent national average.

“There’s an affinity to where you grew up and raised your children — what organizations you’ve been a part of. That’s not something people are easily able to jettison aside to relocate and start over,” Gualtieri said.

That’s what’s keeping women such as Suarez, Moccia and Testani in the Nutmeg State.

“My husband just passed away, and my son asked me to move, but I said I don’t want to move now. I know the people. I know the town, I know how to get around,” Suarez said.

“But why would I want to go anywhere? I want to stay where I know where I am. My daughter went through the whole school system here, from kindergarten through high school; I’ve lived here for 61 years,” she said.

While Suarez said her house, a split-level, is starting to become a bit too much to handle. She plans to buy a lift to help her up the stairs. That way she can age in place, which Orange Senior Center Director David Marsh said is very important for Connecticut residents.

“Bridgeport and Milford have much more age-restricted housing, but, yeah, folks tend to stay here. This is where they grew up, where they have homes and children, and this is where they want to be,” Marsh said.

“We try to let them age in place, which is a big term nowadays. It used to be that when you get to a point where you have challenges, they would ship you off to a nursing home. Now there are a lot of home-care agencies that will come in and they’ll take care of you,” he said.

For example, there are “handymen” who will help seniors change light bulbs or batteries, a “friendly visitor” program in which people visit and provide companionship for homebound seniors and several other services for the town’s older population, Marsh said. And in a town such as Orange, which is a bit more affluent than some of its neighboring communities, seniors are more likely to be able to afford to bring someone in to help them cook or clean, or stay with them for part of their day, Marsh said.

Those kinds of amenities are key to helping seniors continue to live in their neighborhood, according to Gualtieri who said it is important to enhance livability for older residents as communities gray.

Communities everywhere will continue to gray in coming years. Between 2000 and 2010, every state in the nation experienced an increase in the number of residents over 85, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And the older population is now becoming the fastest-growing segment of Americans, according to data from the bureau, which found that the number of Americans aged 65 or older grew by 15.1 percent in that 10-year period, much higher than the 9.7 percent population growth recorded across age brackets.

“Towns need to prepare through re-envisioning how their towns are designed so they can accommodate people as they age, no matter what their physical capacity,” Gualtieri said. “Residential living should be in close proximity to basic needs like grocery stores, shops and places to get food and medicine.”

Orange has already done that, Testani said as she prepared her bingo boards.

“It’s very convenient. There’s good shopping. It’s a good place to be as far as people, and Costco is right here, plus there’s a good social environment,” she said. “Why would I want to live anywhere else?”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

Trending: Where new homes are being built

Sunday, March 24, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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Building permits were filed for 104 new single-family homes in the city of Danbury during 2012, according to census data, making the Hat City the No. 1 spot in Southwestern Connecticut for new houses.

While the average number of single-family homes being built in 20 towns around the area is down by 10.7 percent since 2008, Danbury is a bright spot among its neighboring municipalities, with 70.5 percent more building permits in 2012 than in 2008.

This is the third consecutive year that Danbury has led the pack, after 103 single-family building permits were issued in 2011 and a high of 119 were issued in 2010. Previously, Greenwich had more permits than other towns and cities, with 94 in 2009 and 130 in 2008. These days, Greenwich is the No. 3 municipality, with 62 building permits.

How quickly is your town building single family homes? Here’s the breakdown of permits issued in 20 area towns and cities in 2012.

The data shows that Shelton’s single-family home construction has grown more quickly than any of the other 19 municipalities, doubling from 22 permits issued in 2008 to 44 permits issued in 2012. At the same time, Trumbull’s new housing stock has decreased more than any other town, shrinking by 90 percent over the five-year period, from 71 permits in 2008 to only seven in 2012.

Southwestern Connecticut’s most expensive rental property

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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In this Thursday’s edition of Trending, we examine the high cost of rent here in Southwestern Connecticut. Across the area, median rents can range from a low of $966 paid per month in Naugatuck, to more than $2,000 a month in both Darien and Easton, according to data from the American Community survey.

But as with all things in Southwestern Connecticut, there are the averages, and then there are the extremes. Check out this home in Sherman, which takes top billing as the most expensive rental property on the market in Southwestern Connecticut this week, according to real estate website Zillow. The 3,000-square-foot home, situated on 200 acres, goes for $35,000 a month.

Stay tuned later this week for a breakdown of the most expensive properties, town-by-town throughout Southwestern Connecticut.

Fairfield County’s love of stone walls 10 times greater than U.S.

Saturday, March 2, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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Folks in Fairfield County sure do love our stone walls.

A recent report put together by real estate website Trulia found that property listings in Fairfield County mention “stone walls” 10 times as frequently as the national average.

We’re not the only area with a high desire for otherwise normal amenities. San Francisco listings mention Whole Foods 10 times more than national listings on average, because the proximity to the grocery store are incredibly important to house hunters in the city, according to Trulia. Check out some of the other “hyperlocal” desires found around the country.

Screenshot taken from Trulia Report at http://trends.truliablog.com/2013/02/real-estate-lab-listing-words/

In addition to our love for stone walls, the Trulia report also said that many listings in our area “mention a ‘level yard’ or ‘level lot’ – which is a draw because much of the land in that area is rocky rather than level.”

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