Out and About: The allure of Hamilton Heights

View of a Hamilton Heights from top floor of a nicely renovated 4,400-sf townhouse that is offered for $2.695 million.

For buyers accustomed to neighborhoods farther south, Hamilton Heights may represent challenges with respect to convenience, amenities and street life.

Yet on a recent tour of an even dozen open houses, I was struck anew with how vibrant the area is and how great is the value of properties in contrast to more popular parts of Manhattan.

As the New York Times has noted, the massive Columbia University development now rising to the south suggests that Hamilton Heights is on the verge of a boomlet:

. . . Hamilton Heights, largely unknown to those who have never cracked the 100s on the No. 1 train, is preparing for an influx of teachers, students and support workers. It is also anticipating the higher real estate prices that usually come with proximity to an Ivy League institution.

The Heights

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Reflections on three weeks of travel in Cambodia

A major artery in the capital city of Phnom Penh (click to enlarge photos)

Among the numerous images that I have retained from my recent travels in Cambodia are two indelible ones.

Those impressions involve a family in the seacoast city of Sihanoukville on the one hand and, on the other, works of tourist art in sprawling markets as well as in hotel rooms and lobbies.

In a country of grinding poverty, there is no avoiding beggars, child laborers, individuals asleep where they work or on the street, shop after shop that literally is a hole in the wall, and one-room hovels that many must call home.

Thanks to Nicholas Kristof’s‘ superior work aimed at ameliorating and his writing on humanity’s deprivations around the world, child labor, sex-trafficking and child abuse cannot be far from one’s thoughts.

What remains engraved in my mind is

Buying sight unseen is not for faint of heart

(Flickr photo by MadEmoiselle Sugar)

Anyone who purchases an apartment from floorplans probably knows that opportunities abound for making a mistake.

An article in the New York Times last year provided a good rundown of issues that buyers should explore before signing on the dotted line for apartments in buildings yet to be completed or, on occasion, even started.

Some of the concerns that the wise buyer of such apartments ought to bear in mind center on the following:

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Legendary rocker

$15 million lawsuit against the Dakota lives on

Part 2 of 2

The co-operative building is legend.

Former home of John Lennon, Lauren Bacall and Leonard Bernstein, location of Rosemary’s Baby, the hulking Dakota on a corner of Central Park West at 72nd St. continues under the cloud of a $15 million lawsuit lodged by an African-American resident who served two terms as president of the board.

Alphonse Fletcher Jr., who moved into the building in 1992 claims racial discrimination in the board’s rejection of his application to purchase an adjoining apartment.  His complaint adds that he wasn’t alone, naming

Celebrities are fun to watch, folly to follow

Can you see me now? (flickr photo by dunkr)

If celebrity endorsements didn’t matter, you wouldn’t see stars (many of them on the wane) shilling insurance, pills or perfume.

So it is hardly surprising that building developers like nothing more than to rub shoulders with notables of the silver and pixellated screens.  Real estate brokers are just the same.

It is, indeed, true that proximity to stars sells real estate, as the news media regularly remind us — for example, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times not so long ago.  But why?

Have you seen those folks sorting cans in trash?

There certainly are more degrading enterprises than picking through trash bags to extract bottles and cans from them.  But the effort is way down there, you must agree.

Perhaps you read the New York Times story on New Year’s Day about such “canners.”  The column by Francis X. Clines is what has motivated me to write this post and e-mail City Council members Christine Quinn and Gail Brewer, who represents my district along with State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, with the suggestion below.

When selling, don’t check reality at the door

SUMMER DAYS DRIFTING AWAY

One of my favorite posts.

Sellers tend to learn the hard way.

That’s the message of a piece in today’s New York Times, which chronicles the bad decisions that some sellers made when they listed their homes.

Among a few anecdotes, the newspaper quotes a couple who ignored their broker’s advice to ask no more than the prices of houses near their 4,000-sf place in suburban Houston:

You’re emotionally attached, so you think your home is worth more. I had a landscape service and a Sub-Zero refrigerator and an icemaker on every floor, but buyers don’t care, they want deals.

Listed originally for $825,000, the house being sold by Michel and Rick Shanks underwent four price reductions and eventually sold for $605,000 after 10 months on the market.

Well, doh.

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