The Real.Est List
No-Fee Apartment of the Week: $4,920 two-bedroom in Clinton
by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 5/17/13 - 2:18 PM
This over 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom at 560 West 43rd Street has generously sized rooms. The listing even says it's convertible into a three-bedroom.
This over 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom at 560 West 43rd Street is ideal for theater nuts.
Pros: The building has a doorman, gym, pool and concierge and it accepts guarantors. The apartment has two balconies and the bedrooms seem nicely sized (that's why it's described as a potential three-bedroom). We think the listing's description of the living room being able to double as a basketball court might be slightly hyperbolic, though.
Cons: Located just off 11th Avenue, it's a hike to the nearest subway.
- Transitions
South Harlem to Midtown East: Moving for a great elementary school
by Jessica as told to Marjorie Cohen | 5/17/13 - 10:58 AMWhy would I want to move from a reasonably priced two-bedroom apartment in South Harlem, upstairs from my best friend and her family, overlooking Morningside Park and across the street from a recently built playground?
There was only one reason and it was a powerful one: the opportunity to live across the street from PS 59, one of the best elementary schools in NYC (recently relocated to a state of the art building on 57th between Second and Third Avenues), where my daughter will go to kindergarten.
StreetEasy’s Most Wanted: Flying solo
by Sara Alessi | 5/17/13 - 8:57 AM
This $875,000 one-bedroom, one-bathroom prewar co-op on West 11th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue sports 15-foot ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace, renovated kitchen and bathroom and a washer/dryer.
Striking out on your own? You might want to check out the four one-bedrooms that made this week's edition of StreetEasy’s Most Wanted--the 10 sales listings StreetEasy users saved more often than any others this week.
Let's start with a one-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op (pictured) on West 11th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues listed at $875,000. Prewar details include exposed beams, exposed brick, a wood-burning fireplace, hardwood floors and 15’ ceilings. An in-unit washer/dryer rounds out the perks of this space.
Real Estate Want: A master bath grand enough for Lady Grantham
by Julie Inzanti | 5/16/13 - 2:53 PM
On a cool spring night you can watch a roaring fire while you soak in this stand-alone tub in your Hamilton Heights townhouse.
This $2.99 million Hamilton Heights limestone townhouse was build in 1897 and has all of the old-world charm you'd expect from the Gilded Age…
There are 8 grand fireplaces, a grand parlor and plenty of other grand rooms with soaring ceilings and original woodwork.
But there is one room in particular that will make you feel like aristocracy. The master bathroom! (Yes, there is what appears to be a working fireplace in there, too.)
The mahogany-footed standalone tub is so spectacular it would make Lady Grantham proud. All this place is missing is a lady in waiting to draw a bath and get you dressed for dinner.
Real Estate Want is a weekly column featuring New York City apartment details we're coveting right now.
- Lessons From a Small Landlord
A landlord speaks -- about what's behind that incomprehensible lease
by Craig Roche | 5/16/13 - 10:27 AMLessons from a Small Landlord is a new bi-weekly column penned by a real-life NYC landlord whose pseudonym is Craig Roche.
In an ideal world without lawyers, apartment leases would be very short: “Tenant promises to pay $X per month for the use of the apartment, and landlord and tenant promise to behave reasonably.”
Plenty of tenants rent apartments or shares this way, but usually they know each other first. In the real world, for everyone else, lawyers write 10 pages attempting to codify what "reasonable" means.
From my perspective as a small landlord, an ideal lease:
- Is very official looking, making it look non-negotiable.
- Is printed in a microscopic font and full of impossible-to-decipher jargon.
- Gives the benefit of the doubt to the landlord in all circumstances.
- Has been tested in court.
