Early in the last century – the Twentieth, that is – Croton-on-Hudson became a Mecca for New York’s artsy, leftist crowd. Easy access from the City via the new electric trains (which switched back to steam at Harmon, now Croton-Harmon station) enticed both leading lights and fellow travelers – actors, writers, poets, painters and left-wing intellectuals – to build or buy summer or year-round cottages in the hills above the village. By the 1920s there was a thriving bohemian community centered in Croton, which became known as ”Greenwich Village on the Hudson.”

The focal point for this community became Mount Airy Road, which starts in the village downtown and climbs up what old timers still call “Red Hill” for the political leanings of these very particular settlers. A few years ago, long-time Croton resident Cornelia Cotton, artistic and political scion and chronicler of the history of this group, gave a lecture and slide show on historical Mount Airy houses to a standing-room-only audience at the Croton Free Library. She had to stop after 2½ hours and two full carousels of slides, not half-way through her program.

As a realtor with family roots in Croton, I’ve always been fascinated by this history, and if I drive by these noteworthy houses with clients in the car, they’ll probably get the full guided-tour treatment, even when we’re on our way somewhere else. I take special pleasure in showing and selling these homes, and I’ve sold more than my share.

Joseph Freeman, a writer and frequent visitor in the post-World War I period, described the radical colony in his 1936 memoir, An American Testament:

“At this time, Croton-on-Hudson was a kind of literary and political shrine. The sacred grove was a stretch of brown hilly earth known as Mount Airy Road, on both sides of which, separated by an acre or two of land, stood the houses of John Reed, Boardman Robinson, Lydia Gibson, Floyd Dell and Stuart Chase… . It was some time before I realized that Croton was only a suburb of Washington Square.”

Freeman usually stayed with Floyd Dell, who bought the 1892 farmhouse at 75 Mount Airy Rd. in 1919. Dell was an influential editor, novelist and literary critic who held virtual salons at his house for visiting radical artists and intellectuals. Freeman recalls a memorable weekend there with Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, the muckraking novel about the U.S. meatpacking industry that had led to passage of the Pure Food & Drug Act in 1909. Last year I sold this house to a charming young couple who have been restoring it.

Across the street at no. 66 lived Boardman Robinson, artist and political cartoonist, in a classic center-hall colonial perched high on a bluff with views of the Hudson River. The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, another frequenter of the Croton colony, was married in this house in 1923.

Next door and up the hill at no. 70 is the 200 year-old house that belonged to Max Eastman and his sister Crystal. Max was the dashing literary and social critic who was a leader in the radical Greenwich Village community. He was also editor of The Masses, a magazine combining socialist philosophy with the arts. His sister was a journalist and a prominent feminist who co-wrote the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923 and was a founding member and lawyer of the ACLU. Their home was the main crossroads for visiting luminaries, and their house guests included Charlie Chaplin and Max’s great friend Leon Trotsky. As a realtor, I was fascinated to discover that when Eastman bought this house, his down payment was twenty dollars and the purchase price was $1,500. In 2005, it sold for well over the asking price of $799,000.

Around the bend at the top of the hill, at no. 106, stands the 1840 house that John Reed bought in 1916. Reed is best known as the radical journalist who, with his wife Louise Bryant, participated in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and wrote about it in his famous book, Ten Days That Shook the World. Warren Beatty based his great Oscar-winning movie Reds on “Jack” Reed’s story, and part of the film is set in Croton (though it was filmed in England), at the house where Reed wrote his book. Beatty took the role of Reed, of course, Diane Keaton played Bryant, and Floyd Dell was also featured in the screenplay. The Reed house was recently listed for sale.

History might have been different if Mabel Dodge hadn’t turned down Jack Reed’s proposal of marriage early in 1916, the same year he later married Louise Bryant. Dodge was the formidable heiress and patron of the arts who had established a weekly salon at her Fifth Avenue apartment in Greenwich Village. In 1913, she and Reed ran off to Paris, where they became lovers. In Paris and in Mabel’s palatial Tuscan villa outside Florence, they hobnobbed with the likes of Picasso, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, Artur Rubenstein and Andre Gide. Back in the U.S., Dodge lived in a house on Mount Airy, but when she rebuffed Reed’s marriage proposal, she moved to Finney Farm, not far away in the village. There, in a rambling farmhouse built in 1870, she offered Reed the use of the third floor as a writing studio. He tried it for a time, but it didn’t work out. He then bought her Mount Airy house and, that same year, Mabel married painter Maurice Sterne, her third husband. (1916 must have been quite a year.) Finney Farm already had a rich history when Dodge bought it. Horace (“Go West, young man”) Greeley was just one of the prominent visitors there in the mid-19th century. When I sold this house two years ago it was full of documents and other lore evoking this colorful past.

