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The Hunt A New Performance on 94th Street WHEN they lived on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, Kristi Boone and Isaac Stappas — dancers for American Ballet Theater — had such a time-consuming trip home from…... Read more >

The Hunt

A New Performance on 94th Street

WHEN they lived on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, Kristi Boone and Isaac Stappas — dancers for American Ballet Theater — had such a time-consuming trip home from work that they bought a car.

 After performing until, say, 11 p.m.; changing into street clothes; stepping out the stage door; and maybe signing some autographs, they would have an hourlong two-subway ride home and would still need to get up early for class the next day.

The young couple had schedules that didn’t always coincide. Sometimes Ms. Boone would be finished after a ballet’s first act, while Mr. Stappas danced until the end. Waiting so they could drive home together, she would sew ribbons and elastic on her pointe shoes or read shelter magazines at the Barnes & Noble cafe near Lincoln Center, sometimes sipping an iced decaf latte.

Ms. Boone, now 27, who is from Fairport, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, gladly gave up jazz and tap dance after sampling classical ballet at age 13.

Mr. Stappas, 28, who is from Kernersville, N.C., near Winston-Salem, followed his older sister to the North Carolina School of the Arts, where she took dance lessons. As an 8-year-old, “I didn’t have any other hobbies,” he said, “so my mom conned me into ballet.”

Once in New York, Ms. Boone lived first with two other dancers in a one-bedroom apartment near Lincoln Center, and later by herself on the Upper East Side. Mr. Stappas had roommates in Brooklyn. They married in 2006.

When the couple bought their Kensington co-op three years ago, “we were just starting out and didn’t think we could really quite afford what we wanted in Manhattan,” Ms. Boone said. “That was when the market was superhot.”

The more they hunted, the more they realized they didn’t want a nicely finished place, since they would alter it to their taste anyway. A fresh renovation of a run-down apartment would provide a greater return when it was time to sell, too.

In the Ocean Avenue building, they’d had a choice of a redone one-bedroom or a mess of a two-bedroom. For the same money, around $275,000, there was no question that they would buy the two-bedroom. Back then, they had no idea what renovation entailed. “It sounded so simple in our minds,” Ms. Boone said. “I had painted my bedroom growing up.”

By the time they were finished, nine months later, “Isaac knew how to do everything,” she said. With no elevator, he hauled drywall and plywood up the stairs. His grandfather helped him put tile down in the bathroom.

Living there during the renovation was awful, she recalled. “That is not something I would recommend,” she said. “I would wake up in the morning with plaster dust on my eyelashes.”

The trip to American Ballet Theater’s studio at Broadway and 19th Street, where the dancers usually rehearse, took only one subway. Still, the couple felt removed from their friends, who rarely visited. When they invited people for dinner, they limited the guest list to the number that could fit in the car for the drive home — a total of five, though sometimes an extra ballerina squeezed in.

Last summer, they found themselves wanting to move to Manhattan and embark on another renovation. Ms. Boone says she envisions becoming “some kind of interior designer when I am done dancing.”

“Seeing something that starts out so-so or really bad and watching the progress and seeing the finished product is rewarding,” she said. “Not as rewarding as dance,” but with fewer aches and pains.

So the couple began hunting for a one-bedroom co-op on the Upper East Side, where there were plenty for sale. Their budget was $500,000 to $700,000.

Ideally, they would have an elevator and a doorman. “I haven’t had a doorman since I first moved to the city” at age 16, Ms. Boone said. “I adored getting packages” from home, “and if you don’t have a doorman it is hard to get a package.”

The right layout, with a window in the bathroom and the kitchen, was also important. “You can’t change that — you can’t put in a window,” Ms. Boone said.

They considered a one-bedroom on East 67th Street, priced at $679,000. (The price later fell to $579,000.)

With 850 square feet, it was on the small side, though outdated enough to make for a worthy renovation project. But the kitchen wall that they wished to remove held water pipes and gas lines.

A ground-floor two-bedroom on East 92nd Street, at 950 square feet, initially seemed promising, but was way too dark. (The price started at $700,000, but is currently $560,000.)

“You can’t tell there are buildings right near you from the floor plan,” Ms. Boone said. “No matter how many walls you knock down, you can’t change the fact you are not getting any light.”

Searching online, they found a one-bedroom on East 94th Street, an estate sale with nearly 1,000 square feet and two enormous bedroom closets. The price was $695,000.

Mr. Stappas checked it out on his favorite Web site, Streeteasy.com. Because the site includes price history, “you can make a plan before you go in there,” he said. The apartment had been on the market for about eight months.

“Isaac went right to work to see if he could knock down the wall,” Ms. Boone said. He could. So they could easily enlarge the kitchen. The floors were marred with nicks and paint drips, and the bathroom fixtures were stained.

They offered $580,000, and bought the apartment for $585,000. “It was odd to feel as a buyer you had the upper hand,” Ms. Boone said. Monthly maintenance is around $1,150.