- StreetNoise
The mid-lease rent hike, the most important accessory for your million dollar apartment, and more
by Sara Alessi | 5/16/13 - 8:56 AM- StuyTown renters get mid-lease rent hikes up to $1,100/month (NY Daily News)
- This is why the most important thing to buy when you move into a million-dollar apartment is blinds (NY Post)
- New in town? Stealing papers and not holding the elevator are just two ways to tick off your neighbors/fellow New Yorkers (BuzzFeed)
- Why you shouldn't snap that listing photo til your dog is out of sight (Wall Street Journal, The Real Deal)
- Legal questions aside, Airnb may generate $1 billion this year in NYC's economic activity (Crain’s; previously)
- Greenpoint’s thriving; not so, the G trains (Crain’s)
- If there’s mold in your building, it’s the co-op board’s responsibility to check it out (Habitat Mag)
- Generation Y, you may want to extend that lease by, oh, 50 years or so (WSJ)
- Want to invest in NYC real estate? Crowdfunding opens the field to the masses...starting with Brooklyn (NY Times)
- You’re not the only one struggling to get the asking price on your apartment -- Ben Stiller’s sold at a near $1m loss (NYC Co-op Apartment Sales)
Your Celebrity Neighbor: Tory Burch
by Sharon Krum | 5/15/13 - 2:39 PMWHO: Starting at her kitchen table, Tory Burch built a fashion company now worth $3 billion. Who says women can’t kick ass in business?
WHERE: The CEO and designer of the "Tory Burch” brand lives in an apartment inside the Pierre Hotel at Fifth Avenue and East 61st Street. We're guessing that the annual tab for that is, oh, a touch higher than the median Upper East Side rental price of $2,800, as calculated by StreetEasy.
Your Celebrity Neighbor is a weekly heads-up on the A-listers who call your neighborhood home and (in theory) shop the same Duane Reade as you.
- Real.Est List Spotlight Gallery
Uprise Art: Making art collection more affordable and accessible for New Yorkers
by Leah Hochbaum Rosner | 5/15/13 - 12:23 PM
Summer Girls 1 by Leif Huron, a New York-based photographer, is one of a few hundred original artworks currently available for purchase ($1,250, or $50/month) on Uprise Art.
Shortly after graduating from Columbia University in 2006, Tze Chun noticed a strange phenomenon among her friends: Even the ones pulling in six-figure salaries had nothing on their walls but ripped movie posters, if anything.
An art history major who longed to make the sometimes daunting art world more accessible for the younger generation, Chun understandably found this irksome. So she decided to do something about it, founding Uprise Art—the focus of this week’s Real.Est List Spotlight Series—an online gallery where buyers can shop for contemporary, original artwork, then set up an account that allows them to purchase pieces over time through monthly installments.
- Confessions of a Neighborhood Blogger
"I Love Franklin Avenue": A blogger's-eye-view of the Cobble Hill/Williamsburgzation of Crown Heights
by Julie Inzanti | 5/15/13 - 11:10 AMNick Juravich moved to Crown Heights in 2008 to work as Brooklyn Coordinator for the New York Road Runners' Mighty Milers Program, a youth health and fitness program. That job had him walking, running, biking, and riding subways all over Brooklyn, and he started a blog--I Love Franklin Avenue--as an effort to make sense of his new home.
In 2010, Juravich left NYRR to pursue a PhD in U.S. history at Columbia University, where he is now writing on the history of community activism, education and labor in New York City in the 1960s and '70s.
He narrowed the scope of his blog from a general overview of not only Crown Heights but all of the surrounding areas and Brooklyn in general to hyper-local community events, neighborhood change, and local issues in western Crown Heights, where Franklin Avenue is the main commercial strip.
