Caught in the Web By HILARY STOUT IN an age when people reflexively turn to the Web to screen everyone from blind dates to baby-sitters, the Internet search has become a part of one of the most opaque…... Read more >

Caught in the Web
By HILARY STOUT

IN an age when people reflexively turn to the Web to screen everyone from blind dates to baby-sitters, the Internet search has become a part of one of the most opaque and arcane screening processes of all: the New York co-op board review.

It is by no means a universal practice. Many co-ops, and the management companies that oversee them, say they do not routinely use the Web to dig for dirt on prospective buyers. They say the standard co-op application package — tax returns, bank statements, salary verification, credit check, reference letters and board interview — gives a complete and reliable picture of the applicant.

Information gleaned from Facebook, blogs or other Internet postings “is not pure data,” said Beth Markowitz, the president of Merlot Management, a company that manages about 32 co-ops and condominiums throughout Manhattan. Therefore, she said, it is not necessarily “true, accurate or unbiased.”

But as more and more buyers and brokers are learning, there is nothing to stop an inquisitive board member from typing a name into a search engine — and using what turns up to derail a deal.

That is what happened to Larry Silverman, a criminal defense lawyer, when he sold the apartment in a Manhattan co-op where he had lived as an upstanding shareholder for 17 years, and made an offer on a new one. He was already in contract to sell the old place, and his offer was all cash. Board approval seemed a sure thing, said Barbara Good, his broker, an executive vice president of Halstead Property.

Weeks went by, and the board did not schedule an interview. Mr. Silverman could not get anyone to tell him why. “I finally said: ‘Listen, there couldn’t be anything in my finances. I’m a licensed attorney so I have no criminal record. I told the board president that if I don’t get an interview, I’m going to withdraw my application.”

It turned out that a board member had done a search and pulled up news articles about a court case in the early 1980s. The defendant, Mr. Silverman’s client, was charged with insurance fraud and racketeering. The board member was convinced that Mr. Silverman had represented a mobster.

When the board interviewed Mr. Silverman, the member confronted him with a pile of information she had found online about that case and others. “How do we know one of your former clients isn’t going to come to the building and kill the children?” he recalls her asking.

Mr. Silverman says that he kept his cool, as one must do in board interviews. He explained that the case involved financial fraud, not murder, and that the charges against his client had been dismissed.

Eventually, he said, the board approved his application, but not before he had spent more than $25,000 on rent for a temporary place in an inconvenient neighborhood and put his furniture and possessions in storage.

Luigi Rosabianca, a real estate lawyer who serves as counsel to co-op and condo boards in New York and who has represented boards as well as buyers, said it was perfectly legal for a board to raise questions based on information from the Internet. However, he said, such information should supplement, not replace, the information gathered in the traditional applicant package.

Still, Mr. Rosabianca said, “there are benefits to availing yourself of online resources like Facebook and other social networks to conduct due diligence.”

He recalled a prospective buyer in an Upper East Side co-op who listed his occupation as gemologist on his application. A quick Google search found that he was, more precisely, a diamond dealer and that he had been involved in an incident concerning diamonds of questionable origin. The board approved him, but the information led to questions in the interview about his professional activities.

“I think the board did its job,” Mr. Rosabianca said.

Often the information that board members pull up has nothing to do with professional matters. Burke J. Smith, the founder of Your Net Coach, a company that helps real estate professionals use social media effectively, said that he had clients who had lost commissions that “they thought were in the bag” because of their clients’ photos or other postings on Facebook and other social media.

One broker he works with told him that she had represented a buyer who made an offer on a multimillion-dollar co-op. But, the broker said, the board blackballed the application because of online photos of the prospective buyer partying with friends.

Steven O. Goldschmidt says social networks provide his co-op with applicant information, pro and con.

But never mind photos of adults posing triumphantly with empty beer bottles or wearing underpants as hats: Brokers say some of the most eyebrow-raising online tidbits can involve children.

“Kids are really where you find a lot of the information that can cause some concerns,” said Steven O. Goldschmidt, a senior vice president of the Warburg Marketing Group of Warburg Realty, and a member of his Morningside Heights co-op board. “There have been one or two incidents when we looked at an application and then looked at the children. They were wild to the nth degree.”

In one case, he said, the applicants had a 16-year-old son. An online search found photos of him in full Goth regalia. That didn’t go over well with the board. Worse, the page contained “some language and referred to parties and to drug use in a manner that caused some concern,” Mr. Goldschmidt said. After the board raised questions, the family pulled its application.

Sometimes Internet sleuthing can work in the buyer’s favor. Shari Bornstein and Bryan Meccariello of Southington, Conn., recently sought to buy a one-bedroom in a small Upper West Side co-op building. Their plan was to turn it into a pied-à-terre.

The board was worried: No one in the building had ever used an apartment as an occasional residence. And the couple had a teenage son, Garrett. Would he be coming there — by himself?

When the couple showed up for their interview, the member who served as a spokeswoman for the board took them aside and told them not to worry, she had checked out the boy online and thought he was terrific, said Ms. Bornstein and the two agents who represented her, Holly Palance and Jennifer Roberts of Halstead.

Indeed, a Google search of young Garrett’s name yielded, among other things, a Facebook page for a hot-dog stand he runs and a local news report about a pedicab business he started. In the segment, he said he wasn’t in it for the money, but to provide a service for Southington residents.

Based on that impressive snapshot, the 15-year-old entrepreneur went from deal breaker to deal maker. “Anyone who could raise such a wonderful son would be a wonderful addition to our building,” Ms. Bornstein recalled two board members saying.

Mr. Goldschmidt’s co-op was also swayed in a positive direction by online intelligence. The prospective buyer in this case was a single mother with a teenage daughter. The apartment had one bedroom. Because of the close quarters, it didn’t sound like a great situation, but a Facebook search turned up “wonderful photos” of trips the mother and daughter had taken together. “It appeared they were very close and had a heartfelt relationship,” Mr. Goldschmidt said. The application was approved.

So what are boards looking for when they go surfing?

Mr. Goldschmidt said he refers to the professional networking site LinkedIn to round out an applicant’s picture. Among other things, résumés can be found there, and the recommendations from peers are useful, he said.

That, and the ubiquitous Google search, can turn up charities and political causes in which the person is involved. Usually the information doesn’t affect an application either way, he said, but it helps present a more complete portrait.

Of course, many people have privacy settings that prevent those not in friend networks from viewing the full contents of their profiles. But even with these barriers in place, Facebook informs members of “mutual friends.” Mr. Goldschmidt says board members sometimes call those mutual friends and ask for their impressions of the applicant. (He said he would not, however, ask a mutual friend to sneak him onto another person’s page.)

Brokers routinely scour the Web to head off potential problems. For example, if a client is seeking an apartment in a pet-free building, she shouldn’t have photos of a dog on her Facebook page. A prospective buyer who posts enthusiastic comments about, say, a secessionist rally, could cause a board composed of liberal members to wonder whether he would be a good fit. (Co-ops don’t have to give the reason for their rejections.)

Landlords, too, find the Internet immensely useful. Victoria Shtainer, a senior vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, and her husband were seeking a tenant to rent their luxury Midtown apartment. A young man described by his broker, a colleague of Ms. Shtainer’s, as “an Internet genius” wanted to do a deal.

As a precaution, the couple looked up the prospective tenant on Google. Strangely, given the fact that he was supposed to be very successful, they turned up nothing. Then they did an image search.

What they found, Ms. Shtainer said, “made my hair stand on end.”

There, staring back at her on her computer screen, was a photo from a Florida newspaper of her prospective tenant, along with an article recounting his arrest for threatening to cut off another man’s hands and genitalia if the man didn’t give him $200,000.

“Needless to say, we did not rent to him,” Ms. Shtainer said.

