Agent Detail

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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