BrickUnderground

Real Estate Want: A Gothic condo

by Julie Inzanti | 5/02/13 - 12:44 PM

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This $1.69 million East Harlem condo looks like the purrfect spot for a "True Blood" themed premiere party.

This $1.6m East Harlem condo has over 2,400 square feet, amazing 20-ft ceilings and a wood burning fireplace.
With its vaulted ceiling and archways, Gothic-style church windows and dark wood criss crossing against crisp white walls, the stunning space has an old cathedral feel...no doubt Eric Northman and his vampire cohorts would feel right at home here, as would a Season Six premiere party for True Blood.
Alas...the two-bedroom apartment is already in contract.
R.I.P.
Real Estate Want is a weekly column featuring New York City apartment details we're coveting right now.

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filed under buying
Confessions of a Neighborhood Blogger

Hoboken411: Hard-partying 20-somethings make way for young families

by Julie Inzanti | 5/02/13 - 10:29 AM

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Perry Klaussen knows Hoboken.

Hoboken has been referred to by some as the sixth borough of NYC. New Yorkers may scoff at this (especially if you've been stranded in Hoboken late-night and are forced to take a $60 taxi ride back to Manhattan), but with its close proximity and easy access PATH train service to lower Manhattan, Union Square and Midtown (during normal business hours anyhow), along with ferry service, this New Jersey city is arguably more convenient than parts of Brooklyn.
Perry Klaussen has been a resident of Hoboken for nearly 20 years and loves the neighborhood so much he might not ever leave. But he's not convinced that the sixth borough is a fair nickname.

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filed under buying, Hoboken, neighborhood, neighborhoods, renting
StreetNoise

Booming spring market not so great for appraisals, how to park for less in NYC and more

by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 5/02/13 - 8:58 AM

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- One potential downside to a strong real estate market: problems with appraisals (NY1)
- Good news for co-op buyers: Hearings start on proposed bill to require boards to be more transparent (Real Estate Weekly; New York Post; Malcolm Carter)
- If you're single and live off of the G train, you may want to move (DNA Info)
- The million dollar question: How can I park in NYC without breaking the bank? (UrbanBaby)
- Rent hikes on rent-stabilized apartments could be more than twice the size of last year's increase (WSJ via The Real Deal)
- Travel site FlipKey begs Stuytown renters to turn their apartments into hotels (which by the way is totally illegal in NYC) (New York Post)
- A match made in heaven: Lena Dunham is (high-end) house-hunting in Willamsburg (Daily News)
- Are the stars aligned for you to move? Check out your NYC real-estate horoscope (Bond New York)
- City slaps brokers with fines of $3,600 and up for showing illegal apartments (NY Times)
- Six months after Sandy, many neighborhoods--like Staten Island--are still reeling from damage (amNewYork)...
- ... but, on the bright side (and largely due to price cuts) the Rockaways have seen a spike in home buying and summer renting (New York Post)
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filed under appraisal, buying, parking, selling
Your Celebrity Neighbor: Jerry Seinfeld

by Sharon Krum | 5/01/13 - 3:52 PM

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prphotos.com

WHO: Jerry Seinfeld recently said the best thing about the subway is that he doesn’t have to ride it anymore. What, he doesn’t miss how it doubles as a sauna in summer?
WHERE: The comedian and former star/creator of “Seinfeld” lives with his family on the Upper West Side, where the median sales price is $1.065 million and the median rental price is $3,200, according to 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.

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filed under celebrities, neighborhood, neighborhoods, neighbors, Upper West Side
Dear Ms. Demeanor: My roommates are too picky about finding my replacement. How can I politely nudge them?

by Jamie Lauren Sutton | 5/01/13 - 12:55 PM

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Dear Ms. Demeanor,
I'm moving out of my current apartment and my roommates need to fill my spot. They are being SUPER picky about my replacement, turning down candidates for the silliest reasons. I want to be understanding, but it's getting close to move-out date and I want them to get moving. Any suggestions?
Sincerely,
Moving Out
Dear Moving Out,
Tricky business! Take heart that you are so hard to replace, and cast a wide net looking for replacement.
If you haven't already, you and your roomies should reach out to all your contacts, post on Facebook (maybe they'll prefer to pick friends and friends-of-friends over strangers) and put the listing on mutually agreed upon websites, bulletin boards, etc.