 

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F'd! UES co-op kills sale after reading kid’s Facebook page A reliable source tells BrickUnderground that a posh Upper East Side co-op quashed a sale after running a Facebook check--on the buyer’s…... Read more >

F'd! UES co-op kills sale after reading kid’s Facebook page

A reliable source tells BrickUnderground that a posh Upper East Side co-op quashed a sale after running a Facebook check--on the buyer’s children.

“The board looked at all of the kids’ Facebook pages and there was something a little strange on one of them,” says our source. The page apparently revealed ties to a hate group.

Checking out buyers and renters online is routine these days, but several brokers and board members told BrickUnderground that investigating children is a new and so far scattered phenomenon. It may be linked to recent changes in Facebook’s privacy settings that have opened a wider door for curious boards and brokers to peer through.

Whether ferreting out information on parents or their offspring, brokers, boards and landlords have related but separate agendas: Boards and landlords are trying to spot bad neighbors/tenants, while brokers aim to cherry pick buyers who will pass the board and renters who won't become a thorn in a landlord's side.

Bottom line: Sanitize your digital presence--and your kids'--before looking for your next New York City apartment.

“Now more than ever, because everything is so transparent and the whole world can follow what you're doing, you can’t leave any stone unturned when you’re applying for a co-op,” says broker-blogger Paul Zweben of Prudential Douglas Elliman.

He Googles his clients and checks out their Facebook pages to get to know them better. "If there is something alarming when I search, that could change my future relationship with them," he says.

Steven Goldschmidt, a senior vice president at Warburg Realty who is on the board of his UWS co-op, says that while he has not (yet) started checking up on buyers’ children, he scrutinizes the Facebook friend lists of the buyers themselves.

The accidental publication of the friend lists has been a particularly pernicious side effect of Facebook’s recent privacy-setting changes, but says Goldschmidt, “It’s not all negative – it’s very useful to learn that you have a mutual friend in common.”

Goldschmidt also checks out buyers’ Twitter feeds, looking for updates like, "Dead drunk, heading home."

Several other Warburg brokers told BrickUnderground stories about how over the years, their Googling had turned up evidence of undesirable pasts that went well beyond frat-boy lifestyles.

“We were going to lease a very expensive unit on East 57th Street and when we Googled the customer, we found out that he was in prison in Connecticut for fraud,’ says Robert Doernberg, a senior vice president at Warburg Realty. “He was willing to pay cash but the landlord was very uncomfortable with the fraud history and worried about getting him out after the cash ran out.”

Goldschmidt described how one buyer’s online profile got him dinged even before he got to the board.

“We found out he was a rock musician promoter and the image I got from Googling him was that he didn’t really intend to live there, but intended to have friends and guests stay there,” says Goldschmidt, who represented the seller. “It prompted me to ask his broker questions, and we aborted.”

But even a stellar online reputation can be foiled by offline dealings.

"We Googled one buyer who had a prestigious fundraising job--she was on all sorts of boards--so we took her over another buyer, and she didn't pass the board," recalls Goldschmidt.  "It turned out another board member knew her and didn't like her."

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BROKERS WEEKLY Real Brokers of NYC The exploits you won’t see on reality TV. When brokers say their business doesn’t operate in a nine-to-five world, they mean it. From the absurd to the asinine,…... Read more >

BROKERS WEEKLY

Real Brokers of NYC
The exploits you won’t see on reality TV.

When brokers say their business doesn’t operate in a nine-to-five world, they mean it.

From the absurd to the asinine, many agents have heard, seen and experienced it all. In Ripley’s believe it or not fashion, we’ve asked some of the city’s top sales people to share their oddest on the job moments and the responses have not disappointed.

In the case of Warburg Realty senior vice president Steve Goldschmidt’s predicament, his had a happy ending. Touring Crillon Court with clients, Goldschmidt managed to lock himself – and his clients – inside a unit and posted an SOS on Facebook at 2:19pm, according to Corinne Pulitzer, an executive vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman.

By chance, Pulitzer happened to catch a glimpse of Goldschmidt’s Facebook post and quickly spring into action. She called the onsite offce then made arrangements to have the super open the unit where Goldschmidt and his client awaited rescue.

“I can only imagine his anxiety. He probably would’ve had to call the fire department,” Pulitzer said.

By 3:02pm Goldschmidt happily reported on Facebook that he and his client had been freed. And the unusual situation had a silver lining: Pulitzer reports that the two brokers have become good friends as a result of the lock-in and have even collaborated on a few listings.

 

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Scrivener.net What home price collapse? "Manhattan micro-studio: Only $150k, plus $700/mo." Zaarath and Christopher Prokop -- and their two cats -- live in the smallest apartment in the city, a 175-square-foot…... Read more >

Scrivener.net

What home price collapse? "Manhattan micro-studio:
Only $150k, plus $700/mo."
Zaarath and Christopher Prokop -- and their two cats -- live in the smallest apartment in the city, a 175-square-foot "microstudio" in Morningside Heights the couple bought three months ago for $150,000. Well, they waited to time the market bottom just right! At 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide ... to the Prokops, it's a castle.

When you first see it, the first thing you say is, 'Holy crap, this place is small,' " said Zaarath, 37, an accountant for liquor company Remy Martin. "But when I saw it, all I could think of is, I can do something with this. This is perfect for us. We love it."

The co-op is on the 16th floor of a doorman building on 110th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. But it's only accessible by a staircase on the 15th floor...

Privacy.

"I'm amazed we can fit two people and two cats in there," Zaarath said. "But it's harmonious at this point ... It's a good thing we like each other"...

The couple wakes up every morning in their queen-size bed, which takes up one-third of the living space.

They then walk five feet toward the tiny kitchen, where they pull out their workout clothes, which are folded neatly in two cabinets above the sink ...

"We don't cook," Zaarath said, adding that their fridge never has any food in it. "So when you don't cook, you don't need plates or pots or pans. So we use that space for our clothes."

They then jog to their jobs in Midtown, picking up along the way their work clothes, which are "strategically stashed at various dry cleaners."

"It's a great strategy, you always have fresh things to wear." Just in case the cleaners are closed, both have emergency clothes at their offices...

They don't have a trash can. The second something needs to be thrown out, they walk to the chute in the hallway ... Their bathroom -- about 3 by 9 feet -- has a small pedestal sink with mirror, and a stand-alone shower.

Real-estate broker Steven Goldschmidt, senior vice president of Warburg Realty, showed the Prokops the apartment, which used to be one of about nine maid's quarters in the prewar building.

"We converted eight of them into four apartments," Goldschmidt said, with each apartment going for a little less than a half-million dollars.

"But we could not configure that one room within any of the floor plans we were looking at without spending oodles of money. So I came up with the idea to just make it the smallest apartment and see how it goes ... It was not on the market all that long," he said. "And the Prokops made us a great offer, and that's it."

The couple will pay off their mortgage in two years, when they plan to remodel some of the apartment, adding a Murphy bed and larger windows.

They will then be saddled only with their maintenance fee, which is just over $700 a month... [NY Post]

That $700 a month is equivalent to the payment on another $130,000 mortgage (and largely services a separate mortgage on the whole building).

So the four "double" versions of these pre-World War II apartments (two maid's quarters put together) -- that sold for near $500,000 plus an equivalently larger monthly maintenance fee -- each sold for about as much as Detroit's 34-year old, 80,000 seat Silverdome...

... just auctioned off for $583,000, with 127 adjacent acres thrown in.

All real estate markets are local.

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NEW YORK POST Cozy-crazy couple makes tight all right in the city's tiniest studio By ANGELA MONTEFINISE If they can make it there, they can make it anywhere. Zaarath and Christopher Prokop -- and their…... Read more >

NEW YORK POST
Cozy-crazy couple makes tight all right in the city's tiniest studio
By ANGELA MONTEFINISE

If they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.

Zaarath and Christopher Prokop -- and their two cats -- live in the smallest apartment in the city, a 175-square-foot "microstudio" in Morningside Heights the couple bought three months ago for $150,000.

At 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide, it's about as narrow as a subway car and as claustrophobic as a jail cell. But to the Prokops, it's a castle.

