Out and About: 2-bedroom units are all the rage

This is the final Out and About for the summer, but please do check in for occasional posts on other topics meantime.

Second bedroom of my apartment, now on the market.

Two-bedroom apartments may well meet the needs of the biggest segment of buyers.

For one or two residents, they represent the flexibility of having an office, guest room or baby’s room for a family planning to grow.

For a couple already with offspring, two-bedroom units make it possible to accommodate easily (in New York City terms) two quite young children of even the opposite sex, two of the same sex into their teens and even three kids should it be possible to divide a large bedroom if, as often is the case, a true third bedroom is too much of a financial stretch for the buyers.

It is no surprise, then, that two-bedroom co-ops and condos accounted for approximately a third of the market share in Manhattan during the first quarter of the year.  And they sell quickly when priced correctly.

Two-bedroom units that are listed under the market have been going fast, while those that seem to be exactly on the market take just a bit longer.  That’s true of at least three pre-war apartments that I happened to see on the Upper West Side within the last couple of months.  Consider these:

Weekly Roundup: Outer boroughs vs. Manhattan, Hamptons on rebound, growing June sales and prices, eager buyers, actors aiming lower, more

This is the last Weekly Roundup until after Labor Day

Outer boroughs far outpace Manhattan in Q2 sales

‘Best and final’ offers often getting breached after seller acceptance

Ties to the city by relative handful of residents usually long and loved

Landlord spends $20,000 on private detective to bust owner renting out apartment via Airbnb

Renting apartment for grown children can be taxing

Rent regulation creates two different worlds

To say nothing of the enormous tax advantages many luxury co-ops enjoy

Home sales, prices rebound in the Hamptons in Q2

City Council erases quirk in special tax exemption for veterans

Finally acting like a grown-up, he lowers price to sell Malibu mansion for $10.2 million

Widow of opera legend

Weekly Roundup: Broker titles, celebs on the move, growing supply, reverse mortgages, the American Dream, boarding houses, and more

Next week’s Weekly Roundup will be the last until Sept. 6

Offering plans afford glimpse into pluses, minuses of lavish lifestyle in luxe buildings

Buyers snapping up Manhattan apartments 38 percent faster than last year, with UWS tightest market

Brokers still wrestling with new state rules on titles

Prices of Williamsburg condos plummeted in spring

First-half volume of investment properties leaps 41.3 percent over same time last year

One Picasso forsaking his walls

Lord of the Rings actor drops $1.075 million for gingerbread Victorian in Texas

Former NBA player lists California home for $2.795 million

Onetime TV detective, also actor who originated role of

Out and About: Walls always speak volumes

Portion of a wall that needs help

Clean windows, polished floors, organized closets and sleek kitchen all communicate positive aspects of any home being considered by buyers.

One characteristic that is not usually noticed at once also can have a decided impact on first impressions and subsequent appreciation of properties on the market.

That is the walls, especially in pre-war apartments and townhouses. The shape they are in speaks volumes.  They thereby affect prices in ways that can elevate or depress the selling price.

Consider the photo above. Perhaps you can

Weekly Roundup: Hot sales, rising prices and rents, upward trending rates, online reno tools, conflicting recovery predictions and much more

Sales hot, hot, hot in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, where Williamsburg prices soar 23.6 percent in year

Even with continued inventory shortage, Q2 sales leap up

Average rent in city (excluding Staten Island) breaks $3,000 for first time

And median rent in Manhattan hits $3,195 in June, with Brooklyn’s jumping 13.5 percent since 2012

Many uptown adherents now embracing downtown neighborhoods they once considered unthinkable

Landlords, boards of co-ops and condos tailoring latest amenities to

Out and About: Why I write what I write

(Flickr photo by MN Photos)

I frequently am asked why I publish this weekly feature.  Well, not frequently.  Actually, not at all.

But I thought you might permit me to indulge myself with an explanation.

It happens that I (among others) believe it is essential for real estate agents to get to know their market intimately.  That means not merely reading listings online but kicking the tires, as it were.

Not to toot my own horn too loudly, let me express my sense that only a minority of us go to the trouble of checking out listings personally just because they exist.  In other words, we don’t look at properties that might interest only a particular buyer but properties that may fit the needs of the next buyer as well.

The process of thereby learning the market takes a fair amount of time and uses up an unholy amount of shoe leather.  One week, I counted

Weekly Roundup: Foreclosure auction, DOMA effects, climbing prices and rates, millennials, home offices, housing affordability and more

Have a great holiday week! No more posts until July 8.

Foreclosure auction scheduled for co-op in posh River House at end of 18-year legal battle

Metro area’s foreclosures down in April but still above national average

6.2 percent growth in construction spending expected during the year

End of DOMA produces real estate tax benefits for New Yorkers, of course others as well

Analysis of Manhattan prices, sales suggests they’re flatter than apparent in Q2

Actress sees black, not red, in sale of Greenwich Village duplex for $7.45 million

Comedian who played TV psychologist, hotel owner lists Bel Air home again at new lower price of $15.5 million

Peripatetic former Dateline anchor

Dirk Zeller: All buyers have their misconceptions

Dirk Zeller

Author, speaker and all-around expert on  real estate, Dirk Zeller maintains that buyers invariably hold misconceptions about agents and the benefits of working them.

In the first of his two blog posts on the RealtyTimes site, he says that some buyers don’t think they need an agent.  Although lots of information is now available on the Internet, says Zeller, that’s not the same as receiving interpretation, analysis, counsel and protection.

Second, the writer argues against the belief in the minds of some buyers that they don’t need

Weekly Roundup: New NYC stats, land paradox, easing rates, Fair Housing, search tool. . . more

All-cash dream can become all-consuming nightmare

WNYC investigation: System of appointing foreclosure referees operated with little oversight, rife with irregularities, dominated by political insiders

Signed contracts for $10 million-plus residential properties in Manhattan double the same time last year

Narrowest house, where Edna St. Vincent Millay lived, finds buyer at last

Rent board approves maximum increases  roughly double last year’s for stabilized apartments

Finding Hollywood home addresses of celebrities fast and easy

Grammy-winning saxophonist tries again to sell UWS townhouse, this time for $12 million

Comedic former TV talker sells Miami hacienda way below original ask of $20 million

Couple could be sleepless

Out and About: A sad tale of two kitchens

What is the antithesis of a “chef’s” kitchen?

One kitchen, in a townhouse floor-through in a Central Park block of the high 80s, fills a nook off a hallway.

The second kitchen fills, overwhelmingly, the living room of a three-bedroom duplex in Lincoln Square.

Both of them are stunning — in the first case because it is so inadequate and, in the second case, because it is so out of scale.