‘Pet friendly’ and other mysteries of house rules

(Flickr photo by ashley rose)

For owners of dogs and cats seeking to move into an apartment, there’s nothing like finding a building described as pet friendly.

Friendly is one thing.  A warm embrace is quite another.

As BrickUnderground has noted, a new resident may well be dismayed to discover the distinction amounts to a gaping difference.

After a new rule was imposed for canines weighing more than 25 pounds, one tenant was relegated to riding in a slow-moving elevator with her German Shepherd.  And there was no way to challenge the measure.

Although most new rules in cooperatives and condominiums grandfather current owners, it is important for anyone contemplating a move

Out and About: Some properties have no future

Forget it at any price.

A property is sometimes so hopeless that there’s no point in renovating the place.

Consider a one-bedroom unit in the mid 90s that literally has  nothing going for it. It has been listed for months at $470,000 with maintenance and a special assessment totaling $831 a month.

Carved out of at least one other unit in an Upper West Side doorman building, this co-op seems meant only for an out-of-towner who plans to spend a tiny amount of time in his pied-à-terre.  (Alas, the building forbids pieds-à-terre.)

Out and About: A textbook case of overpricing?

Everything about this co-op is superlative. (Brown Harris Stevens photo via OLR)

When I walked into a studio apartment in the high 60s on Central Park West, the gut renovation bowled me over.

So did the price, $980,00 with monthly maintenance of $1,166.  That for a north-facing co-op of probably no more than 550 square feet on a high floor in a full-service post-war building.  From the balcony, and only the balcony unless you stand at the window, there are superb views of the park.

But $980,000, I wondered aloud? I told the listing broker that I couldn’t imagine anyone paying that much, but he told me that

Arleen Shabel hasn’t killed her husband–yet

My clients as photographed by the New York Times in front of their Moorestown, N.J. home.

I had the pleasure of connecting a New York Times writer with buyers of mine, Arleen and Norman Shabel, a couple of weeks back.

The Shabels, who have been looking for pied-a-terre in Manhattan, were quoted in a long piece about homeowners having second thoughts about selling their properties at the 11th hour.  Chronicled, as well, were the ziz-zags of buyers whose remorse had them pulling back from offers that they had made or were about to make.  And today’s Times had a similar story on Page 1.