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filed under roommate, roommates
Real.Est. List Spotlight Gallery

Blocking out light but still brightening up a room with Delia Shades

by Leah Hochbaum Rosner | 5/01/13 - 10:53 AM

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For many people, window treatments are something of an afterthought—you need to get something, anything to shut out prying eyes (and, if you're lucky, light). But for Delia Heilig, founder of Midtown’s Delia Shades—the subject of this week’s Real. Est. List Spotlight Series—they’re a transformative must, spicing up bad views and inexpensively making over a space.
“I always hated what was available in the window shade market,” says Heilig, an industrial designer from L.A. who moved to New York in 2006. She sensed that others felt similarly, often buying whatever shades they saw first because they needed to keep the sunlight from streaming in—not because they liked them.
“There was this funny gap in the design market,” she notes.
So she set out to change that, experimenting with a variety of designs that she placed on mesh fabrics before mounting them on roller shades. And with that, a business was born.

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filed under design, windows
Would you rather...live in a fabulous 4th floor walk-up, or a plain-vanilla elevator building abode?

by Mayra David | 5/01/13 - 8:55 AM

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Who doesn't love a good round of "Would You Rather"? We've decided to give the age-old party game a real estate twist in this new every-so-often column.
Today we're kicking things off with our first totally hypothetical question: Would you rather pay $1 million for a fourth-floor walk-up that’s 1,500 square feet and gorgeously renovated with outdoor space--or use that same million to buy a 900-square-foot generic apartment in an elevator building?
We asked five New Yorkers to choose--and explain.

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filed under buying, renting
Ask an Expert: What do co-op boards look for in reference letters?

by Teri Karush Rogers | 4/30/13 - 12:56 PM

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Q. What sort of things do co-op boards look for in reference letters? Are reference letters from out of state acceptable? I've only been in New York for six months and I don't know that many people here other than through work.
A. Relax: Out of state reference letters shouldn't be a problem in most buildings, according to our experts.
"While it’s great if you’ve been a New Yorker for awhile, already owned shares in a co-op, know someone in the building, or have some other bond that will create a comfort level with the board, being a recent transplant is not necessarily a negative," says real estate broker Gordon Roberts of Warburg Realty. "Your letters would reflect the transition and demonstrate some continuity."

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filed under boards, buying
The StreetEasy Hot Dozen: 12 rentals that may or may not be available by the time you read this

by Alex Hughes | 4/30/13 - 11:51 AM

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This $3,000/mo two-bedroom apartment at 364 West 30th Street occupies a full-floor of a 3-story walk-up building and comes with a washer-dryer.

Looks like three (thousand) is the lucky number this week. The Hot Dozen--the 12 rental apartments Streeteasy.com visitors clicked on most often over the past seven days--features three two-bedroom apartments for $3,000/month apiece.
Just steps from Hudson River Park and the Highline is a two-bedroom apartment at 322 West 11th Street and Greenwich Street listed at, you guessed it, $3,000/month. Each of the apartment's two bedrooms has windows (with window bars, as this is a first-floor unit) and can fit a full bed, and the place has high ceilings and wood floors.

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filed under hot dozen, rentals, renters, renting
Who gets the apartment after a divorce?

by Elise Pettus | 4/30/13 - 8:58 AM

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Stillframe

If you are thinking about divorce in New York City, you are thinking about real estate.
“The home is almost always the major issue,” says real estate broker Deborah Lupard of Warburg, herself a divorced homeowner in TriBeCa. “Where are you going to go?”
If you and your spouse own a house or an apartment together, chances are this is your primary asset or at least one of them. And it’s not many couples anywhere--let alone New York City--that can sell their home and buy two comparable ones. It can be a thorny question and often the most difficult to work out, especially if there are kids in the picture.

