No-Fee Apartment of the Week: Three-bedroom townhouse apartment for $3,200
by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 1/27/12 - 3:38 PM
This $3,200 a month three-bedroom townhouse apartment in Central Harlem has its own backyard.
This $3,200 a month three-bedroom apartment is located inside a three-family brownstone at 163 W. 129th Street in Central Harlem.
Built from the ground up in 2002, the space has approximately 2,400 square feet, and a backyard, too. The kitchen, while spacious, has standard, non-luxury appliances. Rent includes heat and hot water.
The first lease term is for one year plus six months (ending July 31, 2012), and it will be renewable after that for one year at a time.
Cool Stuff: RentJolt gives renters a piece of the broker pie
by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 1/27/12 - 12:45 PM
This just-under-$3,000 1-bedroom on the Upper East Side is one of RentJolt's first three listings.
Many if not most NYC renters wind up paying a broker fee ranging from one month's rent to 15% of a year's rent when signing a lease on a new apartment. Find your next apartment through RentJolt, an online apartment marketplace that launched its beta version last weekend, and you'll pay 5.75% of a year's rent.
If you list your soon-to-be-former apartment and find a renter through the site, you'll get paid $500 to $1,000 (or about 1.75% of a year's rent). CEO Avi Dorfman says he hopes to increase that amount in coming months.
Posting an apartment is free. You just include photos, a description and your current rent up to 8 months before you plan to move. (RentJolt calculates an "Expected Rent" by increasing the current rent by 8 percent.)
The Haggle: In new construction, the last buyer gets the discount
by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 1/27/12 - 10:21 AM
The last apartment to sell at 471 Washington Street went for $2.6 million. This is a rendering of another unit in the building.
This week, we go behind the negotiations for a brand new Tribeca condo which sold for $2.6 million in December. The buyer’s agent was Harold Kobner of Argo Residential and the seller’s agent was John Gomes of Prudential Douglas Elliman.
THE DETAILS
The apartment, was a two bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath duplex at 471 Washington Street in a brand new building of 12 lofts.
Then & Now: Despite massive amounts of noise, I still love my rent-stabilized UES apartment
by Anonymous as told to Marjorie Cohen | 1/27/12 - 7:30 AM
When I moved into my apartment on 68th Street between Second and Third Avenues, I considered it to be one of the luckiest breaks of my life.
I have a one bedroom, just about 1,000 square feet, with a great layout. And the luckiest part: every one of those square feet is rent stabilized.
I've lived here for almost 20 years and I still love my place but there have been some pretty big challenges lately to my little piece of paradise.
First, there’s the inevitable Second Avenue subway construction noise and traffic mess. But second, and even more disruptive for me, is the monster re-surfacing project going on at my building that generates huge amounts of noise every day of the week.
Bedbugged! When the critters invade your subconscious and show up in your dreams
by Theresa Braine | 1/26/12 - 4:14 PM_0_0.jpg)
The unpacking was underway. I pulled my things out of storage and started to take out possessions I hadn’t seen in two years. Suddenly I noticed some bed bugs.
It’s ok, I told myself. There’s no way they could be alive. I knew the stuff had been in storage for more than the 18 foodless months required to make sure the critters are dead. I had been careful to avoid bringing the bags from the storage place into my apartment.
So these bugs were definitely not alive. But suddenly they started moving, propelled by a barely discernable breeze. Desiccated, they were so light that the slightest zephyr could send them skittering. And skitter they did. They almost looked as though they were scurrying.
