BrickUnderground en-us Sat, 27 Dec 2014 12:59:53 -0500 Sat, 27 Dec 2014 12:59:53 -0500 The latest news on BrickUnderground from Business Insider Business Insider How To Decide What To Tip Your Doorman Mon, 01 Dec 2014 17:30:00 -0500 Teri Karush Rogers <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="new york doorman"></p><p>Does the service at your building seem a little more top-shelf&nbsp;lately? Most likely, that's&nbsp;because Thanksgiving Weekend marks the kickoff of holiday tipping season in New York&nbsp;City.</p> <p>Below, we've updated our&nbsp;tried and&nbsp;true&nbsp;tips for mastering the season of yuletide gratuities,&nbsp;including how much to tip, who to tip, and how.&nbsp;(Spoiler alert: Even your landlord might deserve some extra cash.)</p> <p>Need more info?&nbsp;&nbsp;Check out&nbsp;the links following this article, which&nbsp;include&nbsp;everything you need to know&nbsp;about&nbsp;<a href="">tipping pools,</a>&nbsp;as well as&nbsp;<a href="">alternatives to tipping in cash</a>, the&nbsp;<a href="">renter-versus-owner tipping divide</a>, and how to&nbsp;<a href="">tip staff you rarely see</a>.&nbsp;To find out what your neighbors are planning to tip this year, take our<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;two-click&nbsp;annual tipping poll</a>:</p> <h3>THE BASICS</h3> <p><strong>Q. Do I have to tip?</strong></p> <p>No.&nbsp; You’ll be in the minority, but tipping the staff at the holidays is a custom, not a requirement.&nbsp; Plenty of staff tell us they treat non-tippers the same as tippers—just as plenty of others admit to extending fewer favors (or making them pay-as-you-go) and fewer smiles to non-tippers.</p> <p>(For more, see&nbsp;<strong><a href="">What happens to bad tippers</a>&nbsp;</strong>and<strong>&nbsp;<a href="">Is holiday tipping really necessary?</a></strong>)</p> <h3><strong>DOLLARS AND SENSE: HOW MUCH TO TIP</strong></h3> <p><strong>Q. How much should I tip building staff?</strong></p> <p>The precise amount of each tip depends on the size of your building (the larger the staff, the smaller the individual tips), quality of service, staff seniority, length of time you’ve lived there, whether you own or rent (see below), personal chemistry, your financial circumstances, and whether you're frugal, generous or somewhere in between.</p> <p>Here's a general framework—adjust accordingly. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li><strong>Super, resident manager:</strong>&nbsp; $75 &nbsp;to $175 on average (broad range: $50 &nbsp;to &nbsp;$500)</li> <li><strong>Doorman, concierge:</strong>&nbsp; $25 to $150 &nbsp;on average (broad range: $10 &nbsp;to&nbsp;$1,000)</li> <li><strong>Porter, handyman:</strong>&nbsp; $20 to $30 on average (broad range: $10 to $75)</li> <li><strong>Garage attendant:</strong>&nbsp; $25 to $75 on average (broad range $15 to $100)</li> </ul> <p><strong>Q. How much should I tip&nbsp;total?</strong></p> <p>Much will depend on the size of your staff and the other factors cited above, but it may help to review &nbsp;the results&nbsp;of<a href="">&nbsp;BrickUnderground's&nbsp;2013 tipping poll</a>&nbsp;completed by more than 700 New Yorkers to get a sense of what others do. Here's an overview:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Owners in doorman buildings:</strong>&nbsp;Twenty-five percent of&nbsp;<s>Scrooges</s>&nbsp; owners in doorman buildings reported&nbsp;&nbsp;tipping&nbsp;nothing at all, with the bulk (38 percent) reporting tips totaling between $250 and $1,000. &nbsp;On the high-roller end, 21 percent&nbsp;tipped in the $1,000 to&nbsp;$2,500 range, while just 4 percent&nbsp;said they anted up more than $2,500.</li> <li><strong>Owners in non-doorman buildings:&nbsp;</strong>Like owners in doorman buildings, about a quarter said they tipped nothing at all. &nbsp;More than half tipped up to $250, with only&nbsp;about 20 percent handing over more than $250.</li> <li><strong>Renters in doorman buildings:</strong>&nbsp;In some ways, renters in doorman buildings were more generous than owners last year: Just 4 percent&nbsp;(compared to a quarter of owners)&nbsp;said they planned to tip nothing at all. &nbsp;About 25 percent of &nbsp;renters in doorman buildings tipped up to $250, another quarter tipped &nbsp;in the $250 to $500&nbsp;&nbsp;range, and another quarter in the $500 to $1,000 range. &nbsp;About 20 percent tipped more than $1,000. &nbsp;</li> <li><strong>Renters in non-doorman buildings:&nbsp;</strong>Twenty-six percent of renters in non-doorman buildings&nbsp;reported giving nothing to the staff, which, in a non-doorman rental, is likely comprised of just a super.&nbsp;&nbsp;A third of renters tipped up to $250, while 9&nbsp;percent gave $250 to $500 total and 6&nbsp;percent handed over $500 to $1,000. In a &nbsp;break from prior polls,&nbsp;23 percent (23 respondents) reported tipping more than $2,500. &nbsp;(Perhaps a testament to the&nbsp;Airbnb&nbsp;sharing economy where renters rely &nbsp;on supers &nbsp;to turn a blind eye and/or lending a helping hand?)</li> </ul> <p><strong>Q. My building's 'doormen' are actually security guards who don't do much besides sit there. How much should I tip them?</strong></p> <p>While some security guards do just sit there, others work just as hard as&nbsp;doormen. In the former case, it's okay to tip on the light side.</p> <p><strong>Q. One of my doormen is a &nbsp;jerk, and I never see my super.