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filed under divorce, rentals, renters, renting, selling
The Open House Scorecard: Spring pied-a-terre fever?

by Sara Alessi | 4/29/13 - 1:19 PM

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This $690k two-bedroom, 1.5 bath West 82nd Street co-op welcomes pied-a-terre purchasers.

Did the nice weather this weekend inspire an unusual number of out-of-towners to go house hunting for a pied-a-terre in the Big Apple?
Perhaps. Today's Open House Scorecard--rounding up the 10 open houses buyers perusing StreetEasy saved to their open-house calendars more often than any others this weekend--features several apartments that go very light on purchasing restrictions.
On the Upper West Side, a $690k two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath co-op (pictured) on West 82nd Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue could also be purchased as a pied a terre.

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filed under Boerum Hill, buying, Chelsea, Gramercy, Park Slope, pied a terre, Prospect Heights, TriBeCa, Upper West Side
Sponsored by Insurent Lease Guaranty

Rejected by a landlord lately? Want to get that apartment faster? Here's your secret weapon

4/29/13 - 11:53 AM

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As most renters know (or are shocked to learn), finding an apartment that’s affordable, livable, and available is only the first chapter in the epic battle for a NYC rental.
Once you’ve found a place worthy of renting, you must now convince a landlord that you are rent-worthy.
Here are some scenarios in which Insurent can save the day and get you that apartment.

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filed under renting
Is it really time to sell your NYC apartment? Here are 4 ways to tell

by Marjorie Cohen | 4/29/13 - 10:47 AM

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This 2-bedroom, 1-bath $1.3m West 21st Street co-op needs a second bathroom to put it squarely in the $1.2m-$1.4m sweetspot for a two-bedroom. On the plus side, it's downtown and the $1,076/mo maintenance is low.

You’d have to be living in a cave or on a desert island not to know how hot the New York real estate market is this spring.
Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats sums up what everyone is thinking: “We are in an appreciating market right now and prices have the potential to reach all time highs in the near future. ...If the sales market continues on this path, it will surpass its previous high, which was set in 2008, some time this year."
The reasons: shrinking inventory, low mortgage rates, international buyers. A perfect storm. So how do you know if you should take the plunge and put your apartment on the market?
Here are 4 questions to ask yourself.

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filed under real estate market, selling
StreetNoise

How not to succeed in a seller's market, short-term-rental shocker and more

by Sara Alessi | 4/29/13 - 9:07 AM

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- Sellers: Here's how to turn your apartment into a wallflower (The Real Deal; previously)
- Central Park West couple who rented out condo 110 days last year as a hotel (and blogged about it) shocked--shocked!--over board's lawsuit (NY Daily News)
- What it's really like to be board prez (NY Times)
- Does your commute justify your rent? Yes, if you live in LIC (Curbed NY)
- In NYC's seller's market, some start to specifiy which lenders buyers can use for financing (NY Times)
- Michelin-starred restaurants and expats partly to blame for the high cost of NYC housing (NY Times)
- The wider your townhouse, the rarer and more valuable--but super-skinny wins bragging rights too (The Real Deal)
- UES isn’t seeing green: Compared to other ’hoods, it’s lacking in parks and open space (Crain’s New York)
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filed under boards
No-Fee Apartment of the Week: $3,500 four-bedroom in "Prospect Heights"

by Lucy Cohen Blatter | 4/26/13 - 3:03 PM

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Classic townhouse details have been restored in this $3,500 four-bedroom in Prospect Heights/Crown Heights on which the owner is still putting the finishing touches.

According to the listing, this $3,500 four-bedroom is in Prospect Heights, but we think that's pushing it a bit. The location is better described as Crown Heights. Either way, it sounds like a pretty good deal
Pros: Although the apartment has been recently renovated (as you can see from the photo of the kitchen), architectural features such as a fireplace, moldings and frames have been retained and restored.
Cons: The apartment is a third-floor walk-up.There's only one (small-looking) bathroom.

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filed under brooklyn, rentals, renters, renting, walk-up