StreetNoise: Should kids run amok in the hallways, finding the perfect starter, and more
by Ronda Kaysen | 1/26/12 - 1:10 PM
- Some apartments are worth selling your soul for, or so says new ABC drama (Hollywood Reporter via CurbedNY)
- Are brokers really necessary? Tips on selling and renting solo (StreetEasy Talk; previously)
- 8 tips for accidental landlords (Business Insider)
- Apparently, not everyone wants a Whole Foods in their backyard (Brooklyn Paper)
- Here's a way to make enemies of the neighbors: Let the kids run in the hallway (UrbanBaby)
- Scoring the perfect starter apartment is all about knowing how to find it (New York Magazine)
- Yuppie renters may have an edge Crown Heights, but they're not winning any popularity contests... (Gothamist)
- ...nevertheless, Crown Heights, along with Far West Chelsea, are among the top 10 nabes to invest in (New York Daily News)
- How to find the luxe and the knock-off in Tribeca real estate (CurbedNY)
StreetEasy's Most Wanted: A buyer's guide to the most-saved listings of the week
by Emily Feldman | 1/26/12 - 9:51 AM
You'll pay just $349,000 for this 1-bedroom co-op at 304 West 88th Street. And, no board approval required.
Prices are dropping in StreetEasy's Most Wanted. Eight out of the 10 most frequently saved listings on StreetEasy.com over the last week ring in under $1 million. Three go for less than $700,000—the lowest price for any unit in last week's roundup.
The top bargain is the apartment in the photo to the left: a $349,000 1-bedroom, 2-bath co-op on West 88th Street. The pre-war unit looks larger than its 800 square feet, thanks to the layout. The living room appears to be on its own lower level, separated from the exposed brick dining area, kitchen and bedroom. Bonus: No co-op board approval is required.
Rent Coach: Should I rent an apartment above an empty storefront?
by Mike Akerly | 1/26/12 - 7:50 AM
Rent Coach Mike Akerly
Q. I just saw an amazing apartment in a new rental building. The apartment is perfect and I’m so close to pulling the trigger, but I have one remaining concern: It’s on the second floor above a vacant retail space that the landlord will ultimately rent out.
How do I know what type of business will be there and whether it will have any impact on the peace and quiet I hope to enjoy should I rent this apartment?
A. The permitted uses in the retail space will be governed by what the building owner decides and local zoning law.
Determining what the landlord will actually allow at the space will likely be very difficult to do. Zoning laws can be equally difficult to interpret if you have no familiarity with them, and the rental of an apartment doesn’t typically warrant hiring an experienced real estate attorney to figure things out.
To debit or not to debit? The 411 on automatic mortgage payments
by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 1/25/12 - 2:28 PM
Over on StreetEasy.com, a first-time buyer asks whether it’s a good idea to set up a bi-weekly automatic debit from his checking account to make mortgage payments.
The general consensus is no, with some StreetEasy users advising against automatic debiting for mortgages and in general.
“Do not lock yourself into a biweekly payment structure. In fact, it's not a good idea in general to arrange for automatic bill payment out of your account EVER," cautions one.
"There may be times when you're caught off-guard with an unexpected expense and your account happens to be low on that particular day that the bank tries to siphon the money out," he or she continues. "You're much better off on a traditional monthly payment cycle. If you want to save money in the long run, include an extra payment to the principal in each month's check.”
Dear Ms. Demeanor: My neighbor won't stop barking about my dog
by Jamie Lauren Sutton | 1/25/12 - 10:44 AM
Dear Ms. Demeanor:
I live in a co-op and my neighbor complains about my dog barking when I'm at work. By using a video camera, we know he's exaggerating about how much barking -- in reality it's about an hour a day. The dog is walked for at least two hours day and we are planning to bring a trainer.
If nothing works, what do you do in a situation like this? We're not going to sell our apartment or give our dog away.
Sincerely,
Dog Lover
Broker bestows a rather unusual housewarming gift
by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 1/25/12 - 7:22 AM
A bottle of Veuve Cliquot on closing day is a pretty typical gift to receive from one's real estate broker, but one BrickUndergrounder tells us about a more unique present she received after buying her one-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side.
Broker Lisa Graham of CORE NYC, who is also an Institute for Integrative Nutrition-certified health counselor, offered her clients an apartment "clearing" as a housewarming gift to clear out old energy and start anew.
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