No place like home — sometimes unfortunately

Example of an air conditioning unit that would be installed on a rooftop.

The following headline in the New York Post caught my eye:

Manhattan couple says hulking Duane Reade air conditioner blows away their view

According to the newspaper, they own a $3 million duplex on East 86th Street next to Duane Reade.  Lo and behold, the store is planning to construct a huge eight-foot-high air conditioning unit on its roof.

Uh oh, there goes any view (from the second and third floors) and down goes the Upper East Side co-op’s value.

So

The Big Apple: Developers under gun and ground

Important housekeeping announcement:  There will be reduced frequency of posts until after Labor Day, but you can look forward until then to Out and About, some typically critical posts taken on The High Road, perspectives on sellers and buyers, and other information meant to be both illuminating and, occasionally, even entertaining.  This regular Friday feature will return on September 9, when it will be combined with Weekly Roundup.

Fair Housing Law settlement points to many more in thousands of other buildings

The developer and architect of an Upper West Side luxury rental apartment complex, The Melar, have settled with the federal government on charges that their new residential building violated federal law because it is inaccessible to the disabled, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharark.

The settlement may have an impact on more than 100,000 residential properties across the city.

The Big Apple: Will there be too FEW condos? More!

WITH NEW CONSTRUCTION AT ITS NADIR, LOOK FOR HIGHER CONDO PRICES BY 2012

As the market plods along in a slow but steady recovery, brokers and developers are saying the city will soon face a shortage of new development projects.

Last year, through November, the city issued permits for only 10 new residential buildings, for a total of 505 new units. That’s 95 percent fewer apartments, either condo or rental, than for the same period in 2008, when permits were filed for 9,448 units in 147 buildings, according to census data. (The number of units had dropped to 1,203 in 31 buildings in 2009.)

Starting in 2012, after most or all the new projects that were stalled or delayed have finally sold out, the supply of new apartments will take a decided dip, and prices for all apartments could start to rise significantly again.

“Once we work through the existing inventory and there’s nothing new coming on line,” President Kelly Mack of the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group told the New York Times, “there’s going to be a major shift in the market. Prices may start going up significantly in 2012 in anticipation of the shift in inventory.”

THAT OTHER INEVITABLE FACT OF LIFE IS GOING UP

Co-op and condo owners

The Big Apple: Whither our housing market. More!

MAYBE YOU CAN SEE NEW JERSEY FROM A CONDO FACING AUCTION AND MAYBE EVEN RUSSIA

If you head to Edgewater, N.J. Nov. 17, you can start the bidding with $50,000 on a one-bedroom condo in Battery Park City.

Unit 333 at 21 South End Ave. is the only real estate in New York City among numerous other properties in New York State, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to be auctioned by the Williams & Williams company.

The Regatta

Seventeen units in the Regatta are now on the market, including one with a signed contract, at prices ranging from $385,000 for another third-floor unit described as a junior one-bedroom to $2.7 million for a two-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor.

WHITHER THE HOUSING MARKET? IT DEPENDS, SAY VARIOUS PROGNOSTICATORS

When it comes to the housing market, predictions are perilous business, notes the New York Times. A market that looked as if it was verging on a renaissance

More than a taste of Cipriani faces auction

Giuseppi (left) and Arrigo Cipriani (inset) and their restaurant on 42nd Street. (NY Post photo)

(Note: Please see updated information that you will find highlighted below.)

When Giuseppi Cipriani opened Harry’s Bar in Venice in 1931, little did he know that his undertaking would grow into an empire with restaurants in New York, London, Hong Kong, Miami, Los Angeles and Porto Cervo.

Harry’s Bar is something else, according to the hyperbolic Cipriani Web site: