About Fairfield's Beach Area

Playing Hooky At The Beach .... In March…..In CT!

In CT we are blessed with being on Long Island Sound, which is a haven for beaches, swimming, boating, water sports, and fishing. Usually, we can’t enjoy all of the above until the weather is a lot warmer and the water temperature is NOT in the 40s, like it is now.

However, today, and the next few days, we are enjoying some unusually warm weather in the 60s. I had some business down by the water today and decided to play a little hooky and steal away to the beach... specifically Jennings Beach and Penfield Beach in Fairfield CT. I was not surprised to see quite a few others enjoying the weather, walking, sunbathing, and having picnic lunches.

Oh, I wish it could just get progressively warmer from this point on so we can actually have a spring and then a nice long summer. I am a definite, absolute warm weather gal.

So I snapped a few photos here and there from Black Rock in Bridgeport to the Fairfield Beach Road area, and this is what I captured.

View from Black Rock, Bridgeport to Seaside Park, Bridgeport

South Benson Marina, Fairfield fishing pier

View of Black Rock, Bridgeport from the South Benson Marina fishing pier

View of Jennings Beach, Fairfield

Penfield Beach pavilion, Fairfield

Penfield Beach view

View of Long Island Sound from Lantern Point, Fairfield Beach Road

Lantern Point view of Fairfield Beach Road waterfront homes

I wanted to just linger around the Fairfield beach area, but I had to move on. I will return …. You can bet your sand dollars on that!

Hope you had a great day and an even better one tomorrow!

Playing Hooky At The Beach .... In March…..In CT!

Another scorcher here in Fairfield CT. And the humidity is back, making it a perfect day to sit in the office and pore through statistics and market data.

There are currently 89 listings classified as "Fairfield Beach Area" by the local MLS - my work focus is typically on the pure Fairfield waterfront properties - of which there are maybe 18 that qualify (meaning they are on Long Island Sound or Pine Creek near the Sound .) For today's discussion, I am not including any Sasco Creek or Southport properties - those I will cover later in the month.

The Fairfield Beach properties range in price from $ 580,000 for a bungalow (generally used as a Student Rental for Fairfield University students) in the college section to $ 3.0 million for a 3500 square foot waterfront contemporary. In between are a host of options, from teardowns and investment opportunities to really really beautiful homes either on sandy dunes overlooking the Sound or large homes with docks on Pine Creek (with views of the Sound.)

Unlike last summer where there were very few sales, this year we have seen some good movement. Maybe it's the fact that banks have re-opened their credit for second homes, maybe it's "the economy", or maybe a combination of both. Either way, there is a limited amount of true waterfront property that is located within an hour of New York City in a "Top Town" That said, there is still an oversupply of Fairfield Beach inventory at prices far below the highs of 2006.

Drilling deeper, there are several Sellers very anxious to sell before summer's out - so if you have any opportunistic buyers, send 'em over. I can almost guarantee that prices will be higher next summer! There was just a nice price reduction on a spectacular Pine Creek Avenue home, and another creek home is even giving away a boat with the purchase of the home! This beautiful oceanfront property has a pristine beach - and this home comes with a cottage and dock. If you just want to test the waters, we even have an amazing rental right on the Creek across the street from the Beach for just $2,000 per month!

If you want more hard data on sales and pendings and new listings, just email me at PaulKrumins@gmail.com

Have a great day!

Paul Krumins

Managing Partner/Rainmaker

The Higgins Group

www.HigginsGroup.com

Fairfield County's Fastest Growing Real Estate Brokerage

Here is a wonderful blog by architect Michael Cobb who journals about his experience using this sustainable green SIP building product of the future. Agriboard.

Agriboard is a structurally insulated panel (SIP) and goes up 8 times faster than conventional methods and saves 80% construction lumber, while being insect and mold resistant, fire rated 2.5 hours and F5 Hurricane- Tornado-Earthquake-Blast proof! :

Studio Ecesis Project Journal by Architect Michael Cobb.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Panel Installation is Underway

Panel installation is underway. The builders are moving ahead fast. There is only a little more sunshine in the forecast so everybody appreciates the clip. At midday today about 75% of the first floor panels were up after starting work on the panels yesterday. Most panels are being place by crane. Posted by Michael Cobb at 1:54 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Ready to Go.