&nbsp;&nbsp;Do I have to tip them?</strong></p> <p>Rather than make what amounts to an all out declaration of war by completely withholding a tip, many residents in this position tip on the low end of the scale. &nbsp;</p> <p>In&nbsp;BrickUnderground'<a href="">s</a><a href="">&nbsp;Naughty vs. Nice Holiday Tipping Poll</a>&nbsp;two years ago, 65 percent of nearly 600 voters with "bad" doormen said they still planned to tip them, usually in the range of $25 to $50 apiece. &nbsp;As for those with delinquent&nbsp;supers, only 49 percent of the 455 respondents planned to give them some extra cash, clustering in the lower part of the $25 to $100 range.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Q. Should I tip the new doorman the same as the one who’s been here 20 years?</strong></p> <p>Newer doormen in their first few years of service often receive smaller tips. For instance, a first-year doorman may collect half what a senior doorman does.</p> <p><strong>Q. Is it okay to tip my favorite doorman more than the rest?</strong></p> <p>It’s okay to play favorites, like tipping some doormen better than others depending on how useful they are to you. Just try to keep everyone’s tip within the range of acceptability.</p> <p><strong>Q. Should the amount I tip correspond to the rent I pay, or how many people live in my apartment?</strong></p> <p>Tipping is (theoretically) about rewarding service, not about how big your apartment is or how much you pay for it. &nbsp;If&nbsp;&nbsp;you’re a family of five—or someone who works from home and receives a lot of deliveries or visitors--you probably receive a lot more service from the staff than a 25-year-old software developer&nbsp;who lives alone.</p> <p><strong>Q. I’ve had a financial setback and can’t afford as much as last year.&nbsp; What should I do?</strong></p> <p>Staff is accustomed to senior citizens on fixed incomes tipping lightly, and they are usually “forgiven," though some workers say they won’t perform extra services for these residents gratis.&nbsp;</p> <p>As for lost jobs, divorce, etc., many doormen tell us that if they receive a small amount—particularly from someone who normally tips just fine—they automatically attribute it to financial trouble and that there is no need to say “wish I could do more.”&nbsp; Of course, this won’t fly if you’re still taking your annual jaunt to St. Bart’s and waltzing in with&nbsp;Bergdorf’s&nbsp;bags. &nbsp;And if you frequently ask for favors, the “unable to make ends meet" card may eventually run its course.</p> <p><strong>Q. My building has a&nbsp;<a href="">tipping pool</a>. Do I need to give individual tips on top of that?</strong></p> <p>In practice, many residents continue to tip individually too, at least to the staff they see the most.</p> <p><strong>Q. Why do renters usually&nbsp;tip lower than owners?</strong></p> <p>Renters, as a group,<a href="">&nbsp;tend to tip lower&nbsp;than condo and co-op owners in comparable buildings</a>. Here are a few reasons why:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Transience</strong>: Tips&nbsp;generally rise&nbsp;along with the amount of time you know the staff—and the amount of time you expect to need their services in the coming year—so part of the tipping disparity has to do with the less permanent nature of a renter’s life. (Or of market-rate renters at least. &nbsp;<strong><a href="">According to NYU’s Furman Center</a></strong>, owners and rent-regulated tenants stay put an average of 16 years and 12 years, respectively, while market-rate renters move every four&nbsp;years on average, with a median of two&nbsp;years.)</li> <li><strong>Landlords:&nbsp;</strong>&nbsp;Some renters believe that holiday bonuses are the landlord’s responsibility, whereas in a co-op or condo, residents&nbsp;are&nbsp;their own landlord.</li> <li><strong>Disposable income:&nbsp;</strong>&nbsp;There are far more renters at the early stages of their careers—and earning power—than owners. They simply have less money to spend on tips. Moreover, first-time renters who are also first-time New Yorkers may not be familiar with the custom of holiday tipping.</li> <li><strong>Property values:&nbsp;</strong>With so much invested in the building, owners have a bigger stake in how the building is cared for.</li> </ul> <p><strong><a href=""><span style="line-height: 22.5px;">Keep reading at BrickUnderground &gt;</span></a></strong></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 2 New Apps Bring The Tinder Model To Apartment Hunting Mon, 29 Sep 2014 17:39:00 -0400 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><span><img src="" border="0" alt="skylightdoorsteps 1">Tinder and its quick-swipe way of approving potential hook-ups may have captured the hearts (or loins) of unattached New Yorkers, but are city dwellers ready to apply that same approach to the apartment hunt?&nbsp;</span></p> <p>At least two new-ish smartphone apps are betting yes:&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Skylight</a>, which launched earlier this month, and&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Doorsteps Swipe</a>, the mobile extension of the online buyers’ resource&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Doorsteps</a>, which launched in April and added rental listings about a month ago.