"When you first see it, the first thing you say is, 'Holy crap, this place is small,' " said Zaarath, 37, an accountant for liquor company Remy Martin. "But when I saw it, all I could think of is, I can do something with this. This is perfect for us. We love it."

The co-op is on the 16th floor of a doorman building on 110th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. But it's only accessible by a staircase on the 15th floor.

It has two small windows with views of upper Manhattan; hardwood floors; a tiny kitchen with a mini-fridge and hotplate; and a closet-sized bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet.

"I'm amazed we can fit two people and two cats in there," Zaarath said. "But it's harmonious at this point. I have friends who say they could never live with their husbands in a place this small. It's a good thing we like each other enough to live there."

The couple wakes up every morning in their queen-size bed, which takes up one-third of the living space.

They then walk five feet toward the tiny kitchen, where they pull out their workout clothes, which are folded neatly in two cabinets above the sink. A third cabinet holds several containers of espresso for their only kitchen appliance, a cappuccino maker.

They turn off their hotplate, and use the space on the counter as a feeding area for their cats, Esmeralda and Beauregard.

"We don't cook," Zaarath said, adding that their fridge never has any food in it. "So when you don't cook, you don't need plates or pots or pans. So we use that space for our clothes."

Once in their running attire, the two change the cat litter box (stored under the sink) and start their small Rumba vacuum -- which operates automatically while they're out, picking up cat hair.

They then jog to their jobs in Midtown, picking up along the way their work clothes, which are "strategically stashed at various dry cleaners."

Just in case the cleaners are closed, both have emergency clothes at their offices.

"I have a closet at my office," Zaarath said. "You don't want to be standing outside a closed cleaners at 8:45 in your workout pants thinking, 'Greeeeeat' . . . It's a great strategy. You always have fresh things to wear."

The only other furniture in the apartment is a 27-inch flat-screen TV attached to the wall; a brown leather storage bench at the foot of the bed that stores linens but also acts as a sofa; a cat climbing "tree," and a shelf/wine rack system that holds a radio, cable box, and several bottles and glasses.

One of the kitchen cabinets is full of champagne because Zaarath's job allows them to order cases of it.

They don't have a trash can. The second something needs to be thrown out, they walk to the chute in the hallway.

Their bathroom -- about 3 by 9 feet -- has a small pedestal sink with mirror, and a stand-alone shower.

"Every bit of space is utilized," said Christopher, 35, also an accountant, who beamed as he showed off the apartment. "We really have everything we need."

The Prokops, who met in Texas where they worked, lived in New Jersey before moving to the Big Apple. They started with a 1,600-square-foot apartment in Glen Ridge, then moved to a 900-square-foot place in Jersey City. Once they decided on Manhattan, they wanted to go even smaller.

"We used to be kind of frivolous," said Zaarath, a California native. "I used to collect vintage clothing, for example, and the cost of storing it and moving it was just not economically viable. So when we decided to move to Manhattan, we realized we're not home that much because of our jobs. We don't need that much space. We could go smaller. When I saw the ad in the paper, I knew I had to see it. And I knew it was right for us as soon as I saw it."

Real-estate broker Steven Goldschmidt, senior vice president of Warburg Realty, showed the Prokops the apartment, which used to be one of about nine maid's quarters in the prewar building.

"We converted eight of them into four apartments," Goldschmidt said, with each apartment going for a little less than a half-million dollars.

"But we could not configure that one room within any of the floor plans we were looking at without spending oodles of money. So I came up with the idea to just make it the smallest apartment and see how it goes. I know a number of the luxury buildings are selling servants quarters and they're not this small."

He said he got "a lot of calls" from parents looking to find apartments for their Columbia students or business people looking for a pied-à-terre.

"It was not on the market all that long," he said. "And the Prokops made us a great offer, and that's it."

The couple will pay off their mortgage in two years, when they plan to remodel some of the apartment, adding a Murphy bed and larger windows. They will then be saddled only with their maintenance fee, which is just over $700 a month.

"It's like having a rent-controlled apartment," she said. "We're going to own something in Manhattan in two years. How many people can say that? And we're very happy doing more with less."

She added that because they save money on their home, they can spend money in "areas that make our lives better," like restaurants and vacations. The two just got back from Beijing and have been to Japan and other countries.

"We get to really experience life and enjoy ourselves," she said. "We eat out all the time. On the weekends, we're outside exploring the neighborhood. We're at Riverside Park all the time. We're not nesters. This apartment is perfect for someone active. If you want to stay home or entertain, this is just not the apartment for you."

She joked that the tiny apartment gets her out of hosting duties and dissuades long-term guests.

"No one ever stays too long," she said. "It's too small."

She said Christopher's parents stayed in the apartment while they were in China, and the two suitcases they brought was too much.

"They were sort of fumbling over each other," Zaarath said.

 With the holidays coming, the Prokops plan to hang a wreath and put up Christmas bushes -- but in the hallway.

"Maybe I'll just get Christmas-tree pajamas and wear them around," laughed Zaarath. "That'll be good."

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NYRS Receives Special Recognition Award The Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and the REBNY Board of Directors presented a Special Recognition Award to the founders of the New York Residential Specialist…... Read more >

NYRS Receives Special Recognition Award

The Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and the REBNY Board of Directors presented a Special Recognition

Award to the founders of the New York Residential Specialist (NYRS) at its 21st annual Residential Deal of the Year Awards and Charity Gala on Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Award for Outstanding Service was presented to the Founders of the NYRS designation of the residential brokerage community for their four and a half years of hard work and dedication in creating a post graduate designation course designed to attract top industry brokers to help “raise the bar” in NYC by demonstrating ethics, professionalism and leadership. The founding members are: Vickey Barron, Prudential Douglas Elliman; Jonathan Charnas, Fox Residential Group; Pauline Evans, Sotheby’s International; Steve Goldschmidt, Warburg Realty Partnership; Rena Goldstein, Halstead Property LLC; Elizabeth Henry, The Corcoran Group; Vanessa Kaufman, Sotheby’s International; Randy Mandel, Sotheby’s International; Alan Pfeifer, Prudential Douglas Elliman; Frank Russo, Halstead Property; Dorothy Sexton, Sotheby’s International; and Nancy Teague, Brown Harris Stevens Real Estate.

“It is with great pleasure and gratitude that the NYRS committee accepts this 'special award' that the Board of Directors at REBNY has recognized us with,” said Alan Pfeifer, Chairman of the NYRS Committee, and Executive Vice President and Associate Broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman. He added that, “Our committee is a diversified group from six of the top firms in the industry consisting of two managers and 10 brokers who have worked tirelessly to create a post graduate designation course designed to  raise the bar in NYC by teaching ethics, professionalism and leadership to qualified associate brokers."

The NYRS "Board Certified" designation distinguishes the graduate from his peers and is intended to provide the graduating broker with a distinct advantage when competing for exclusives and soliciting clients and customers, since the course is limited to brokers that achieve an advanced level of education, experience and established record of sales achievement.

The curriculum consists of twenty-four hours of course work broken down, in most instances to eight separate three hour modules (several of which can be applied to a student’s NYS CE requirement). The criteria for attaining NYRS Status is: being an Associate Broker; having negotiated at least 50 transactions in NYC; closing at least $50M in sales or $17M (based on 12 x monthly rent) in rental transactions in NYC; completing a minimum of five year tenure in NYC real estate; all transactional criteria must be verified by the Broker of Record or Manager of each firm upon recommendation of a candidate; having completed 24 hours of NYRS coursework within a 1.5 year period.

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The Smallest Apartment on the Market Pretty nice—for 175 square feet  535 West 110th Street 175-square-foot studio. Asking price: $195,000. Maintenance: $170 per month. Brokers: Steven O. Goldschmidt…... Read more >

The Smallest Apartment on the Market
Pretty nice—for 175 square feet

 535 West 110th Street 175-square-foot studio. Asking price: $195,000. Maintenance: $170 per month. Brokers: Steven O. Goldschmidt and Sarah Smith, Warburg Realty.