The stories and the history go on and on. Farther along Mount Airy, at no. 131, is another landmark of the time, Longue Vue Farm, the grand estate where Gloria Swanson lived and entertained in the late 1920s, and where Isadora Duncan loved to dance on the terrace of the castle. I sold this property too, but that’s a topic for another time. Croton’s history is too rich to be covered in other than small, manageable bites.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar

Just a few years ago, bidding wars were commonplace in our red-hot real estate market. Not bidding wars in the sense of a back-and-forth auction, where buyers were asked to top the latest offer until someone quit. Westchester’s more genteel approach was to give the competing buyers a deadline – “tomorrow by 5:00 p.m.” – to submit a sealed envelope with their highest and best offer. Highest in price, best in terms (how much in cash vs. mortgage, closing date, etc.).

Buyers hated this device. Basically, they had to bid blind, with no clue as to what the others might offer. I used to tell my buyers to figure out the most they could afford and the most the house was worth to them, then take the lower of the two numbers and offer that. Houses routinely sold for higher than the asking price, sometimes way higher.

Those days are so far gone, the market is so turned around, that recently I found myself contemplating a reverse bidding war: challenging two competing sellers to counter my buyers’ offer with their lowest and best. Here’s how it happened.

I was working with some high-end buyers who were looking in the Hudson River towns – Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, Briarcliff Manor, Croton-on-Hudson. They had exhausted the available options in their price range and decided to just wait for new listings to come on the market. One house really tempted them, but price-wise it was too much of a stretch for them. A few months later, a house was listed that met all their criteria. They looked at it and, despite some minor drawbacks, they fell in love and put in an offer. The sellers countered, and while we were considering our next move, the house they had liked earlier dropped its price very close to the one they were now bidding on. What to do?

The buyers said that they liked the two houses equally well, they would be happy with either one. So it came down to price. They decided to buy whichever had a lower price. Hmm. A reverse bidding war. Give the two sellers until noon tomorrow to come up with the lowest price they would consider to sell their house.

I must confess, on some level the prospect of turning the tables on sellers was delicious. Don’t get me wrong. Nobody beats me as a champion of my seller clients. For at least two years I sold my listings at an average of more than 100% of the asking price. But in this case my clients were the buyers, and I couldn’t help feeling, on behalf of past buyers who’d been forced to jump through the highest-and-best hoop, that revenge would be sweet.

In the end, it wasn’t to be. I insisted that my buyers revisit both houses before launching our strategy (they hadn’t seen the first house for months), and when they did they had a clear preference. They signed contracts (!) by the end of the week. But in this buyer’s market it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that other buyers are pitting one seller against another in a reverse bidding war.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar

Last March I was prompted by a buyer client to analyze the relationship between asking prices and selling prices in two of the communities I cover, Briarcliff Manor and Croton-on-Hudson. A savvy Wall Streeter who followed market trends, this buyer was looking at houses in both places, and he told me flatly that he’d be a fool to pay any more than 75% of the asking price.

Sure enough, he liked a house I showed him and made an offer that took about a third, or almost 35%, off the asking price. When I told him he could not expect the seller to counter such a low-ball bid, he replied that given how the market was trending in Croton, especially for million-dollar-plus houses like this one, and given the history of this house which, although the price had come down from its original asking price, had been on the market for months at the same price, the seller should be happy with his offer.

The seller did not counter his offer.

Lately I’ve had buyers tell me they’ve heard that if they spend more than 10% (or 15% or even 20%) of the asking price for a house in today’s market they are not getting a good deal. This may be true in some parts of the country, but not in Westchester, at least not in my part of it. In fact, my impression has been that houses are still selling at close to the asking price, as long as the price is right. Overpriced houses tend not to sell at all. They have to lower their prices to a point where they are a good buy for the market, and then they sell fairly close to the final asking price.

To see if this impression was correct, I looked at sales figures in two of my primary markets, Briarcliff Manor and Croton-on-Hudson. Briarcliff and Croton are adjacent communities, about the same size in population and housing inventory but different demographics: in 2008, Briarcliff single-family homes sold at a median price of $942,450, while the median selling price of a house in Croton in 2008 was $520,000. I took all of the houses sold in both communities in the last six months and compared their selling prices with their final asking prices. In the period since Sept. 20, 2008, a total of 16 houses were sold in Briarcliff and 17 in Croton. In Briarcliff, the average selling price was 95.53% of the average asking price, while in Croton the selling price averaged 95.11% of the asking price. These numbers are remarkably consistent, both across the price range and across the two communities.

What lessons can we draw from this? For sellers, you need to find the correct price, the one that will attract buyers. Many sellers are reluctant to cut their price “too much,” fearing that buyers will simply low-ball their offers by the same margin they did at the higher price. But these figures suggest that the correct price will yield a selling price that is surprisingly close to asking.

For buyers, you need to adjust your expectations of what you may have to pay for the house of your choice. If a house is well priced, it is reasonable for a seller to expect to sell close to (within 95% of) the asking price. Anyone who expects to pay no more than 90% will probably be disappointed.

So how do you judge, whether you’re a buyer or seller, what the correct price is? This is where your agent comes in. It’s your realtor’s job to know the local market and to advise you when a price is right.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar