It is always abundantly, sometimes pungently, clear who lives in some properties that are on the market.
Is it the owner or a tenant? You can tell all too easily.
When I opened the closet door of the Upper West Side apartment in the photo above not long ago, for example, I literally gasped. Like me, you won’t have to tax your brain to know that (more…)
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 (more…)
View through kitchen into living room of Upper West Side condo.
Conventional wisdom has it that vivid colors can be an overwhelming obstacle to the sale of a residential property that is on the market.
Mostly the notion seems to hold true. It is difficult, the argument goes, for prospective buyers to imagine themselves in a home that speaks too loudly of its sellers.
In fact, I recall one client of mine who rejected a house in suburban Washington, D.C. — solely, she said — because she hated the wall covering in the living room. That sort of reaction happens more often than you might imagine.
But the well renovated apartment pictured here may defy the advice to tone down an apartment’s personality as expressed by bright colors.
Although I cannot imagine myself living with the palette chosen by the condo’s residents, I did find the place to be (more…)
Front door of apartment on Riverside Drive.
Sometimes, it is not the layout, spaciousness or fine finishes that sell an apartment, not the overall characteristics. Instead, it can be details that capture a prospective buyer’s imagination.
Such might be the case of a three-bedroom, two-bath condo on Riverside Drive in the low 90s.
The 2,600-sf corner unit has superlative views of the Hudson River through oversize windows from most rooms, including the improbably large kitchen, an exceptional amount of floor-to-ceiling mahogany woodwork and numerous other original features.
What first got me was (more…)
Three-bedroom duplex has kitchen that is but one highlight of the co-op.
There’s nothing like an ugly duckling wearing pearls.
Woe to the seller of a gorgeous apartment in a building that offends its neighbors and hurts the eyes.
Such it is with a sparkling and stylish top-floor duplex on a Central Park block in the very low 90s.
Virtually nothing about the co-op could be better. For one thing, there is a 400-sf roof deck overlooking the block’s lovely interior and not hemmed in by taller buildings.
Other qualities include lavish floors of Brazilian teak, numerous harmonious built-ins, a wonderful open kitchen with two sinks and top-end appliances, baths of uncommon beauty, terrific use of space, washer/dryer, through-wall air conditioning, excellent closet space, master suite on its own floor and an invitingly warm ambiance.
Can you guess which building contains the duplex?
But. . . (more…)
When it comes to obstructed exposures, it takes all kinds.
There are those where all you can see out the windows is forbidding blank brick walls mere feet away, often in courtyards.
Other more distant exposures may tower so high that the only way to glimpse the sky is to stick your head out the window.
Others may consist of buildings some distance away, perhaps half a block, where it is impossible to see anything worth seeing — not a skyline, not a river, nothing of interest and nothing particularly offensive.
Then there are those exposures like the one in the photo that are partly blocked by buildings across the way, letting in a modicum of light but permitting nothing like a view. What they offer is a patch of blue.
The apartment from which I took this photo is (more…)
View of train tracks from living room that my client hoped to occupy.
Buyers in love with an apartment may shrink from making an offer anyway.
It is not anything inside their prospective home that turns them off. It is the outside that becomes a deal-breaker.
There always are buyers who can get over blocked exposures into gloomy courtyards, though fewer who can stomach a messy courtyard seen from the living room of a ground floor apartment. I’m not talking about those issues. (more…)
Built in 1910, this low-rise has 20 apartments on five floors — and no elevator — but represents value for a hardy soul.
They exist, those apartments for buyers on a tight budget.
It will not surprise them that low prices inevitably mean compromise, usually serious tradeoffs for homeownership in Manhattan.
Among the issues they can more or less count on are lack of light, excess of stairs, cramped quarters, dismal condition, inconvenient location, noisy streets or neighbors, grim public spaces, minimal amenities such as doorman or live-in super, or persistent visits by creatures parading on more than two legs. (more…)
Kitchen of 775-sf apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Some Manhattan apartments in popular neighborhoods actually are affordable for buyers whose incomes put them in the middle class.
However, many of those units have less realized than actually fulfilled potential such as one in the low 90s close to Central Park.
The co-op is in one of the formerly city-owned buildings transferred to a Housing Development Fund Corp. and thus is known as an HDFC apartment.
HDFC apartments come with income restrictions, but they are reasonably liberal. The latest median income standards (more…)
Out and About: Victims of their own excess
May 14, 2013Squash 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. (more…)
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Tags:Amsterdam Avenue, Apartments, Broadway, Brownstone, Co-ops, Columbus Avenue, Condos, House prices, Manhattan real estate, New York City, Riverside, Upper West Side, West End Avenue
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