When they began converting 535 West 110th Street to a co-op in 2004, the building’s sponsors decided to gut the top floor, where the maids’ rooms used to be, and carve one- and two-bedroom apartments out of it. They built three, and had 175 square feet left over. “We didn’t know what to do with it, so we made it the best smallest apartment ever,” says listing broker Steven O. Goldschmidt of Warburg Realty. They called it the “micro-studio.” It’s ten by fourteen feet, plus a bathroom; if you were to bring in a queen-size bed, which would take up nearly 20 percent of the room, there’d be just enough space for a dresser, a chair, and a couple of end tables.

Pricing it proved difficult: How to value such an odd space in a relatively top-shelf building? Goldschmidt ended up putting it on the market at an ambitious $195,000, or more than $1,000 per square foot, and after some negotiation, he found his buyer. Aside from one other penthouse, this is the only unit on the top floor that’s sold, entering into contract for $150,000 as August began. (Two other, and needless to say larger, penthouses await. The building overall is 70% sold.) “I priced it that way figuring, Let’s give it a shot,” says Goldschmidt, who says the buyer—an auditor for a multinational corporation who needed a pied-à-terre—had been spending a fortune on hotel rooms in the city.

The place has its quirks, even beyond its size. To reach the apartment, the new owner has to exit the elevator one floor below and take a separate flight of stairs. But no matter: The roundabout approach, plus the views of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine nearby, echoes a Parisian garret in which she once stayed. Apparently, she remembers it fondly.

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THERE are few things that New Yorkers react to more quickly than the trilling of a smartphone as it signals the arrival of an e-mail message. With lightning speed they respond to e-mail messages on the…... Read more >

THERE are few things that New Yorkers react to more quickly than the trilling of a smartphone as it signals the arrival of an e-mail message.

With lightning speed they respond to e-mail messages on the street, in cabs, on buses, standing in line at Starbucks, the instant their Q train emerges from darkness onto the Manhattan Bridge.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that many real estate deals involving multimillion-dollar apartments and complicated co-op board applications are also now being done electronically.

In the current market, with fewer apartments being sold and buyers waiting to scrape the bottom of the market, many brokers say that the immediacy of e-communication often helps them keep deals alive.

However, the art of negotiation takes on a whole new meaning online and raises a host of new questions.

Can a negotiation be conducted entirely via e-mail? How much and what kind of information can be shared online? Are there times when agents and clients should put their BlackBerrys away and pick up the telephone? Are exclamation points and smiley faces unprofessional?

“It’s a different type of written negotiation that people in the industry have never been trained for,” said Diane Levine, the downtown brokerage manager for Sotheby’s International and a lawyer by training. She says she is always cautious before putting anything in writing, even in an e-mail message.

“It’s the way of the world now, so we’ve got to get used to it,” she said. “But I think agents should be careful to have a plan in mind and not just let it be about spitting everything out in the next e-mail.”

There are obvious benefits and pitfalls to bargaining by e-mail.

It is a good way to send information, to keep a record of communication and to keep everyone informed at the same time, said G. Richard Shell, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

“But it can tend to go wrong if there’s any kind of conflict or misunderstanding,” he said, “because it can’t convey any nuance or emotion.” To resolve a conflict or unravel a misunderstanding, Mr. Shell said, “you really have to pick up the phone or walk down the street and talk face to face.”

Some studies of e-mail raise warning flags that might be interesting to people who do online negotiating.

“People are less inhibited and they seem to feel that they can get away with more self-serving behavior when they send an e-mail,” said Terri R. Kurtzberg, an associate professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School. In a study that she conducted with researchers at DePaul and Lehigh Universities, she found that people are more likely to lie in an e-mail message than when they converse on paper. People don’t ask questions as well online and are less likely to reveal their true interests, she said.

But others think that there are circumstances when online bargaining makes sense. Kathleen L. McGinn, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School who has written extensively about negotiation, says real estate is one area in which e-mail negotiation may actually be better than face-to-face negotiation.

E-mail can help buyers and sellers be more forthcoming about what they really want, Dr. McGinn said. “It might be uncomfortable for me to sit across from someone and say, ‘Could you leave the sofa?’ ” she said. “But if you put it online, you’re just getting it on a list and you don’t have to worry about seeming penny-pinching or petty.”

The record that e-mail creates can also make brokers more accountable. Dr. McGinn said that when an agent relays a request from a client, there’s a risk that the message might be distorted along the way. But chances for distortion disappear if every request sent by e-mail is copied to every other party involved in the deal.

Dr. McGinn said that e-mail messages should be taken seriously and not written on the fly. “They should be drafted like formal letters and not like an e-mail to your friend when you want to know if they’re ready for dinner,” she said.

To avoid “conflict spirals,” where tiny irritations quickly become irreparable disagreements, she advised against writing in all capital letters and multiple exclamation points and against making flip comments like, “You call that a counteroffer?”

Steve Goldschmidt, a senior vice president at Warburg Realty, recently handled a deal in which he sometimes exchanged 20 to 30 e-mail messages a day with his client, but he said: “I’m old school — I still like to hear the other broker’s voice to get a gauge of where the deal is. There’s no substitute for the sound of a voice.”

Mr. Goldschmidt said that some agents hide behind e-mail. “I’ve seen a lot more brokers make ridiculously low offers by e-mail because they’re not afraid to hear the laughter or the scorn on the other side,” he said. “People are more likely to act irrationally or get false courage when they don’t have to talk to the other person.”

Melanie L. Swanson, an agent at Century 21 NY Metro, said that after an e-mail miscommunication cost her a deal, she vowed never to make any major move in a negotiation before first talking to the client. She said she recently misread a client’s e-mail and submitted a bid on an apartment that was $5,000 more than the client’s previous bid, only to learn that the client actually wanted to reduce the original bid by $5,000.

“The seller’s broker had asked for a final offer and I had gotten my buyer’s e-mail at night and the font on my BlackBerry was too small for the lighting situation,” she said. “By the time I realized it and told the other broker it was a gross error on my part, the broker said they wouldn’t entertain the bid and we should just move on.”

Ms. Swanson said that speaking to a client before going into a negotiation was now “critical for me to understand the emotional involvement of my customer, and an e-mail can be misinterpreted very easily.”

Brokers and their clients say that one of the biggest advantages to e-mail negotiation is that information can be shared quickly and with everyone involved.

David R. Levine and his wife, Melanie, are in contract to sell their one-bedroom co-op in Brooklyn Heights, and he said that during the negotiation, they were in constant contact with their broker, Mr. Goldschmidt of Warburg.

“In this market, especially as a seller, our nerves were on edge and e-mail meant that we could get real-time updates from Steve,” he said. He recalled one encouraging message from an open house informing them that a young couple were discussing how to place their furniture in the space.

Once an offer was made, Mr. Levine said, he received copies of all the communication that Mr. Goldschmidt had with Mr. Levine’s lawyer, the buyer’s broker and the buyer’s lawyer. “I could see the progression in the sale because we could read everybody’s e-mail,” Mr. Levine said. “It made us feel more in the loop.”

The ability to reach all parties by e-mail makes it particularly well suited for sales in new developments. Developers would have been loath to back down on price a year ago, but the current market has made negotiated reductions almost a norm. Sidney Whelan, the director of sales at the Kalahari, a condo on West 116th Street in Harlem, said he had negotiated a sale via e-mail because he was on vacation in Spain and after he returned the buyer was out of town on business.

And because the Kalahari is a project with four principals, reaching all of them via e-mail was essential to reaching a price. “You can’t organize a conference call every time there’s a counteroffer,” Mr. Whelan said. Instead, he would pull together data on previous sales in the building and then wait for the principals’ joint decision. “Whenever there are multiple decision makers,” he said, “e-mail is indispensable.”

One of the keys to a successful online negotiation is to make sure agents and clients have met to establish a relationship.

