The New York Times has an excellent, and to their credit, a balanced article about backcountry Greenwich. Lisa Prevost wrote this excellent article entitled “
Living in Backcountry Greenwich“ with Jane Beiles adding some beautiful pictures that do a good job of capturing the spirit of backcountry Greenwich. I got quoted on how sales were this year and last year in backcountry. (They are even better since the story came out as you can see below.) My listing at 633 Round Hill Road is also featured with a photo by Jane. That listing has been getting a lot of attention. It’s in excellent shape, has a beautiful pool, waterfall and hot tub and at $1.69M is on for less than $300/s.f. about 60% of the average list price per square foot. We are seeing more activity in backcountry with sales up 69% from last year as it’s seen as the value place to buy.
Neal Vigdor wrote an article for the Hartford Courant entitled “
Mansion tax draws the ire of the wealthy, real estate industry”. The article is a political analysis of how the law got passed and the reaction in the real estate community, which as you might imagine is not good. I got quoted on the number of sales statewide and prepared a map that got used in the story showing that the sales are concentrated in the Gold Coast towns of Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, Westport and also Fairfield. He also quotes me about the big spike in sales in June 2011 the month before the last conveyance tax increase on July 1, 2011. You can read more of my comments on the new conveyance tax in my
May market report and see the 2011 sales spike in the graph that was featured in the print version of my Greenwich Sentinel column.
I’d also like to thank Neal Vigdor for his many years of covering Greenwich at the Greenwich Time and Connecticut politics for the Hartford Courant. He was a reporter you could trust to present the story fairly including lots of information in a concise writing style. He got a great offer to covering breaking news for the New York Times, who recognized his excellent reporting. Connecticut will miss his insightful reporting.