The mudsills and LSL keys have been applied to the foundation. The Agriboard install should start tomorrow. Total Concepts is the General Contractor and Shook and Waller is the contractor responsible for the Agriboard installation. A big thank you to Steve Pestell, the structural engineer of record, for catching some last minute lumber rating issues and to John Sharp, of Total Concepts, for catching all the electrical issues before the panels went in. Posted by Michael Cobb at 7:45 PM 0 comments

Friday, January 29, 2010

The Diaz Farm Massing Model

The Agriboard panels on the Diaz Farm Residence will look something like this massing model when they are assembled.

The building regulates sunlight intake with a deep eave over the main living space and west facing exterior retractable shades. Coupled with the excellent insulation properties of the Agriboard, it is our hope this building will have superior thermal performance.

In working on this project and others like it, we've found the language of crisp edges to be the most natural expression of a panelized building system. Posted by Michael Cobb at 4:48 PM 0 comments

Friday, January 22, 2010

Waiting for the Rain to Stop

No sooner did the panels make it to the site, than a series of storms hit Sonoma County. In a holding pattern until the weather gives us several days to build. Posted by Michael Cobb at 10:54 PM 0 comments

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Agriboard!

Well after about five years of attempts, Studio Ecesis, has the pleasure of seeing the first Agriboard delivery for the Diaz Residence up in Cloverdale. Agriboard is a product that represents an improvement in SIP panel construction. SIP panels, popular in the Green Building movement, are a highly insulated prefabricated wall, floor or roof panel that is essentially a sandwich of OSB (oriented strand board) and polystyrene. While the product has been successful at improving a home's energy performance, the problems with polystyrene are wide ranging. The manufacturing, the burning and the disposal of this product are all problematic environmentally.

Enter Agriboard. As a byproduct of the wheat and rice harvest, Agriboard manufactures a pressed wheat and rice panel they call a CAF (compressed agricultural fiber) panel. The long and short of the CAF panel is that instead of burning the wheat and rice fields after their harvest, a second crop is afforded by harvesting the stalks for CAF panels. The CAF panel essentially replaces the styrofoam in the SIP panel recipe. The panel for the Diaz Residence is 8" thick and has a R value of 24! This is about twice the R value of a 2x4 wall with batt insulation. The panel's fire rating is 2 1/2 hours and this has allowed us to build closer to the property line than a traditional 2x4 wall assembly would have permitted.

This panel also provides a viable alternative to the present straw-bale quandry in California. Straw-bale, like rammed earth, is an affordable and readily available building material that has been essentially legislated out of existence in the affordable housing market. Isn't affordable housing the place to use these relatively unprocessed low cost materials? To build with straw-bale in California today requires a steel structure to handle seismic issues. The code considers straw-bale too risky a material in and of itself. This steel work is usually too expensive for affordable housing. The place we are far more likely to see rammed earth and straw-bale these days is in higher end homes. By coupling the use of straw with conventional wood construction elements (i.e. OSB) there is a real opportunity with Agriboard to provide a structurally sound building solution here in California that is energy efficient, healthy and renewable.
We are pretty excited about this project. With the approval of an "Application for Alternate Method or Material," the Diaz Residence will be the first Agriboard structure constructed in California. Its 8" thick walls will allow the use of exterior shades in the window pocket. More photos to come. Posted by Michael Cobb at 12:26 PM 0 comments

Fairfield Beach Update for September 30, 2009

There have been 49 Single Family homes sold so far this year. This is down from the 59 that sold last year at this point. It continues a two year decline from the 89 Homes that sold in 2007 or a 45% decrease in units sold.

The Average Selling Price this year for the Beach Area is $794,113. The Good News is that this represents only a 8% decrease from last year. It is 15% below the Average Price in 2007 of $986,840.

There are 84 Homes for Sale currently. We are averaging 7 Homes sold per month for the first 9 months of the year. This means we have a 12 month inventory of homes or the other way to say it is - The Average Market Time for a home in the Beach Area is 12 months.

The homes for sale range from a small Ranch for $267,000 which just came back on the market to $5,499,500 for a Fairfield Beach Road home that is Direct Waterfront. To see these and all the homes for sale in Fairfield, just go to www.tetreau.com.

This information is taken from the Greater Fairfield County MLS.

The Fairfield Beach Area has traditionally been one of the strongest Real Estate markets in Town. Buyers who wanted to be close to the water and preferred New Construction really drove this market for the last ten years or more. Through July 31st of this year, 38 Single Family homes had been sold. This is down 10% from last year and 43% from the 67 homes that sold in 2007.

The Average Sales Price came in at $775,882. This a decline of 20% from last year's Average of $995,554.

This Analysis is based on data from the Greater Fairfield County MLS.

To see all the homes for sale in Fairfield County, visit http://www.tetreau.com