Day of Caring

Every year, we close all of our offices for a day and work at non-profits in one or more of the communities we serve.  This year, we chose to work at Connecticut Hospice in Branford, which had been battered by winds and tide during Hurricane Irene.  Over 50 of us went with rakes, paintbrushes, chain saws, and leaf blowers to clean up debris, repaint furniture, wash windows, and remove wet leaves from the bottom of the swimming pool, as well as to work indoors on materials for Hospice's big annual service for families in late September.  We estimate that we worked about 250 man (person) hours, and did the work that contractors had bid large amounts to complete.  We astounded the maintenance staff at Hospice, who were skeptical about the work ethic and expertise of a group of volunteers, and we once again proved that we put our muscle where our mouth is. 

By the end of the day, eating pizza on the patio and looking out over what we had accomplished, there was a wonderful feeling that comes from honest work and tired bodies, combined with the knowledge that we had made other peoples' lives a little bit better.  Thanks to all who participated, most of whom don't get paid and do it out completely out of the kindness of their hearts, and thanks to Hospice, which welcomed  us and worked alongside us to meet our goals.  It's one of our favorite days of the Pearce year, and one that we will look forward to again next September.

Waterfront Statistics

Since I've been blogging about prices and trends in New Haven compared with its suburbs, I was prompted to look at the shoreline statistics. Since we've been talking about the upper end of the city market, we checked sales of waterfront property since the beginning of the year. Taking Branford, Guilford, and Madison, a dozen homes on the water over $1 million (which we assumed meant all but an anomoly) sold in the first six months of 2010. They stayed on the market anywhere from one day to over 600 days, and none sold for the full listing price. The lowest listing to sales ratio was 62%, although most I calculated were in the 85% range, with only a couple selling at over 90% of the listed price. One was in Branford, three were in Guilford, and the rest were in Madison.

While this is an exceptionally low number of sales in that period of time, it does tend to confirm the idea expressed in earlier pieces that the City of New Haven is outperforming other high-end areas. The surprising thing about this particular comparison is that waterfront is the ultimate example of location, location, location. The most frequent comment on its primacy as an investment choice is that "they're not making any more of it". When even that theory fails to prompt sales, especially during a time when the traditional hoped-for investment bankers are doing well enough to buy waterfront summer homes, there's cause for real concern about the economy. Let's hope that the next quarter shows a different result.