Weekly Roundup: New mortgage caps irk sellers

Here’s your chance to catch up with news included to inform, enlighten and perhaps even entertain you. To read about The Big Apple, check out the other of today’s posts and look for Out and About early next week.

Actor seeks to trade visual poetry for pied-à-terre and pâté de foie gras

Live buyer catches mystery writer’s lair on W. 67th St. for $745,000

Celebrity photographer who was a Warhol protégée sells his two-bedroom apartment

He puts Telluride spread on the market for $18.3 million, not that there’s anything wrong with that

Average effective rent rises $23 to $997/month, but NYC at $2,826

New Zestimates give rise to

The High Road: Even brokers sometimes need brokers

Consider the real estate broker whom I’ll call Seth, whose experience he recounted last week while my client was taking measurements of the condo that it is to be his in a month.

Seth and his wife recently went into contract to purchase for more than $5 million a Jersey City, N.J. property.

As a New York licensee, he realized that buying in New Jersey is so unlike New York that Seth would be a fool to represent himself. Said he:

The Big Apple: Sales spiked last spring, then sagged

LANDLORD SUES BROKER, ALLEGING THAT HIS FIRM DIDN’T LOOK OUT FOR HIS BEST INTERESTS

William Cornwell, a retired advertising art director, hired a brokerage firm to a rent out a studio in his West Village townhouse. Then a broker at the firm made him a proposition he found he couldn’t refuse: Why not rent it to me instead?

The result was that Cornwell, 74, signed two handwritten leases on two studios in his Greek revival townhouse, with the agent and the agent’s father, for below market rate and for terms of up to 20 years.

Now Cornwell is in court battling the broker and his firm, charging the leases violated the obligation under state law that a broker represent a client’s interests honestly, fairly and in good faith.  In addition, the state is now investigating the transactions.

IF YOU USE A COMMON CLOTHES DRYER AND ARE PARANOID ABOUT BEDBUGS,