Weekly Roundup: Landlord confession, piece of Portugal, April building permits, pocket listings, air purifiers, timely Lotto win, recovery threats

Penthouse pursuit is costly contagion to attain height, light, unobstructed views

Airbnb gears up for Albany initiative that would regulate short-term apartment rentals

City plans sale to debt collectors of tax liens against Sandy-hit homeowners

Cost of rent, price of property actually moving in sync

New York region’s borrowers way below average of homeowners who deduct mortgage interest

Stuyvesant Town tenants told pay up and up or move out this summer

Onetime Sinatra apartment sells after steep price cut

Lease confessions of small landlord make for compelling reading

All it takes is money, but there’s still rental inventory in the Hamptons

Investment group identified as purchaser of most expensive Manhattan residence, One 57 penthouse

Nascar superstar lists trophy condo on Central Park West for $30 million

Dancing queen

Weekly Roundup: Rent squeeze, U.S. price gains, rates reversal, stocks vs. housing, declining buyer regret, best inflation hedge, tomorrow’s market

‘Gatsby’ lends a whiff of luxury, glamor to buildings

With declining vacancy rate, rents in Manhattan and Brooklyn keep rising

Navigating school zones trickier as more families with young children put down roots

85-year-old man adopted 62-year-old woman of privilege for her to claim $100-a-month Queens rental

Brick Underground lists eight best site for finding a no-fee apartment

Blog on worst rentals would be funny if

Weekly Roundup: All-cash offers, reality dust-up, high annual sales growth, no-doc loans, Newtown resiliency, worst investments, housing ‘haze’

April transaction volume in Manhattan beats year earlier by 24 percent as supply finally starts to rise

Rent board preliminarily approves annual increase of at least 3.25 percent for one-year lease

Winning offers at even lower levels more likely than ever to be all cash

State passes overhaul

Weekly Roundup: Hamptons, celebs, new-home sales, lower interest rates, auction spat, Baby Boomers, marble stains, housing’s headwinds

Court approves of class action lawsuits by tenants claiming rent overcharges when apartments illegally deregulated

Study: Living in New York actually relative bargain for the wealthy

Hudson Yards finally on track

Regret may define things you might do within your four walls

For politicians, finding a rental apartment differs from searches the mere mortals endure

Sandy deals lingering blow to Hamptons residential prices

Upper East Side developers scramble to convert projects as luxury market rebounds

Details of navigating schools choice provided by BrickUnderground

Council hearing on Fair Cooperative Procedure Law is set for April 30

Outdoor space on ground floor is expensive, but higher up more so for good reasons

Relationships sour between landlords and tenants of Dumbo lofts in converted factories

Q1 sales in the Hamptons 29.4 percent lower than same time last year

It’s time for spring house, garden tours

Interior designer with TV show finally

Weekly Roundup: New development sales, eccentric buyers, agents’ frothy remarks, free mortgage tutorial, economics of price changes

With inventory tight and prices climbing, sales of new condos plunge

Yet developers, marketers designing ever more spectacular penthouses, townhouses in buildings old and new

Recent law change could make maintenance-free apartments less rare

Buyers do the darndest things

New Yorker magazine lets you click on subway stops to gauge wealth

Beachfront homeowners in Southampton building ramparts against storms

No, says New York magazine, it’s not a bubble again

Disgraced athlete latches onto quarter-acre Texas compound in gated community after dumping old Austin home

Artist makes mark in SoHo with purchase of

Weekly Roundup: Inventory effects, moving actors, price gain questions, dubious lenders, N.J. condos, renovation tips, divergent forecasts

Despite short supply, citywide sales rise in 2012

Median Manhattan rent reaches $3,195 as sales inventory dwindles

23 new developments hitting market this spring

Closet space can account for substantial price differences

Lottery opened for affordable rentals in new luxe UWS building near Fairway

Auction scheduled for lakefront home in Copake

As supply becomes scarce, price growth is modest in Queens

Actor’s strategy for exiting Manhattan is move to Brooklyn

Greenwich Village home of classical music icon on market for $2.8 million

Here comes the profit for

Don’t sign contract without financing contingency

Weekly Roundups will resume starting April 5

Lawyers start with boiler-plate contracts, and the terms that they add are intended to provide essential protections.

In this nascent world of restrictive credit standards, anyone buying a new home needs to expect the expected.

When it comes not only to getting mortgage approval but also to getting promised funds, buyers can count on roadblocks that could delay or even prevent settlement.

That is why it is essential for their attorneys to include appropriate financing contingency clauses in the contracts.  Those clauses allow buyers to have their deposits returned in the event that lenders don’t finally provide the money to close.

Considering that the usual deposit of 10 percent of the purchase price — $40,000 on just the $400,000 purchase of a studio apartment — is a substantial sum, contingency clauses are not to be taken lightly.

Notes Forest Hills lawyer Ryan J. Walsh, whose explanation I’ll paraphrase liberally below, there are three major contingencies that can protect a buyer:

Weekly Roundup: ‘Insane’ market, rising prices, pronounced seasonality, surging sales, wasted electricity, 65,000-acre Quebec spread. . . more!

Next Weekly Roundup April 5

Bidding environment now ‘absolutely insane’

Contract activity soars above prior years, thereby confirming both item above and my Wednesday post

Prices soar 11 percent from January 2012

Prior to usual seasonal increase, February rents in Manhattan

Whew! It’s a virtual stampede of buyers out there

(Flickr photo by abrin523)

Competition for apartments started to heat up about a month ago, and now the flames burn more intensely than ever as a result of withering inventory.

I went on Sunday to eight or nine open houses that had been listed on the Upper West Side in just the prior week, and they were mobbed.  The only one that wasn’t packed in the first five minutes was a $279,000 studio remarkable only for how oppressive it was.

Worse for buyers, at least two of them had offers, including that studio.  In some cases, there were multiple offers — even before those initial open houses.

Listing agents were running out of show sheets, prospective buyers were literally bumping into each other, there was a palpable sense of panic.

“Irrational exuberance,” one of the agents muttered none too originally but emphatically accurate.

We are not alone in that observation.  Indeed, confirming that the housing market is galloping once again, the new Real Deal proclaims in a headline that bidding is “absolutely insane.”

Lord Keynes had a point.

A sellers’ market that is so robust is not a good thing, occasionally even for sellers.

Weekly Roundup: Renters, new market stats, dropping loan rates, foreclosure purchase risks, credit misconceptions, kitchen trends, and more

Renters don’t stay put for long in the financial district

New York magazine explores world of platonic urban cohabitation i.e. roommates

Housing signals mixed in metro region

Four things to bear in mind when buying an apartment for your kids

19 percent more building permits issued in 2012 than in prior year

Committee ranks Upper East Side tops for kids, Bay Ridge beats all other Brooklyn neighborhoods

Request for proposals to redevelop Lower East Side sites signals end of bitter renewal squabbling

Foreclosures in region higher in December than a year earlier

Estate in the Hollywood Hills finds friendly buyer but at greatly reduced price

Legendary rocker