“You have to first meet people face to face, so you can see where they’re at, know their body language and how they react to different things,” said Marcia Altman, an agent with Brown Harris Stevens in the Hamptons. Many of her deals wind up being negotiated chiefly online since most of her buyers don’t live nearby and are looking for second homes. “The emotional part is seeing and choosing the property,” she said. “The rest is just business, and there’s no reason why it can’t be done with e-mail.”

Margery Feldberg, a retired finance executive, hired Andrea Daniels, a senior managing director at Warburg Realty, to sell a 2,000-square-foot apartment on the Upper West Side and then to buy a 4,700-square-foot co-op. Ms. Feldberg said that having looked at 30 different properties with Ms. Daniels, she had a comfort level that made it easy for them to handle both transactions almost entirely by e-mail.

“Having seen so many properties together was huge,” Ms. Feldberg said.

Ms. Daniels disagrees with those who say that e-mail lacks nuance and emotion. “You can hear a terse reply or pensive reply in an e-mail,” she said. “And if you read any of Margery’s e-mails, you would see how expressive a person can be.”

The actual buying and selling of the apartments went remarkably smoothly via e-mail because both deals were straightforward, Ms. Daniels added.

Mr. Levine, the Brooklyn Heights owner, said he and his agent, Mr. Goldschmidt, used e-mail to handle basic questions like whether the Levines planned to leave the flat-screen television and the patio furniture. But he vividly recalls receiving a telephone call from Mr. Goldschmidt to announce the offer that eventually turned into a signed contract.

“He called to congratulate us and tell us we had a buyer, and then we talked about what we should do — accept the bid or counter,” he said. “I think it was very important that we actually had a conversation about the strategy.”

Amelia S. Gewirtz, an executive vice president at Halstead Property, is also of the opinion that at crucial junctures, a phone call is a good idea.

In a recent three-way bidding war over a 1,300-square-foot apartment downtown, she said that she and her partner, Andrew Phillips, organized a conference call with the sellers just before they told the three potential buyers that they would be setting a deadline for a final and best offer. “We wanted to do a final run-through of how it was going to work, just to make sure nothing got lost,” Ms. Gewirtz said.

She added that in the last year she had noticed more and more of her communication migrating toward her BlackBerry and away from her phone. “The phone is really more about if you think somebody needs a hug, if there’s a warmth missing in that moment,” she said, “because e-mail is all about business.”

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NYP HOMES House of the Week June 26, 2008 East Village $749,000 Bedrooms: 1 Bathrooms: 1 Square feet: 650 Maintenance: $550 -- Six hundred square feet is a decent amount of space for one person in this…... Read more >

NYP HOMES
House of the Week
June 26, 2008

East Village
$749,000
Bedrooms: 1 Bathrooms: 1 Square feet: 650 Maintenance: $550 -- Six hundred square feet is a decent amount of space for one person in this 'hood, and in this case, we're talking about the outdoor space that comes with the 650 square feet of interior space in a renovated co-op on East Seventh Street. The apartment includes the "peace and serenity" of a private garden accessed through the bedroom. And Tompkins Square Park, a much larger public green space, is a short stroll away.

Agents: Steve Goldschmidt, James Hunter and Sarah Smith, Warburg Realty Partnership, (212) 300-1830, (212) 327-9615 and (212) 300-1832.

 

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Feature Story - January 2006 Residential Market Despite Talk of a Bust, Development Remains Active by Debra Wood From Connecticut through New York City and down to the Jersey shore, multifamily residential…... Read more >

Feature Story - January 2006
Residential Market

Despite Talk of a Bust, Development Remains Active

by Debra Wood

From Connecticut through New York City and down to the Jersey shore, multifamily residential development remains active and competitive, even if the sector shows signs of cooling from its recent red -hot pace.

"We still see the market as extremely strong," said Stuart Saft, an attorney who represents developers and chairs the real estate department at Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz of New York. "After the scare stories [on the real estate bust] in the newspapers, people came to realize that's really a national story and has less to do with the tristate area, where there is a tremendous demand for housing."

That demand is particularly strong for condominiums and townhouses. Continued low interest rates, the advantage of mortgage interest tax deductions, steady property appreciation, and a stagnant stock market have all contributed to a preference in the marketplace to own rather than rent.

Most observers agreed that rental multifamily housing, while offering pockets of development opportunity around the region, clearly trails for-sale units in terms of economic attractiveness.

 
"In New York City over the last 30 years, prices of co-ops and condominiums have increased 8 percent per year," Saft said. "People need a place to live, and it's a great investment."

Saft added that most New York-area buyers intend to live in the units, unlike the situation in Florida where many purchasers are speculators who plan to flip their properties to others.

Having more buyers who intend to occupy the units translates into a more secure presale phase for developers because the purchasers are more likely to close even in a soft market, said Seth Weinstein, principal with Hannah Real Estate Investors of Stamford, Conn.

Spreading the Wealth in New York

Various New York City neighborhoods have undergone residential revitalizations in recent years, and the trend appears to be continuing, said Steve Goldschmidt, managing director of New York-based Warburg Marketing Group. The firm's realty arm brokers properties throughout the boroughs, including a spate of condominium renovations and new construction in resurgent Harlem.

"There is still demand for housing in the city that outpaces the available supply, and the market is finding new locations to build and develop," Goldschmidt said. "Unless developers start becoming unrealistic in their pricing, properties will continue to move."

As the market downshifts from its frantic pace of recent years, developers must design projects that meet specific buyer desires and wallet sizes, said Jeffrey Levine, president of New York-based Levine Builders and its development affiliate, Douglaston Development.

"The buyers' frenzy has left, and the ordinary course-of-business market, with people looking for the right product at the right price, is prevalent," he added.

The company has projects in the works targeted at different markets. One is a 337-unit condominium building in West Chelsea, which will offer smaller, affordable units. Another is 325 Fifth Avenue, a high-end, 50-story, 250-unit condominium tower diagonally across the street from the Empire State Building that is scheduled for completion this fall.

Levine said the pull for more housing spans the five boroughs. Douglaston will break ground this spring on the Edge, a 1.5-million-sq.-ft. high- and mid-rise condominium project in Williamsburg on the Brooklyn waterfront.

In Queens, meanwhile, CE Flushing LLC of New York, an affiliate of Muss Development, has begun extensive remediation of a 14-acre former industrial site in downtown Flushing. The site, once used by Consolidated Edison, a major New York power utility, will become a $600 million, 3.2-million-sq.-ft., residential and retail complex with 1,000 condominiums.

"With the market becoming much stronger in Flushing, it's well worth our while to take an underutilized site and turn it into something productive and attractive," said Jim Jarosik, project manager for Muss.

Development Steadies in New Jersey

Residential development appears to be returning to a more reasonable pace in New Jersey as well. Developers are wrapping up new projects throughout the state, including several Class-A waterfront condominiums, said José Cruz, senior director of Cushman & Wakefield of New Jersey, a broker.

He said developers would likely be taking an inventory this winter.

"There's not the frenzy there was 18 months ago, where people tried to outbid everybody to get product," he added. "If it starts not to make sense within the projected time period, [developers] may not stretch."

There already are several large projects under development in New Jersey that will come online in phases over the next few years. Westminster Communities of Florham Park, N.J., is building the 50-unit Cranford Crossing in downtown Cranford, near a New Jersey Transit train station. It also is developing the Landings at Harborside, a 2,300-unit waterfront community with 150,000 sq. ft. of retail space on the site of a former industrial complex in Perth Amboy, N.J.

David Minno, a principal with Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners of Lambertville, N.J., said such projects have come about thanks in part to a state growth management plan that encourages redevelopment within cities and towns, where infrastructure is already in place, in a bid to decrease suburban sprawl.

"There's adaptive reuse of sites," Minno said. "We're seeing a lot of industrial or commercial sites being converted to residential. And there's a real trend to develop the land adjacent to public transit stations, especially New Jersey Transit. Anything near a train station takes on a great deal of value now."

