It’s OK To Wait

This past week-end we spent time with friends who we met 37 years ago in the playground at 85th and Central Park West. The kids were both a year old and we had just moved into our apartments, us on 86th and them on 87th. Even though apartments were cheap, we couldn’t really afford them and none of us had jobs which would adequately pay the maintenance without family help. My wife and I painted the faux bois paneling in our apartment over with white semi-gloss latex paint, and while we were at it we painted the dining room and the master bedroom. We spilled some paint on the 20 year old bedroom carpeting, which we did not replace until years later. Friends helped us out, and my brother-in-law, who was working for a flooring company in those days, refinished our floors. The apartment had three bedrooms (still does): we slept in one, I made one into my office by installing an old corduroy sofa, a table from my mother’s apartment, and a stereo table made from planks held up by bricks. The third sat empty until our daughter was born a year later. Like our friends next door, we cooked in the 1929 kitchen, with no dishwasher, which still had a drying rack for clothes suspended from the ceiling on pulleys. We all gave big dinner parties in our jerry-rigged dining rooms – ours was illuminated by a chandelier found in my grandmother’s barn. And we all felt incredibly lucky.

 We did renovate our kitchen in a minimal way a year after moving in, although it took us another 20 years to do the bathrooms. Nobody behaves like this today. I have not sold an apartment to young people at any time during the past 20 years which was not completely refurbished before they moved in. Frequently, as far as I could tell, the cost of the renovation might have bought them another room, or a better outlook. Few people of any age now have the tolerance to buy and postpone the upgrade. For a variety of reasons, I think that’s a shame. Most significantly, keeping a big budget in reserve for renovation just means you don’t end up buying the best property you can. 

I am a real believer in stretching when making a first purchase. Buy the biggest, best home you can possibly afford. Paint it yourself. Leave the bathrooms alone if you must. Reface the kitchen cabinets and get new granite or Caesarstone counters. Space and location provide you with the wonderful gift of flexibility. They can add five years to the time you can stay in your home before moving. And it doesn’t all have to be perfect when you start out in life. Time (and money) enough to see to that later. All of us who own property in New York City should feel lucky, just as we did when we moved into our unwired, unrenovated, unpainted apartments. Fixing it all up can always come later.