Weekly Roundup: Rates bottom, Freddie hopeful

Happy holidays!  Posts will resume on Jan. 3.  Until then and always, you can keep current via Twitter or Facebook.

Apartments listed for more than $4 million are flying off the — you know what

Cost of storage space enters the stratosphere

Here’s how to find a quiet apartment

Some bars aren’t made for drinking

Selling his condo for twice the previous record, Weill does very well

Until now, first-time foreclosures in Manhattan never equaled Queens

Data show that Manhattan sales volume tracks the S&P 500

To purchase home priced at the median and live here, a buyer needs $130,000 in annual income

Two into one must go. . . for $12 million

Unemployment rate exceeds the nation’s

Late philanthropist’s Westchester estate finally finds a buyer at deeply discounted price

Low-sodium cooking isn’t

A Web site promises me that I can buy your trust to become your real estate broker for just $399

Chart via Verified Professional

Thank heaven for an outfit called Verified Professionals.

Consumers can go to its Web site to find a real estate agent who is experienced, ethical and, yes, professional.  In case you don’t know, the Web site states (precisely as written) what you and others seek:

Honesty, Trustworthiness & a great Reputation. These are EXACTLY the things we Verify. Win more business!

And they promise me the world:

Less than 1% of Agents are VPA™s. Get Verified and gain INSTANT Differentiation. Your VPA™ status is the perfect centerpiece of your personal branding strategy.

How very, very

There’s no need to fret waiting for new post

When you’ve already read my latest post and the hours seems to drag, you don’t have to wait for a real estate fix from me.

Thank goodness!

Not only can you stay current with other of my sources, but you’ll find a variety of information elsewhere that may never appear here.

For example, you may want to consider following me on Twitter or checking out my Facebook page, each of which provides a wide spectrum of real estate news focused on New York City.

And if you’re especially interested in news affecting just the Upper West Side, have a look at Facebook; there’s my continuously updated site about the UWS too.

Like many of my readers, you may be thinking about selling or buying property.  If you’re a buyer, you can search the listings of virtually all brokers here.  If you’re seller, you’ll be able to check the competition there as well.

I hope you’ll be keeping in touch.

Tomorrow: Trust for a price (holidays hiatus starts Monday)

To take your own bite out of the Big Apple, start your search for a new home here.

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Malcolm Carter
Licensed Associate Real Estate Broker
Senior Vice President
Charles Rutenberg Realty
127 E. 56th Street
New York, NY 10022

M: 347-886-0248
F: 347-438-3201

Malcolm@ServiceYouCanTrust.com
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Queens auction nets $4.4 million in winning bids

The winning bid for this house on 176th St. In Jamaica went $92,000 over the minimum of $158,000.

With six properties withdrawn prior to the sale, an estate auction conducted today by Queens Public Administrator Lois Rosenblatt produced income for the city totaling $4.405 million.

That sum was $797,000 greater than the minimums for all the remaining apartments and houses, exceeding the total by 22 percent.

The highest bid was for a Brooklyn multifamily building, which had a $604,000 minimum and which went down for

Out and About: East Harlem offers housing value

One of the smaller kitchens in the new East Harlem buildings that I visited.  Most are both attractive and serviceable.

Call it East Harlem, Spanish Harlem, SpaHa or El Barrio.

What ever you call it, the neighborhood’s boundaries lie between First and Fifth avenues and East 96th to East 125th streets in northeast Manhattan.

It is enjoying a raft of new developments, the thrum of gentrification and the throb of racial and economic diversity that is at least as robust as some other popular parts of Manhattan.

Just a couple or few blocks from the five buildings that I visited on a brokers’ tour recently are the new Costco, Target and other useful stores as well as an upscale mom-and-pop bakery called Savoy.  Yet old-time restaurants such as Rao’s are nearby as well, along with casual restaurants where a cafe con leche makes for a delightful afternoon pick-me-up.

There is plenty of bus transportation, but perhaps the area’s biggest drawback is the distance from many of the buildings from the Lexington Avenue subway line.

That’s one of the most obvious tradeoffs for living in East Harlem, the other being

Weekly Roundup: Our cost of living 124% higher than average, buyers tending to wait and see

Co-op revokes woman’s purchase for $33,000 of $400,000 apartment, so she sues

Rental market avoids usual autumnal slump

Free map site is cool way to locate all retail businesses

Preferences for apartment size haven’t changed much over three years

Most expensive rental hits market at $165,000. . . a month

Cost of living in Manhattan 124% higher than national average

But our neighborhoods lag others because wealthiest residents pick its pockets

He gets rid of that old condo for an even $5 million

The former Adam Spiegel

Administrator holds another lackluster auction

Building at 204 E. 7th St., where a studio apartment at auction received the most active bidding, selling finally for $194,000.

Only four of 10 properties offered at auction by Public Administrator Ethel J. Griffin in Manhattan found buyers today.

Worse, the city collected just 26 percent of the minimum for all the properties.  The minimums totaled $2.921 million, but the amount sold reached only $746,000.

In the Surrogate’s Courthouse oppostie the Municipal Building in lower Manhattan, the event attracted an unusually large crowd of some 60 individuals, some of them merely accompanying the bidders.

The first property offered, a 304-sf co-op in poor condition at 204 E. 7th St., had 15-20 bidders jammed in front of a long conference table at which city officials and lawyers were seated as the sale of Unit 12 began. 

The High Road: Arrogance and sloth don’t mix

This sloth has three toes; the broker whose listing I wanted to show has 10, presumably. (Photo via National Geographic)

My buyer wanted to see several apartments in a large complex on a Saturday.

The first listing broker I reached readily agreed to the 3:45 slot I requested. When I had to make a last-minute change late that Saturday morning, she didn’t hesitate to accommodate us.

That’s the way it is supposed to work when you are representing the best interests of your clients, the possibly desperate owner of a property on the market.

I also tried to show three other apartments, studios listed in the $400s in Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen.  After I e-mailed the listing broker, he wrote back, misspelling my name:

Some sellers shouldn’t reduce the asking price

When a listing doesn’t sell within a reasonable amount of time, it always is tempting to suggest that the seller chop the price.

I have been maintaining forever that the only reason a property doesn’t sell is its price.  Offer a $1 million apartment for $900,000, and buyers will swarm with their offers.  Offer it for $100,000, and it will go to contract virtually in seconds.

So it’s price, right?

Out and About: Welcome to grandma’s place

Tastes do, after all, change.

I just had to share with you my photo (above) of the entrance of a classic six-room apartment in the mid 70s on a corner of Columbus Avenue.

“All the rooms looked like this,” the listing broker confessed, acknowledging that their wallpaper had been stripped off the others and a coat of white paint slapped on.  We agreed that the co-op must have been decorated