Medway

This contemporary in Medway has an open floor plan and lots of space inside and out.Details: 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, and 2,700 square feet. This home is on the market for $579,900

A chandelier hangs over the home's entryway.

The dining room and entryway sit under cathedral ceilings.

Builder's family has put new soul into a century-old Victorian

90 Central St., Foxborough
Price $799,900
Style Victorian
Built 1904
Square feet 4,876
Rooms 11
Bedrooms 4
Bathrooms 3.5
Sewer public

FOXBOROUGH - Inside the kitchen with its Franke sink, cherry cabinets, and pot filler above the stove is a refrigerated stainless-steel wine cooler built into the granite-topped kitchen island. But there isn't any wine in the cooler right now. Instead, it's doing duty as a kids' refrigerator, with yogurt, Gatorade, and water for their two young children.

Domenic and Pamela Lanzilo were thinking this would be an adults-only house when they purchased it in 2001, and since expanded it by grafting some 2,000 square feet of new living space onto the old soul of the century-old Victorian. But having been twice proven wrong, they are now looking for a larger piece of land than the 20,000 square-foot lot, and a road less traveled than Central Street.

Lanzilo is a builder and his family will be leaving nice stuff behind. Passing the New England farm stone fence that seals home from street, the front door is old, an oval glass dominant. A rightward turn leads to the living room with its original ceramic-faced fireplace, nine-foot ceilings, and face-nailed oak flooring that Lanzilo has burnished, but not changed.

A dining room, with built-ins, and the original flooring and breathable space follows, leading to a long hallway connecting the old soul with the new. Floors are a changing mixture of oak and Brazilian mahogany or Brazilian cherry. The 23-by-20-foot family room has a massive working fireplace and adjoins a brightly painted recreation room.

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source : boston.com

UPPER EAST SIDE PENTHOUSE

$2,395,000

MANHATTAN: 243 East 77th Street (between Second and Third Avenues), #PHB
A four-bedroom, four-bath triplex co-op with two fireplaces, a wet bar and two terraces in a prewar elevator building. Sharon Lawrence, Prudential Douglas Elliman (212) 891-7019; www.elliman.com

MAINTENANCE: $2,518 a month

PROS: This sprawling apartment feels like a house. The large living room has a wall of glass doors that open onto a small terrace. Two third-floor bedrooms open onto a larger terrace that has lovely open city views. Exposed brick walls and a winding staircase add character.

CONS: The kitchen and bathrooms have some dated fixtures and finishes, including a red whirlpool tub in the master bath and a brown kitchen sink.

Photo: Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

NORTH SHORE COLONIAL

$769,000

NASSAU: 2 Magnolia Place, Glen Head
A charming 1929 updated and restored center hall colonial with four bedrooms, two baths and an in-ground pool. Dee Dee Brix, Daniel Gale Sotheby’s (516) 551-5241; www.danielgale.com

TAXES: $7,874 a year

PROS: The house is in walking distance of shops and the train station.

CONS: Some downtown traffic is audible from the yard.

Photo: Kirk Condyles for The New York Times

RIVERFRONT COTTAGE

$1,795,000
CONNECTICUT: 90 Ring’s End Road, Darien
Historic home with two bedrooms, three baths, a den, two fireplaces, original ceiling beams and wide-plank floors, a back porch, a stone terrace, a second-floor balcony, a dock and a detached one-car garage. The home is on the Ring’s End Bridge over Darien River. ChiChi Mayhew, Kelly Associates (203) 621-0955; www.kellyrealestate.com

TAXES: $12,566 a year

PROS: Built in 1850, this house was renovated to add rich finishes and modern convenience without sacrificing the charm of the original details. Custom additions include oak cabinetry around the living room fireplace and a pull-out bar cart hidden in the wall of a brick archway.

CONS: The house is very tightly situated between the road and the river. The interior square footage totals 1,480, and there is little room to expand.

Photo: Douglas Healey for The New York Times

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS CO-OP

$639,000
MANHATTAN: 523 West 121st Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue), #42
A two-bedroom, one-bath co-op with an eat-in kitchen in a prewar building with a lobby attended round the clock. William Bolls, the Corcoran Group (212) 875-2910; www.corcoran.com
Open house Sunday, 12 to 1:30 p.m.

MAINTENANCE: $772 a month

PROS: This apartment is filled with charming original detail, including glass transoms, glass-panel doors, moldings and wood-paneled wainscoting.

CONS: Although all of the rooms have windows, they face interior courtyards and brick walls. The kitchen could use updating.

Photo: Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Incentives, to Fight the Doldrums

DEVELOPERS in central Long Island are increasingly resorting to incentives to lure buyers. Nassau and Suffolk Counties are both affected, though new units in western Suffolk have been particularly slow to sell in the current sluggish real estate market.

“We’re concerned, so we’ve reduced our prices,” said Elliot Monter, whose development firm, Holiday Organization, builds the Hamlet Estates gated communities on Long Island. He is cutting prices on some of his newest homes in St. James, in Suffolk, by 20 percent, though he won’t be lowering them at his newest Nassau County development, in Jericho.

Potential buyers at the Hamlet Estates at St. James, on Route 347 at Moriches Road, will be introduced to a new scaled-down 3,300-square-foot model; the eight other models all start at 4,000 square feet. Prices will be scaled back, to $795,900, or 20 percent lower than the starting price of $1 million for the bigger models.

In addition, 22 of the larger homes, as yet unbuilt, have been reduced by $100,000, or about 10 percent, Mr. Monter said. Those homes now range from $908,000 to $1.045 million.

During one October weekend, Pulte Homes of New York, which is building six communities in Suffolk County and two in Nassau County, offered incentives worth as much as $50,000 to buyers reserving homes. The communities range in size from a condominium development in Oceanside with units starting at $364,900 to a single-family-home development in Mount Sinai with prices starting at $625,000.

Most of the incentives are tied to the company’s mortgage arm, the Pulte Mortgage Corporation, according to Bruce Orr, vice president for marketing of the Long Island division.
They include covering closing costs, upgrades on home features and “living free for six months” — which means the company pays buyers using Pulte financing an amount equal to six months of mortgage payments and taxes.

That strategy gives buyers breathing room when they have to sell their current home to buy a new one. It also reduces the impact of tighter home financing restrictions, Mr. Orr said, adding, “When we can control the financing side of the business, we have a much higher likelihood of getting the buyer to the closing table.”

According to Pearl Kamer, chief economist for the Long Island Association, builders’ incentives will most likely continue “for some time to come,” especially with homes priced from $750,000 to $1.2 million lingering longest on the market.

In that price range, Dr. Kamer explained, buyers often need “jumbo” mortgages, which exceed $417,000 and are not guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration. Investors are “shying away” from taking on the extra risk of those loans, she added, and banks raise interest rates for carrying the risk.

Creditworthy buyers in this range “can get a jumbo mortgage,” Dr. Kamer said, “but only at an exorbitant interest rate.”

In Suffolk, the time spent marketing a house for sale was 23.9 percent longer in the third quarter this year than for the corresponding period last year, according to Jonathan Miller, executive vice president and director of research for Radar Logic, a real estate data analysis company. [ Read more ]

Source : nytimes