Solid Pockets of Growth in Connecticut

"There may be some softening in some less vibrant areas [of Connecticut], but urban center markets are solid," Hannah's Weinstein said. "The one thing that is helping is there is not an enormous amount of supply."

Hannah and Stillwater Investment Management of Greenwich, Conn., are developing Adams Mill River House, a 52-unit condominium project in Stamford, and Hannah has two other condominium projects wrapping up. But while today's market seems strong, Weinstein said he is taking a cautious approach to new starts - condominiums that would come on the market two to three years from now. He said he is not aggressively pursuing projects, citing several factors dampening his enthusiasm - a possible glut of new units, uncertain interest rates, and inflationary pressures.

"I'm not at red; I'm at yellow," Weinstein said. "There's an enormous amount of money-chasing deals, and that can fuel an oversupply."

Overall, the specter of rising interest rates and higher energy prices leave the residential market's near future uncertain across the region. But with most properties in the area at least maintaining their value, the general consensus in the development community is cautiously bullish.

"I see an intelligent, healthy market, but I don't foresee a period of appreciation similar to that which we saw with the falling stock market and falling interest rates," Douglaston Development's Levine said. "The market is not bulletproof. You have to recognize who your buyers are and what they want."
 
 

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Sale of Big Manhattan Complex Stirs Buzz By DEEPTI HAJELA Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press NEW YORK — The possible sale of an 80-acre Manhattan apartment complex has set the real…... Read more >

Sale of Big Manhattan Complex Stirs Buzz
By DEEPTI HAJELA Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The possible sale of an 80-acre Manhattan apartment complex has set the real estate world abuzz, with a potential multibillion dollar price tag and published reports listing some of the biggest names in real estate as possible buyers.

The sale of the Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village complex on Manhattan's East Side "is a very high-profile transaction," said Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of the real estate appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel. "The scope of the project is not something we've seen before."

The property's owner, insurance company MetLife Inc., had announced in July that it was evaluating whether to sell the development, which contains more than 11,200 units spanning nearly 27 square blocks.

So far, the response to the announcement has been positive, Metlife spokesman John Calagna told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"We've got a lot of informal interest," he said. "We've been very pleased with what we've been hearing."

Richard Lefrak, chairman of The LeFrak Organization, a well-established player in the New York's real estate world, confirmed that his company was interested in possibly bidding on the property.

He called it "unreproduceable" and said he had also been approached by several people interested in forming partnerships in order to bid on it.

Other companies that have expressed interest include The Related Cos., Tishman Speyer, Vornado Realty Trust and The Durst Organization, according to a Wednesday report in The New York Times. Tishman, Vornado and Durst declined to comment to the AP; officials from Related were not available.

MetLife has hired brokerage firm CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. to market the properties, and official papers for formal bids will be released next week, Calagna said. The company will evaluate any offers over the next few months before making a final decision. If no bid meets MetLife's price, then it won't sell the property, he said.

While Calagna declined to name that price, the Times put it at $5 billion.

That's not an irrational number, said Jimmy Kuhn, president of Newmark Knight Frank, a real estate brokerage company. With more than 11,000 units, the price per unit is less than $500,000, below the average market price for a Manhattan apartment.

But the property is complicated since the vast majority of units in the complex are rent-stabilized, meaning tenants pay below market value to live in them. Rent-stabilized units can be converted to market-value units over time, but not overnight.

Those apartments covered by the rent-stabilization law would continue to be stabilized even after a sale, said Peter Moses, spokesman for the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

"It's the apartment that's regulated, not the owner," he said. "The owner is irrelevant."

Anyone interested in buying the property would have to be willing to hold on to it for a while and let apartments come up to market rate, said Steve Goldschmidt, managing director at Warburg Realty, a Manhattan brokerage firm.

"It's a long-term project," he said.

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Sale of Big Manhattan Complex Stirs Buzz By DEEPTI HAJELA Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press NEW YORK — The possible sale of an 80-acre Manhattan apartment complex has set the real…... Read more >

Sale of Big Manhattan Complex Stirs Buzz

By DEEPTI HAJELA Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The possible sale of an 80-acre Manhattan apartment complex has set the real estate world abuzz, with a potential multibillion dollar price tag and published reports listing some of the biggest names in real estate as possible buyers.

ADVERTISEMENT

The sale of the Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village complex on Manhattan's East Side "is a very high-profile transaction," said Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of the real estate appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel. "The scope of the project is not something we've seen before."

The property's owner, insurance company MetLife Inc., had announced in July that it was evaluating whether to sell the development, which contains more than 11,200 units spanning nearly 27 square blocks.

So far, the response to the announcement has been positive, Metlife spokesman John Calagna told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"We've got a lot of informal interest," he said. "We've been very pleased with what we've been hearing."

Richard Lefrak, chairman of The LeFrak Organization, a well-established player in the New York's real estate world, confirmed that his company was interested in possibly bidding on the property.

He called it "unreproduceable" and said he had also been approached by several people interested in forming partnerships in order to bid on it.

Other companies that have expressed interest include The Related Cos., Tishman Speyer, Vornado Realty Trust and The Durst Organization, according to a Wednesday report in The New York Times. Tishman, Vornado and Durst declined to comment to the AP; officials from Related were not available.

MetLife has hired brokerage firm CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. to market the properties, and official papers for formal bids will be released next week, Calagna said. The company will evaluate any offers over the next few months before making a final decision. If no bid meets MetLife's price, then it won't sell the property, he said.

While Calagna declined to name that price, the Times put it at $5 billion.

That's not an irrational number, said Jimmy Kuhn, president of Newmark Knight Frank, a real estate brokerage company. With more than 11,000 units, the price per unit is less than $500,000, below the average market price for a Manhattan apartment.

But the property is complicated since the vast majority of units in the complex are rent-stabilized, meaning tenants pay below market value to live in them. Rent-stabilized units can be converted to market-value units over time, but not overnight.

Those apartments covered by the rent-stabilization law would continue to be stabilized even after a sale, said Peter Moses, spokesman for the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

"It's the apartment that's regulated, not the owner," he said. "The owner is irrelevant."

Anyone interested in buying the property would have to be willing to hold on to it for a while and let apartments come up to market rate, said Steve Goldschmidt, managing director at Warburg Realty, a Manhattan brokerage firm.

"It's a long-term project," he said.

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BUZZ BUILDS OVER POSSIBLE SALE OF 80-ACRE NYC APARTMENT COMPLEX By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer: STATE AND REGIONAL August 30, 2006 The possible sale of an 80-acre apartment complex in a prime…... Read more >

BUZZ BUILDS OVER POSSIBLE SALE OF 80-ACRE
NYC APARTMENT COMPLEX

By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer: STATE AND REGIONAL
August 30, 2006

The possible sale of an 80-acre apartment complex in a prime location has set the real estate world abuzz, with a published report suggesting big-name bidders could push the price to several billion dollars.

The sale of the Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village complex on Manhattan's East Side "is a very high-profile transaction," said Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of the real estate appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel.

"The scope of the project is not something we've seen before," he said Wednesday.

The owner, insurance company MetLife Inc., announced in July it was evaluating whether it wanted to sell the property, which contains more than 11,200 units extending from 14th Street to 23rd Street from First Avenue to Avenue C and the FDR Drive.

That announcement has been met with a very positive response, Metlife spokesman John Calagna said.

"We've got a lot of informal interest," he said. "We've been very pleased with what we've been hearing."

MetLife has hired the CB Richard Ellis firm to market the property, and official papers for formal bids will be released next week, Calagna said. The company will evaluate any offers it receives over the next few months before making a decision; if no bid meets MetLife's price, there won't be a sale, he said.

Calagna declined to say what that price was, but The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the goal was $5 billion.

That's not an irrational number, said Jimmy Kuhn, president of Newmark Knight Frank, a real estate brokerage. With more than 11,000 units, that makes the price per unit less than $500,000, hardly an unheard-of price for a Manhattan apartment.