Previous deals had fallen through because of financing issues, according to the listing agent, Craig Schiller of Warburg Realty. In this case, there were many contingencies. The buyers of the Kensington apartment, which sold for $415,000, needed to close before Ms. Boone and Mr. Stappas received a mortgage commitment.

“Prior to the financial crisis,” Mr. Schiller said, “a lot of this was being done simultaneously,” whereas now it is happening sequentially.

The couple finally closed last month. This time, they want to finish construction before moving in, so they have stored their furniture and are staying with dancer friends. They are impatient to begin, but must first get their permits in order. Co-op boards seem to be far more strict in Manhattan than in Brooklyn, they said.

“Once the hammer hits the wall, I can’t wait,” Mr. Stappas said. “I am, wow, this has a lot of potential, and Kristi is a phenomenal designer so I trust her eye completely.”

The couple hope to be living in their new home for the most demanding time of year — the eight-week spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ms. Boone, a soloist, will dance the lead role in Prokofiev’s “Prodigal Son,” choreographed by George Balanchine. Mr. Stappas, a member of the corps de ballet, has a prominent role in “Romeo and Juliet.”

“It would be nice to go home to a home,” Ms. Boone said, wistfully. That’s unlikely. “I never thought, we bought an apartment — great, we are going to be homeless!”

 

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Build Me a Story: 1 W. 72nd St. By JILL PRILUCK | July 17, 2008 http://www.nysun.com/real- 1 W. 72nd St., #46 Between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue Ben Parker  Price: $18.5 million Maintenance:…... Read more >

Build Me a Story: 1 W. 72nd St.
By JILL PRILUCK | July 17, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/real-

1 W. 72nd St., #46 Between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
Ben Parker 



Price: $18.5 million
Maintenance: $7,669
Broker: Craig Schiller/Warburg

This 10-room home is in the Dakota and has a view of the building's courtyard. About 4,500 square feet, it contains a foyer, parlor, living room (also called the ballroom), library (or fourth bedroom), kitchen (with a family room and pantry), master bedroom, two additional bedrooms, three full baths, and a powder room. Most original details are intact, including the wood shutters, pocket doors, moldings (except in the kitchen), doors, inlaid floors, and built-in kitchen cabinetry. The living room features a hand-painted ceiling (based on Monet's Giverny series), a floor-to-ceiling window (one of three in the apartment), and a sandalwood fireplace mantel designed in the British Colonial style (the hearth is made of pink onyx). The parlor and dining room feature lacquered walls, while the gallery, which contains an Art Deco bar, is finished in gold patina. This apartment also has six wood-burning fireplaces, 13-foot ceilings, and two-foot-thick walls. Amenities in this building, completed in 1884, include doorman, concierge and sentry services.

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June 29, 2008 BIG DEAL New Is Nifty, Old Is Gold By JOSH BARBANEL WHY buy the copy when you can get the real thing? That is what some buyers passing through the newly finished limestone portal at 15 Central…... Read more >

June 29, 2008
BIG DEAL
New Is Nifty, Old Is Gold
By JOSH BARBANEL

WHY buy the copy when you can get the real thing?

That is what some buyers passing through the newly finished limestone portal at 15 Central Park West, brokers at their side, might want to ask themselves, now that there are two 10-room apartments on the market at the 19th-century Dakota, a short limo ride 10 blocks to the north, on West 72nd Street facing Central Park.

After all, 15 Central Park West was designed by Robert A. M. Stern to echo the Dakota and other grand prewar buildings along Central Park, while providing a pool and other current amenities.

The concept has been so successful that six condominium owners have already resold their apartments at nifty profits and, according to the Web site Streeteasy.com, 17 more have their apartments on the market, not counting two huge penthouses with asking prices of $80 million and up.

At the Dakota, you will still have to empty your pockets to get past the co-op board, but for the trouble and for prices that are, on a square footage basis, roughly comparable to those at 15 Central Park West, you can acquire a rarely available apartment in a celebrated building with high gables and deep roofs, gas-lighted entryway and aura of power and mystery. The Dakota was completed in 1884.

John Burger, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens, said that the apartments now on the market were both on the same line, the largest in the building, “not counting combined apartments, such as the former Leonard Bernstein residence, the former Rudolf Nureyev residence and the current Yoko Ono residence.”

Mr. Burger has just listed a newly restored sixth-floor apartment, owned by a Wall Streeter, for $24 million, or about $5,000 a square foot. The place has four bedrooms, four wood-burning fireplaces, original molding, a 16-foot-long gallery and a 29-foot corner living room with large windows.

Mr. Burger described 15 Central Park West as a trophy building, the Dakota as art that requires a discerning buyer. “I think of those apartments being like good paintings,” he said. “You either appreciate the architectural integrity of the building, the woodwork, the ironwork, or you don’t.”

Craig Schiller, at Warburg Realty Partnership, is offering a similar apartment two floors below; it is owned by an advertising executive, according to property filings. The asking price is $18.5 million, or a more affordable $4,000 a square foot.

The apartment has 14-foot ceilings, with details including original shaving closets in the bathrooms, paneled rooms and a 16-foot gallery, he said.

