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: Bad karma exacts heavy price

Another unit in the same line of a Murray Hill condo that has been stigmatized by suicide.

The one-bedroom condo in Murray Hill was originally listed last August for $699,000.  Monthly common charges are $525 and real estate taxes $397.

The asking price was cut, pointlessly, to $690,000 in October and then two weeks later, to $679,000.

In early December, the apartment was taken off the market and now is back.

Before I bring you up to date on the reason for the gap,

The Big Apple: Will investors drive up prices?

Construction activity rises, but new starts of residential building dip below previous two years

The value of construction projects commenced in New York City rose 15 percent in 2010 thanks to non-residential and public sector building, while new residential construction starts continued to slide, according to the New York Building Congress.

Residential projects worth $2.21 billion began last year, which was down from $6.03 billion in 2008, at the tail end of the construction boom, and $2.58 billion in 2009, according to the analysis.

Unsurprisingly, federal tax credit caused spike in last June’s sales

The U.S. tax credit for first-time homebuyers had more