But it's a complicated piece of property. The vast majority of units in the complex, built in the late 1940s as housing for returning war veterans, are rent stabilized, meaning the tenants pay below market value. Rent-stabilized units can be converted to market-value units, but it wouldn't happen overnight, as the rent is gradually increased by regulators.

Those apartments that are covered by the rent-stabilization law would continue to be even after a sale, said Peter Moses, spokesman for the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

"It's the apartment that's regulated, not the owner," he said. "The owner is irrelevant."

Anyone interested in buying the property and profiting from it would have to be willing to hold on to it for a while and let apartments come up to market rate, said Steve Goldschmidt, managing director at Warburg Realty, a Manhattan brokerage firm.

"It's a long-term project," he said.

But that probably won't keep bidders away. The firms bidding on the property would most likely be well-established firms with some familiarity with large complexes, Kuhn said.

"I think that this will be a deal for someone who has run large apartment complexes before, who has dealt in the New York City regulatory environment, who also has deep pockets," he said.

Richard Lefrak, chairman of the Lefrak Organization, a well-established player in the city's real estate market, confirmed that his company was interested in the property and would be evaluating it with the intent to make a bid.

He called the property "unreproduceable" and said he had been approached by several parties looking to create consortiums to buy it.

According to the Times, other companies that have expressed interest include the Related Cos., Tishman Speyer, Vornado and Durst. Tishman, Vornado and Durst declined to comment to The Associated Press; officials from the Related Companies were not available to comment.

The sale of the complex would be a sign of "an era coming to an end," said Kuhn, who grew up there.

"This was the last bastion of middle-class housing in Manhattan," he said.

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September 26, 2004 3-Bedrooms Soar as New York Nests By ANNA BAHNEY   It was as frenzied as a Manolo Blahnik sample sale. Michele Kleier, a broker at Gumley Haft Kleier, put the prewar, three-bedroom…... Read more >

September 26, 2004

3-Bedrooms Soar as
New York Nests

By ANNA BAHNEY
 
It was as frenzied as a Manolo Blahnik sample sale. Michele Kleier, a broker at Gumley Haft Kleier, put the prewar, three-bedroom apartment on the market two weeks ago, then stood back and watched the hordes that descended for her first and only open house. "We must have had 100 people in two hours," she said. The seven-room co-op at 88th Street and Madison Avenue went into contract above the $3.45 million asking price in a four-way bidding war.

These days the most prized apartment may be the one that offers three bedrooms. Buyers, typically families needing space for children or couples seeking space for offices, are finding that there is very little available.

The extra bedroom doesn't just add a bit to the price. To get a prewar three-bedroom, buyers have to spend an additional $700,000 to $1 million above the cost of a two-bedroom.

Three-bedroom apartments are the fastest growing share of the market, according to a study by the residential brokerage firm Brown Harris Stevens. Of 5,489 sales during the first eight months of this year, 638 were three-bedrooms, increasing the market percentage of three-bedroom sales to 12 percent from 9 percent for the same period last year.

On the East Side, the median price of a three-bedroom apartment rose to $2 million from $1.3 million. (If the price tags on Manolos increased by that much there would be riots by wage-earning fashionistas.) On the West Side the median price grew to $1.75 million from $1.59 million, while the median price downtown grew to $1.55 million from $1.47 million.

Gregory J. Heym, the chief economist at Brown Harris Stevens, who conducted the study, suggested that the surge is driven by families opting to raise children in the city and young people looking to trade up.

Not all three-bedrooms are created equal. "When you get into larger apartments, there is a lot of difference in size and design," Mr. Heym said, with square footage ranging from 900 to many thousands. Prices range from $299,000 in Harlem to $12 million and beyond on the Upper East Side. But no matter where they are, he said, "the demand is strong and they tend to hold their value."

Classic seven-room prewar apartments average $2 million to $4 million; a three-bedroom with two maid's rooms, another typical configuration, is at least $4 million to $6 million, according to Deanna Kory, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group who specializes in large apartments on the Upper East and West Sides. Ms. Kory said that, in general, the larger the room count, the larger the rooms. "If you look at a six-, seven- and eight-room apartment, the seven and eight are going to have larger-scaled rooms," she said. "And the price goes up exponentially."

Demand for affordable three-bedroom apartments is at least as intense. Next week, the Developers Group will market a new building in Washington Heights, the Bennett Condominium at 736 West 187th Street, of which 27 of the 56 apartments will be three-bedroom units starting in the mid-$500,000 range.

"We are already getting an enormous amount of phone calls about them," said Highlyann Krasnow, the executive vice president of sales for the Developers Group.

Many good values can be found in Washington Heights and neighboring Inwood. "I think that's where the growth market is, in that area," said Hall F. Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens. "It is more affordable for young families whose means might be more limited. There are direct subway lines and buses. Amenities are catching up. If you're priced out of one area, you just keep going until you can afford it."

Some couples who look for apartments before starting a family, so they won't have to move continually, find the prices rise faster than they can make decisions.

Patricia A. Zapf, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and her husband, Robert Parfitt, a business consultant, now rent a three-bedroom on the Upper West Side.

Ms. Zapf said that they started looking at two-bedroom apartments last year and that most of the units were going for $660,000 or more. "I can't even think about paying that much," she said. But in a year, she said, "they went up to $880,000." That made them realize they had to act fast.

They have been actively looking for and bidding on three-bedrooms for the past six months. But they have had to branch out to other neighborhoods, and they're now looking in Harlem.

Currently there is only one three-bedroom apartment on the market in their price range of $450,000 to $500,000 in Harlem, according to Ms. Zapf. But the apartment, with a $475,000 asking price, is in an income-controlled building in which buyers cannot make more than $160,000 a year. (The couple exceeds that limit by $5,000).

For some intrepid buyers, the do-it-yourself three-bedroom is the most effective way to get a spacious apartment. Steve Goldschmidt, an associate broker with Warburg Realty, sold five units in a co-op conversion building in Morningside Heights at 535 West 110th Street in a matter of months. Several of them were going in pairs at $650 to $800 a square foot for raw space to buyers who planned to combine them. For one of the larger combinations that would have 2,300 square feet, the price tag was about $1.5 million, before renovations.

"This is not buying mint condition," Mr. Goldschmidt said. "These are people who are independent business people who don't show the traditional co-op package. Here they can take two whole apartments and make it their own."

Downtown, Mr. Goldschmidt said, three-bedroom apartments in residential areas like TriBeCa are swallowed whole as soon as they hit the market.

Some buyers prefer TriBeCa because they don't like the prewar style. "You know the apartment in `Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House'?" asked Julie Spigelman, referring to the 1948 movie starring Cary Grant. "That's what uptown apartments look like to me. They are so boxy."

Mrs. Spigelman and her husband, Sam, a urologist, who are from Los Angeles, recently bought a three-bedroom apartment in TriBeCa. They had planned to sell their house in Los Angeles, buy a smaller one nearby and get an apartment in downtown New York at some point in the next two years. But they moved faster when they discovered how quickly apartments were going and how much prices were rising.

Their daughters, 17 and 20, are in musical theater and were planning to move to the city. The Spigelmans wanted to have space for their children to stay and something they could use as a second home in retirement. They thought a one- or two-bedroom might work. While Mrs. Spigelman and her older daughter were in New York to see some plays last March, Mr. Spigelman called from California to suggest they check out a one-bedroom he had found online.

"I loved the building, I loved the area," Mrs. Spigelman said of the condo building on Nassau Street overlooking City Hall Park. She called her husband from the apartment and he asked her if she could see them living there in 20 years. "I said not even if we were newlyweds."

"I'd forgotten how small an apartment in New York can be," she said. "I'm here in my house 3,000 miles away looking at them online. One bedroom, two bedroom seems pretty doable. But when you stand in it and say `I'm going to cram everything I own in this place, my husband, and have space for children?' "

The listing agent, Lisa Wong of Douglas Elliman, suggested Mrs. Spigelman look at another apartment in the building, a three-bedroom on a higher floor.

