Virginia K. Smith

After more than seven years on the waiting list, I won an appeal for an apartment in a Mitchell-Lama complex.  However, the building is now going private, and I've been told there are no longer apartments available. Friends who live there tell me that there are plenty of studios available. What is my recourse, and can I prove that the complex is purposefully holding back apartments?

In this 'Ask an Agent' column, the real estate experts at The Agency--a tech-savvy brokerage that gives buyers and renters access to the same database of listings used by the city's real estate agents, and pays their agents bonuses for client satisfaction--turn their attention to a key question for buyers new to the NYC market: when you're scoping out a potential apartment, what are some positive signs about the building, and which ones should be considered red flags? 

It often feels like you can't walk more than a block in NYC without running into something named after Dutch colonist Peter Stuyvesant, and this is doubly true in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which also contains an eastern subsection, Stuyvesant Heights.