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Greenwich ‘Move-Up’ Homes Don’t Sell as New Yorkers Stay Put, BB

Move-up sales are largely driven by locals looking for bigger homes and New York apartment owners seeking their first place in the suburbs, he said.Buyers who can afford to pay $2 million to $3 million still rely on mortgage financing, said Alan Rosenbaum, principal of GuardHill Financial Corp., a New York-based mortgage brokerage with Greenwich clients. Lenders have curbed financing at that level to between 50 percent and 70 percent of the purchase price, he said.

GREENWICH, CT REAL ESTATE  - Bryan Roddy says it seemed a smart investment in April 2007 when he and his partners bought a $1.2 million home in Greenwich, Connecticut, added two bedrooms and baths and priced it at $2.9 million to lure Manhattan buyers.They listed the Havemeyer Place property in October 2008, a month after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt and sent markets tumbling. The house is still for sale. The so-called move-up market in Greenwich, known as the hedge-fund capital of the U.S., has dried up as the lingering effects of the financial crisis strand potential buyers in their current homes.“There was no one in that price range looking,” said Roddy, 48, a principal of Roddy Construction LLC, a residential building and renovation firm in Norwalk, Connecticut....“That’s in many cases a trade-up, or entry level,” said Russell Pruner, also the owner of Shore & Country Properties in Riverside, Connecticut.
By Oshrat Carmiel, March 3, 2010 Bloomberg

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