Out and About: Tip top an East Side condo is not

The little garden is lovely, the apartment at the top of fire escape not so.

Getting to the one-bedroom co-op on the Upper East Side means negotiating a passageway in an early 20th century building facing the street and entering a sweet little garden.  At the far side stands a three-story white clapboard house dating to the mid-19th Century.

There the charm ends.

The apartment is a one-bedroom unit up two flights of stairs with ceilings so low that I had to fight the urge to hunch over — and no one would mistake me for tall.

To many consumers, ceiling height is everything.  Many prospective buyers won’t even look at apartments that don’t exceed the legal minimum.  To quote the New York City Administrative Code,

Out and About: How about Riverside Drive?

A view of Riverside Drive last fall.

In some circles, Riverside Drive has never quite measured up to the desirability of Fifth Avenue or Central Park West, even though it was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.

But residences on the tree-lined serpentine roadway, which runs from 72nd to 181st streets along Riverside Park and the river beyond, are much in demand.

Lobbies, like this frosted beauty at 180 Riverside Drive, were designed to impress.

With many of them selling at a premium, the apartments in stately pre-war apartment buildings and converted mansions, for the most part, have boasted among their occupants notables such as Damon Runyon, George Gershwin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Paul Krugman, according to Wikipedia.  My former sister-in-law and brother-in-law live there, and my first home in Manhattan was there as well, at No. 425.

Fictional characters have included the leads of 6 Rms Riv Vu by my late friend Bob Randall, the Will & Grace mainstays, Liz Lemon of 30 Rock, copywriter Freddy Rumsen of Mad Men and White Collar‘s Neal Caffrey.

When I checked one day last year to see how many apartments were available on Riverside Drive, I found

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(via Prudential Douglas Elliman)

Despite a busy market for trophy properties, the pace of sales and median prices of Manhattan apartments slipped during the fourth quarter, the Wall Street Journal observed.

The number of sales fell by

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BILLY’S EX STANDS TO CLEAN UP IN MORE WAYS THAN A SPIC-AND-SPAN KITCHEN

LATE MERGER MAVEN’S FIFTH AVENUE APARTMENT IS LISTED FOR $26 MILLION

SHE’S NOW GETTING HER LETTERS AT DEVONSHIRE HOUSE IN GREENWICH VILLAGE

AUTHOR OF GREED AND GLORY ON WALL STREET BUYS SECOND MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR APARTMENT

PALIN DOPPELGANGER DISPOSES OF AN UWS STUDIO SHE USED AS AN OFFICE NEAR HER $3.4 MILLION CO-OP

NOVELIST AND PAINTER WIFE SELL GRAMERCY PARK TOWNHOUSE FOR A GREAT PRICE

ACTOR IS TREATED TO SALE OF HIS BROOKLYN TOWNHOUSE OVER THE ASKING PRICE

AND AN ACADEMY-AWARD WINNER’S MAISON BLANCHE IS FOR SALE ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE

HOME OWNERSHIP IS AT

Last bidder standing wins 1056 Fifth Avenue

The view from the 16th floor in the E line of 1056 Fifth Avenue.

In the impossibly, but gorgeously, ornate Surrogate’s Courthouse across from the Municipal Building in lower Manhattan, seven bidders competed against each other for Apartment 11E of 1056 Fifth Avenue Thursday.

Just why they bothered is a question to be considered below.  However, let’s first set the scene.

Mark your calendar for 1056 Fifth Avenue auction

Unless the estate auction of Apartment 11E at 1056 Fifth Avenue is withdrawn at the last minute, as it was last month, you’ll have the opportunity to bid on the unit Thursday.

But don’t expect a bargain.  If visits to this blog are any indication, there will be a throng of hopefuls.  And the reserve price has been raised from $710,000 to $900,000.

Worse, the board of that building is notoriously difficult, and the purchase will require its approval.

To bid you’ll need a certified check of $90,000 and your purchase must not be subject to financing.

Still interested?  Go ye, then, to 31 Chambers Street, Room 503, at 11:30 on Nov. 19.

Good luck, you’ll need much more than that to win. Since a bargain is far from likely, I believe you’d be wiser to opt for a conventional purchase before those bidding wars that the Times chronicled yesterday escalate both in number and price.  See why in my previous post.

Meantime, Caveat emptor!

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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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Auction of Fifth Avenue co-op is postponed

The New York City’s Office of the Public Administrator says that the auction of Unit 11E at 1056 Fifth Avenue “has been withdrawn.”  A voice recording said the auction “perhaps” would be held in December.

For more on the apartment and other New York properties to be sold Oct. 22, please see the post below from last week.

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Share This Post

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
http://www.ServiceYouCanTrust.com