Weekly Roundup: Skinny condominiums, celeb comings and goings, nation’s price and sales increases, continuing rate rise, investments

This has been year of pricing audaciously

City’s property records site gets update with more information

Developers specifically catering to families in West Chelsea and farther downtown

New graduates returning to New York City learning that life just isn’t fair

Zillow says it takes up to 11.9 years, depending on neighborhood, to match cost of buying with renting

Boom in luxury towers

Guest post: Former co-op member on Intro 188

To writer/editor Norman Schreiber, co-op boards engage in “bloodlust psychodrama.”  He is the author of what Schreiber describes as a “fun novel,”  Out Of Order, about murders in a co-op.  It is available on Amazon.

by Norman Schreiber

Awesome and awful is a bill under consideration by the New York City Council.

The Council, that bastion of reform, hopes to transform the co-op sales process, though the effort faces a hard road.

As recently reported here, the pending bill (Intro 188) obviously views co-op boards of directors as  evil and discriminatory.  The measure would mandate transparency and accountability via 45-day time limits, explanations for turndowns, retention of documents for five years and board member certification that no discrimination occurred in rejecting a shareholder application.

Intro 188 puts the burden of proof on all co-ops to show that they don’t discriminate, instead of proving a pattern of discrimination in those that actually do so.  I’m not sure if the bill could work; more likely, it would change the way in which discrimination is covered up.

Still,

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

Out and About: Victims of their own excess

Squash anyone? Kitchen of brownstone listed for $10 million.

They closed on the brownstone on Aug. 20, 2008 for $7.85 million.

It happens that Lehman brothers collapsed less than a month later, causing our housing markets to swoon.

While the markets in Manhattan and Brooklyn in particular have made great progress since then, we still have a way to go before reaching the peaks of days gone by.

Unfortunately, the sellers — I’m sure, a very nice family — have overestimated the demand for properties that can accommodate a big family easily.

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

Sellers must avoid biggest mistake they can make

Sellers often fail to ask a vital question when interviewing potential listing brokers. (Flickr photo by David Davies)

When interviewing brokers to list their apartments for sale, prospective clients ask a lot of questions.

In many instances, the question that property sellers often want answered is how much of a fee the broker will demand.  (Many a listing presentation and meeting could be spared if sellers with commission as their sole criterion simply asked for the percentage before a meeting is scheduled.)

Among the other bits of information that sellers may seek relate to a broker’s track record — for example, how many sales the agent achieved in what amount of time and in which neighborhood or apartment building.

But the most critical query centers on

The High Road: I broke every smart broker’s rule

(Flickr photo by litherland)

I have no one to blame but myself after I took on a new buyer.

Cindy is an acquaintance who e-mailed me one Friday saying that she was toying with the idea of moving out of her nearly $4,000-a-month rental to purchase an apartment on the Upper West Side.  Could we chat sometime? she asked.

I spent a couple of hours with her the next day explaining the process to someone who had lived overseas for decades and, like any first-time buyer in Manhattan, knew little about co-ops and condos, let alone what she needed to do to buy one.

It was a good conversation, in the course of which I went on at some length about steps that Cindy hsf to take to obtain a mortgage, retain an attorney and make an offer before going to contract.

She indicated as we talked that there was some urgency to get moving because

Listing brokers actually must see board package

Requirements list on typical purchase application

To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, when I make a mistake, it’s a doozy.  So it was with this post.  Please see correction below, now reflected in headline.

A broker friend of mine confided in me her anger at another broker.

It seems that the broker listing an apartment wasn’t happy with the board package.  My perfectionist friend, a highly successful broker of close to 30 years, had assembled the thing for her buyer and sent it to the other woman for review.

Without a comprehensively and competently presented package, as most consumers here know, the likelihood of a board’s accepting a prospective shareholder into the building is greatly reduced.

My friend, call her Emily, had painstakingly put together the thick packet, having

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

Out and About: Desperate measures warranted?

Truncated living room in an Upper West Side studio apartment.

Given the cost of residential real estate in Manhattan, nothing could be more understandable than buyers’ willingness to match the imperfect co-op or condo that they decide to purchase with the amount of money they can afford.

Consequently, many folks in search of a new home readily accept the necessity of turning a two-bedroom apartment into a three-bedroom unit, an alcove studio into a one-bedroom home.

But they invariably pay a price both in aesthetics and, paradoxically, flexibility.  Gone the dining area, the well-placed window in the living room, the airy ambiance.

So it is with