Room for Improvement: A kitchen that makes sense, cheaper parking for residents and more
by Mayra David | 5/15/13 - 8:57 AMExpensive parking, overheated bedrooms, and kitchens that don’t make sense for the act of cooking. Five New Yorkers share their apartment-life wants:
- Cheaper parking: I wish there was some kind of discount in the parking fees for building residents. I pay over $400 dollars for parking my car in a garage. After six months it still feels like highway robbery. - Victor, Financial District
- A kitchen for sane people I wish I could totally re-do my (rental) kitchen and make the layout make sense! There is no place to put a garbage can unless I put it in the hall way or in the dining area. The drawers for cutlery have been positioned above eye level and they only pull out halfway! The only counter space I can work on is as big as a cutting board next to the sink. There’s no place to add a butcher block or any extra storage since the kitchen is in a narrow alcove that opens onto the narrow hall way where we need to walk. There had to have been a better way of designing this. -Sally, Harlem
Ask an Expert: My co-op needs cash. What's the least painful way to get it?
by Teri Karush Rogers | 5/14/13 - 2:21 PM
Is your building cash-poor? Consider selling off pieces of the roof for residents to use as private outdoor spaces.
Q. My co-op building has been hit hard in recent years by property taxes on top of a huge elevator replacement project. Our maintenance charges are already on the high side and we are trying to avoid another increase or an assessment.
Can you suggest some other alternatives for raising money that would be less painful?
For example, one idea that has been suggested is dividing up our undeveloped roof area and selling it to shareholders.
A. You're on the right track, say our experts, who shared some common and not-so-common ways co-ops and condos are building up their coffers nowadays.
The StreetEasy Hot Dozen: 12 rentals that may or may not be available by the time you read this
by Alex Hughes | 5/14/13 - 11:36 AM
On the Lower East side, $2,495/mo gets you two bedrooms, a sparkling white bathroom and a washer and dryer in this rental at 172 Rivington Street and Clinton Street. Or it would have, if someone hadn't already snapped it up.
What can $2,500 a month get you in Manhattan? Three diverse apartments within $25 of that magic number made it into this week's Hot Dozen--the 12 rental apartments Streeteasy.com visitors clicked on most often over the past seven days.
Here's the scoop.
How to buy a NYC apartment: The international edition
by Mayra David | 5/14/13 - 8:58 AM
Photo Credit / Djibouti
Buying an apartment in NYC is challenging enough for the natives, which is the raison d'etre for BrickUnderground's popular How to Buy a NYC Apartment guide.
If you're a foreign citizen, however, things get even trickier. We suggest beginning with a close reading of the above guide to build a basic understanding of how the real estate game is played here.
Then keep in mind some additional provisions that apply to you as an international buyer:
1. Forget co-ops (for the most part)
Never say never, but generally speaking, foreign buyers will find it difficult to buy in a co-op versus a condo building.
(Why should you care? For one thing, although they tend to be more modern, condos cost around a third more than co-ops.)
Are you a real New Yorker? Here are 12 ways to tell
by Alana Mayman | 5/13/13 - 2:00 PMYou may pride yourself on your Wikipedia-like knowledge of the best/worst rooftop bars and smartest/dumbest places to hail a taxi at rush hour, but you're not really a New Yorker until you pass through the Five Stages of Real Estate Grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance)...and the following NYC real estate truths no longer shock you:
- You may be an adult with no curfew, but your doorman will always judge you for coming home late/drunk/both.
- The super expects a holiday tip even though you haven't seen him since last Christmas and Task Rabbited your clogged sink last week.
- The neighbors you can see walking around naked in their apartment are rarely the ones you want to see naked. Ditto the ones you can hear having sex.
The Open House Scorecard: Mom wasn't the only hot ticket this weekend
by Sara Alessi | 5/13/13 - 11:39 AM
The wall of windows in the living room of this $800k two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in Park Slope provides skyline views of Manhattan from Wall Street to the Empire State Building, and the private balcony offers harbor views.
Whether you like to gaze out over peaceful gardens, green parks or the city skyline, there’s a view for you in this week’s Open House Scorecard--the 10 open houses those browsing StreetEasy this weekend saved to their open-house planners more often than any others this weekend.
An $800k two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo on Fifth Avenue and 13th Street in Park Slope offers skyline views of the city from Wall Street to the Empire State Building from a wall of windows in the living room (pictured at left), as well as harbor views from the private balcony.