“Without denigrating anything in particular,” he said, “in new construction you only know how well it was built a number of years later. But if the building is a hundred years old, any construction defects have been identified and fixed a generation ago.”

So far the highest price at the Dakota was the $20.5 million sale in January to Philip Milstein, a scion of the Milstein real estate fortune, and his wife, Cheryl. That apartment was sold by Dolly Lenz, of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who had listed it in fall 2006 for $25.5 million.

Mr. Schiller listed his co-op for $19.5 million in October 2006 and cut the price in May to $18.5 million. He said the reduction took into account the actual purchase price of the Milstein apartment.

At 15 Central Park West, an eight-bedroom 11th-floor apartment facing the park has an asking price of $22.7 million, or $6,526 a square foot.
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May 11, 2008 Big Deal Selling Isn’t Poetry By JOSH BARBANEL THERE was one last full-floor condominium lingering on the market in a meticulously restored and expensive prewar Park Avenue building at…... Read more >

May 11, 2008
Big Deal

Selling Isn’t Poetry

By JOSH BARBANEL

THERE was one last full-floor condominium lingering on the market in a meticulously restored and expensive prewar Park Avenue building at East 75th Street. So Elliott P. Joseph, the project’s developer, jumped on what he thought was the perfect sales sweetener: two free Lexus hybrids with the purchase. 

Soon, however, Mr. Joseph sent a reporter a haiku-like text message reconsidering: “2 car idea / Still an idea / Not a reality yet.”

After meeting with his broker, Kathy Sloane of Brown Harris Stevens, and her boss, Hall F. Willkie, Mr. Joseph agreed to trim the asking price instead of offering inducements to sell the 11th-floor apartment at 823 Park Avenue.

The apartment has a 46-foot-wide living room and library (with mahogany paneling) facing Park Avenue, five bedrooms and nearly 4,200 square feet of space; the building has classical marble columns and a polished marble floor in the lobby.

Mr. Joseph agreed to lower the price by $500,000, to $14.9 million from $15.4 million.

As the peak spring selling season unfolds, owners of other co-op and condos lingering on the market have also been trimming asking prices, hoping to get ever-more-cautious buyers to give their properties a second look.

In the last 30 days, prices were cut on about 17 percent of the co-ops and condos in Manhattan, according to an analysis of listings on Streeteasy.com, a Web site that compiles information from most brokerage firms. Prices rose on around 2 percent of all Streeteasy listings. Among the most expensive properties — those listed for $10 million or more — there were fewer price changes, but price cuts outnumbered price increases by a ratio of 10 to 1.

That is one result of the cooler winds blowing through the Manhattan market, despite continuing high prices for completed co-op and condo transactions last month. Brokers say deals are being done, but they are showing apartments less often, and everyone is more cautious.

“I am having fewer showings, but more of the buyers who look at apartments are serious buyers,” said James Lansill, the senior managing director of the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group.

Among the price cuts listed on Streeteasy.com was one at the Dakota, at Central Park West and 72nd Street, where the price of a 10-room apartment was reduced by $1 million, to $18.5 million from $19.5 million. “As fabulous as your fantasy,” notes the listing at Warburg Realty by Craig Schiller and Meredith Specht.

At 1040 Fifth Avenue, the 17-story co-op designed by Rosario Candela at 86th Street, the asking price on an 11-room, five-bedroom apartment was cut by $3 million on May 5, to $21 million, four months after it was listed by Alina Pedroso of Brown Harris Stevens.

“Buyers are out there expecting to get good deals,” said Gregory J. Heym, the chief economist at Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property. “Some people who want to sell are more open to it.”

That isn’t evident from actual sales data from deeds and tax records filed with the city’s Finance Department. Preliminary data showed that prices rose last month, with the average sale price on a co-op or condo reaching $1.45 million, up 17 percent from a year earlier. The median price was $927,500, also up 17 percent.

At 823 Park Avenue, Mr. Joseph and his partners at the Property Markets Group thought they would be sold out by now, with total sales of about $166 million. They paid $60 million for the building, after the previous owner bought out the last of the rental tenants.

At first, the 11th-floor apartment quickly went into contract, to a couple expecting a baby, but with construction delays, Mr. Joseph returned their deposit and raised the price to $15.4 million.

Among the buyers in the building was Brendan Shanahan, the New York Rangers forward, who paid $13.4 million for the seventh floor.

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The Real Deal February 2008 Residential Deals - Manhattan Upper East Side $460,000 343 East 74th Street 524sf studio co-op in postwar elevator building; marble bathroom, pass-thru kitchen, new…... Read more >

The Real Deal February 2008
Residential Deals - Manhattan
Upper East Side
$460,000
343 East 74th Street
524sf studio co-op in postwar elevator building; marble bathroom, pass-thru kitchen, new washer/dryer, large walk-in closet; building has gym, roof deck, garage; maintenace $888; 66 percent tax-deductible; asking$469,000; five weeks on the market. (Brokers: Jamie Brietman, Bellmarc; Craig Schiller, Warburg)< Read less