"I walked in and looked out at the Empire State Building, called him from the doorway and said, `Put the house on the market, we can live here.' "

In the time it took to get the check sent overnight from California for the apartment, the only other three-bedroom unit in the building went into contract, which made Mrs. Spigelman very nervous. But this summer, they closed on the apartment.

New developments like the Time Warner Center and the Trump buildings are adding three-bedroom apartments that are less family oriented, and are attracting buyers without children who simply want the space.

Michael Shvo, an agent with Douglas Elliman who also works as a consultant to developers, said some buyers in the Time Warner building have converted 2,400-square-foot apartments into one-bedroom units. "They want the space, but not all those rooms," he said.

So why not just build them as one-bedrooms in the first place?

"As a developer," he said, "it doesn't matter how many square feet, if you can put in three bedrooms you're always going to get more money for it than if there is only two. As conscious as people are about price per square foot, they are also conscious of price per bedroom."

His current developments, including a building at West Broadway and Franklin Street that will have 2,600-square-foot three-bedroom units starting at $4 million, are being designed with modular floor plans. "If people want to knock a wall down, they can," he said. "If they want to combine it with the apartment next door, they can."

Three-bedroom apartments in new developments in Brooklyn are also selling quickly, in certain neighborhoods. Two units from the Developers Group in Park Slope at 103 St. Marks Place — each with three bedrooms, three and a half baths and more than 2,400 square feet — were priced at $890,000 and $980,000 and sold in two weeks.

But it's a different story in Williamsburg. At another building handled by the firm, the 226 South Second Street Condos, the three-bedroom triplexes priced at $900,000 and $940,000 took longer to sell.

"In Williamsburg our best seller is a two-bedroom, not a three-bedroom," Ms. Krasnow said. "A lot of younger people are going there to get more bang for their buck. Once the size gets big, then the purchase price gets too high."

With prices rising so quickly, those who want larger apartments feel increasing pressure to move before prices rise further.

"Things that we were looking at that were $700,000 are now $1 million, $1.2 million," said Lucy Appert, a teacher at New York University, who with her husband, Edward, has been flirting with buying a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side for the last five years. "We could never tell anyone in North Carolina, where we're from, that we're looking at million-dollar apartments."

With both of their families in the furniture business in North Carolina, the couple had so much furniture crowding their two-bedroom Upper East Side apartment that they had to rent storage spaces.

"We are looking for some mental space and then public space — a living room, a dining room, then room for a family in the future," said Mr. Appert, a senior manager at Deloitte Touche Tohma.

They calculate compromises (should they look at two bedrooms, move out of the Upper East Side, jettison furniture?) even as they are conscious of the clock ticking on current prices.

"We have that eternal optimism," Mr. Appert said, "and hope that someday we can get a bigger space."

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The New York Times February 19, 2004 HERE, OWNERS FETCH THEIR DOG'S PAPERS By Nadine Brozan   Pet owners living at the Ruppert Yorkville Towers Condominium…... Read more >

The New York Times
February 19, 2004

HERE, OWNERS FETCH THEIR
DOG'S PAPERS

By Nadine Brozan
 
Pet owners living at the Ruppert Yorkville Towers Condominium say their buildings have become a dog's police state. Here, they say, just look at some of the new rules:

Dogs will be required to wear special tags on their collars or leashes identifying their owners and apartment numbers.

Owners will be charged a $100 fee and must register their dogs by Feb. 27, submitting proof that they have been spayed and neutered and given the inoculations for rabies and other conditions.

No visiting dogs are allowed.

Owners are responsible for paying for whatever damage their animals cause, and preventing nuisance behavior defined in part as "making noise continuously and/or incessantly for a period of 10 minutes or intermittently for one hour or more.''

Violations will be subject to fines - $100 for the first infraction, $250 for the second, $500 for the third and permanent removal of the pet within 30 days for further breaches.

Dr. Judith Dattaro, a physician who lives there, was incensed. "I am being told that I can't do what I have always done: walk peacefully through the lobby without the prospect of someone stopping me and checking my pet's credentials,'' she said.

Yes, it is another confrontation in the pet wars, those impassioned fights that put owners against condo or co-op boards or landlords. This time, the battleground is the Ruppert Yorkville Towers, four brick towers in two buildings stretching from 90th to 92nd Streets between Second and Third Avenue in Manhattan. Until last January, the towers were under the umbrella of the Mitchell-Lama moderate income housing program.

There were, everyone agrees, hundreds of dogs living at the complex when the buildings converted under a noneviction condo plan. The offering plan specified that dogs already on the premises could remain, but their owners would be barred from replacing them without management's consent.

Now R Y Management, with the backing of the condo board, has sought to add teeth to that measure by enacting a stringent new set of limits. Residents received letters this month on the policy. Like a match to a tinderbox, the reaction was instantaneous.

Condo owners and renters retained Maddy Tarnofsky, a lawyer who specializes in pet issues. They held a meeting in a resident's apartment on Feb. 10 that spilled out into the hall. At an open condo board meeting two nights later, the first since the conversion, discussion of the matter became so heated that the topic was relegated to the end of the evening to not distract from more subdued considerations of tax abatements and laundry room renovations.

As Henry Kallan, president of the board, sees it, the policy was written to improve the ambience of the buildings, which have 1,257 apartments, 825 of them condos.

"The general idea is that there are way too many dogs in the building and we were trying to create a policy where everyone can hold on to their dogs, but we have to make sure that dogs behave so they don't diminish the quality of life for everyone in the building,'' he said in a telephone interview. "There is nothing wrong with dogs. The problem is people.''

Howard Schechter, the lawyer for the board, said that "for the small minority of people who feel they can't abide by the civilities that good neighborliness requires, the fines give the board a method to get their attention and require compliance short of going to court.''

To dog partisans in the buildings, the policy smacks of a dictatorship.

"They asked us to sign and comply with rules that, in my opinion, violate our civil rights, override what could be legally enforceable by law and threaten fines that could put someone in financial hardship or cause them to lose their pet,'' said Jane Colton, a former flight attendant and a 27-year renter in Ruppert Yorkville, who has two elderly Dalmatians and a sick bird.

No one disputes that there is a problem: a distinct aroma of urine at the complex that is especially noticeable in the summer. In part, it is believed to be trapped by the scaffolding that has been in place for months as renovations are done and in part, residents say, by inadequate cleaning.

At the board meeting, Mr. Kallan said there would be a referendum on the policy but did not say when.

In fact, the board has already rescinded one provision in the new policy, that owners may not walk their dogs on East 91st Street, which, although it is a public thoroughfare, is closed to traffic.

But this has done little to quell the controversy. Ms. Tarnofsky is telling people that, should they be apprehended for not having the tags on their pets, to "be courteous but resistant and carry identification and a cellphone when you go out."

To Bruce Steibel, who breeds his yellow Labrador retriever, the regulation that dogs be spayed or neutered is unthinkable. "He is a show dog," Mr. Steibel said. "How can they arbitrarily tell me to neuter him? I won't do that."

Allison Rolontz, who is divorced, said the policy would cause her multiple hardships. "I have two small Malteses who live with my husband, but I have visitation rights every other weekend," she said. "Now they won't be able to visit me."

Ms. Rolontz also has a Rottweiler that is walked by a dog walker. "She sometimes brings other dogs with her and would not be able to enter the building with them," Ms. Rolontz said. "So my dog would not be able to play with his friends."

Some people are concerned about the effects on the value of their apartments, not an unreasonable concern, said Steven Goldschmidt, an associate broker with Warburg Realty Partnership.

"I have had open houses at which some people leave when they realize there can be no pets," he said.

Indeed, Michael Renz, a cat owner who was at the board meeting the other evening, said: "The only reason I moved here was because I was told it was dog friendly, and I have friends with dogs here. I don't have a dog now, but I intend to get one when I retire a year from now."

Copyright 2004  The New York Times Company

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