The Golf Coast Standard

Open Houses-Darien Real Estate-September 6,2009

Owing to the long holiday weekend there are just a couple of open houses this weekend.

Saturday,Sept. 5,2009, 1-3PM

69 Hale Lane (condo), $750,000

Sunday,Sept 6,2009, 2-4PM

80 Goodwives River Road, $1,550,000

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Darien Real Estate Market Report, August 28,2009

Here is this weeks’ Darien,Ct Real Estate market report for August 28,2009.Click on the link to view New Listings,Price Changes,Deposits, and Recorded Closed Sales.

Next week I’ll post  January-August ‘08 vs.’09 statistics. We’ll see if the numbers indicate an upward trend. Based on the past few weeks closings, I’m not terrribly optimistic.

 

Darien_MKTRpt_AUG27

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Tags: closed sales, deposits, market report, new listings, price changes

Darien Real Estate,Open Houses Aug 30,2009

Here is the list of this weeks’ open houses in Darien,CT.Look for this list to increase significantly after the Labor Day weekend.

                                                1-3 PM

• 32 Edgerton St, $995,000                                      

                                                 1-4 PM

• 102 Rose Lane $737,000
• 8 Delafield Island $2,799,000
• 8 Davis Lane $3,495,000
• 111 Ridge Acres, $3,799,000

                                                   2-4PM

• 90 Leroy, $799,000
• 22 Great Hill Road, $2,495,000

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Darien Real Estate Market Report,Aug 23,2009.

Below is  a weekly” hot sheet “I will be publishing that shows new listings,price reductions and closings for the week in Darien Real Estate.As you can see ,prices continue to drop while deposits and sales remain very soft. I’ll post a full report of overall trends at the end of the month.

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Little Grey Schoolhouse-Update-Darien real estate

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Antique schoolhouse in Darien that I loved.Just want to keep you updated. Its $699K down from the original 799K. Its a flat acre in Darien with a 19th century one room schoolhouse on it!  So great. 83 Camp Ave,Darien. I’m not allowed to advertise other peoples listings on this blog but YOU can look it up.

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Baby I’m Amazed…Home repair and recession…..Darien real estate.

Let me start by saying that -I’m no kid. I’m 52 years old and have owned a home for 25 of those years.Every so often however, I am AMAZED by how easy it is to get ripped off by unscrupulous home repair companies.

Yesterday,at the beginning of the first real heatwave of  the summer, my central air conditioning stopped working .(you know, that Murphys’ Law thing). Anyway, I have been doing business with the same AC company for all of 25 years I’ve been in Darien,CT .They are  a Darien and Fairifeld County company, their trucks are all over the place and I’ve never had any reason to mistrust them.     Read the rest of this entry »

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This article captures the psychology of Darien Real Estate…

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article today on what is happening in the luxury real estate market. I happened to be discussing this just this noon in realtion to the Darien,Ct market.

I’ve even known of several Realtors in town who, when faced with reducing their own homes’ price,have been in denial and disbelief. That special”number” we all have in our heads ,occupies a very stubborn area of our brains . With time I guess we’ll all come around. We have to. 

Ive attached the full article below.

 

Real-estate agents are offering the same refrain: home sellers who are serious about selling have to price their homes properly (read: make the buyer think they’re getting a bargain).  Those who do, they say, are selling their home much faster.

A new report Friday shows that some sellers are getting that memo, albeit belatedly. Nearly one in four home sellers has dropped the asking price on their home, with an average price chop of 10% in July, according to real-estate Web site Trulia.com. More than one third of sellers reduced their asking prices in the top three cities: Jacksonville, Fla.; Portland, Ore.; and Milwaukee, Wisc.

The advice to offer buyers a “bargain” is particularly relevant for the luxury home market, where sellers have to be aggressive because inventories are piling up in many markets. Homes listed at $2 million and up offered an average 14% price reduction last month. (This story last week looked at how mid-to-upper end communities have braced themselves for further price declines.)

In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, buyers are getting more realistic about reducing prices for homes at the high-end, according to the Trulia report. One-third of homes listed for sale in Marin County, an affluent area north of San Francisco, had reduced their prices last month. In the East Bay’s Contra Costa County, some 36% of homes listed above $1 million had reduced their prices by July, compared to price reductions on 23% of homes below $1 million.

And there’s more evidence out this week for those who are in denial about the high-end market: Sales of single-family homes increased by 10% in July from the previous year in San Francisco’s East Bay, but sales of homes of at least $1 million were down 72% for the first seven months of the year compared to the same period last year, according to local Realtor data provided by Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist.

For example, in San Ramon, an affluent middle-class community that has some of the state’s best public schools, just 36 homes above $1 million have sold this year, compared to 112 two years ago. But overall, San Ramon had a decent July, with 69 sales, up from 65 last year and 56 two years ago.

 

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Darien Real Estate Open Houses, Aug.16,2009

Here’s the list of Darien real estate open houses for the weekend of August 16,2009. If you wish to see any of these homes at another time ,please contact me directly.

 7 Queens Lane, $1,995,000 Sunday 1-3PM          

28 East Lane,$695,000,Sunday 1-3PM

23 Denhurst Place, $885,000,  Sunday1-3PM

22 Great Hill Road,$2,495,000,Sunday, 2-4PM

 83 Camp Ave,$699,000,Sunday, 2-4PM

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Darien Real Estate Market Statistics Jan-July 2009

I’m  not one for blogging about  real estate market statistics.I feel that if people want them they are available readily from a million sources on the Web. However, I have found recently  that there is a lot of bad info on a couple of prominent sites (Zillow).

So, I thought it best to begin to publish Darien Real Estate stats directly from the Darien MLS. If you come to the GoldCoastStandard.com at least you’ll know you’ve got the straight scoop and no “stale” data.

As always if you are looking to slice or dice the market in ways other than I am providing,please contact me directly or call me at 203-554-0951.

The link below shows year to date  Darien,Rowayton and New Canaan real estate numbers as of July 31,2009. Not a pretty picture. The real takeaway is  that as bad as these numbers are- they don’t  even reflect the sharp downturn in 2007!

http://statspak.firstamericanmls.com/DARStat/AR1_2_7/statrpt%20Comparison2.PDF

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Darien Living,Push-ups or Plies?

 

Darien sports programs are second to none . The town of Darien,CT and Darien schools boast multiple lacrosse,volleyball,gymnastics championship titles. The local YMCA is widely known as a  ”feeder” for the high school teams and each year many kids from Darien  schools go to prestigious colleges on some sort of athletic scholarship.

What to do though, if you or your kids are not particularly athletic or interested in competitive sports? Should they be literally sidelined?

Absolutely not. The Darien Arts Center will come to the rescue. I just received the fall program and it has 20 pages of great programs for kids and adults.

Musical Theatre,Singing Groups,Children’s and Adult Ballet,Jazz and Latin Dance,cartooning,painting,private and group music lessons and a lot more.

I’ve been a member of Equinox Fitness(another great facility located in Noroton Heights neighborhood of Darien)  since it opened 7 years ago and I love my workouts there. Pilates, Body Sculpt,Yoga, Cycling and treadmills as far as the eye can see.

This year though, I think I shall feed my soul with a few ballet classes at the Arts Center.I took dance classes for years before I hit my 40’s and just figured if the professionals stopped when they  were 40-ish,who was I to argue? (plus my body REALLY didn’t want to JUMP anymore). But what the heck. I’m signing up…..maybe for Latin Dance too.

For more info ,visit www.arts.darien.org or contact me directly at kmbrewer2@aol.com.

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