</p> <p>Like Tinder, both these apps are free to use—Doorsteps makes money from subscriptions for brokers and lenders, while Skylight is still ironing out its revenue model, but also plans to charge agents—and both employ the now&nbsp;familiar yay-or-nay model of scanning through search results: Swipe left if you don’t like, swipe right to save, and tap for more info.&nbsp;</p> <p>For Tinder and its ilk, this approach is not just a marketing gimmick: swiping accomplishes two actions&nbsp;with one movement&nbsp;(saving or discarding what's on your screen while simultaneously flipping to the next screen) and presents a lot of information in an easy-to-digest format,&nbsp;as the&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">tech blog Re/Code observed&nbsp;</a>earlier this year. In other words, it's a more efficient and attractive setup than, say, Facebook's news feed.&nbsp;</p> <p>The question is, does it&nbsp;work when you’re scouring rental listings, as opposed to potential mates? After all, being single isn’t quite as bad as being homeless (despite what the headlines would have you believe), and on a practical level, a lot more decision-making and money goes into locking down an apartment versus&nbsp;a regular hook-up. (Sad, but true.)</p> <p>The founders of Skylight—Michael Lisovetsky, a senior in finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business; Dean Soukeras, a real estate broker and former e-commerce entrepreneur; and Jason Marmon—maintain that the rental hunt lends itself to swiping and to an exclusively&nbsp;mobile-based search. “We’re able to bring the same information that you’ll see on hundreds of thousands of website pages in a very simple format,” says Soukeras, adding that people think “somehow real estate needs to be a difficult, painful experience. We don’t believe that.”</p> <p><span>Skylight’s listings (about 8,000 so far, the founders say) come from various New York City brokerages, including&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Bond New York</a><span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Keller Williams NYC</a><span>. While that keeps a lid on duplicate listings, it means that only a fraction of the offerings are no-fee (about 300 or 400, the founders estimate). The app also doesn’t have a no-fee search filter—yet. On Doorsteps Swipe, the listings&nbsp;come from&nbsp;local brokerages, landlords&nbsp;and other websites, and there’s similarly no option to search “no-fee.”&nbsp;The upshot? This may be a new way to search, but the listings are the same ones you'll find on other websites. (More on that below.)</span></p> <p><span>Still, many observers contend that apartment-hunting by phone is the next frontier.&nbsp;</span><span>It's smart for real estate startups to turn their attention to renters' smartphones, says</span><span>&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Joe&nbsp;Charat, the founder of&nbsp;NakedApartments</a><span>, a rental search site and&nbsp;BrickUnderground&nbsp;sponsor, who has not yet tried Skylight.</span><strong>&nbsp;</strong><span>“If you look at the growth of Naked Apartments,&nbsp;</span>StreetEasy<span>,&nbsp;</span>Zillow<span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span>Trulia<span>, you'll see a common theme,” he says. “A significant portion of our growth comes from mobile users, and that trend is only accelerating.”</span></p> <p><span>And it’s true that on both apps,&nbsp;it’s easy to get searching right away, in part because of the Tinder-like setup:&nbsp;You enter only the minimum number of details—price, area, number of bedrooms—and start swiping.</span></p> <p>“When we watched people who were&nbsp;browsing potential homes, they would just look at the pictures," says Doorsteps founder Michele Serro. "How do we take that behavior that people are already doing and not show them all of the information that they’re not necessarily ready to receive yet?” For Doorsteps, the answer was an app with a swiping function, which displays the most important info for buyers or renters in the early stage of a hunt (price, address,&nbsp;photos). Once you've saved five listings, the app will show you a summary, with the goal of illuminating what you're looking for.&nbsp;</p> <p>On the other hand, there are certain features that get lost in the migration from a browser.&nbsp;<span>Neither app takes into account a renter’s need to compile information from a variety of sources—say, looking up commute times or&nbsp;</span>Googling<span>&nbsp;a broker—at the same time as looking for listings.&nbsp;And&nbsp;</span><span>one of the biggest issues is that you decide to swipe left or right based on a single photo, since you have to tap on a picture&nbsp;to look at additional images&nbsp;or to see more information about an apartment. This</span><em>&nbsp;may&nbsp;</em><span>work on Tinder (I’m not conceding that it does), but it does not work in real estate. I found myself tapping on almost every listing looking for more information and more photos, negating the utility of the swipe altogether.</span></p> <p>Of course, an app-only rental search site could have loads of useful features, including the power to scan listings on your evening commute; check if you can afford anything within the immediate radius of your brunch table; or get&nbsp;“push” notifications, so you’d get&nbsp;alerts when an apartment that fits your criteria hits the market,&nbsp;or if the price comes down on one of your saved listings (which Skylight plans to add).&nbsp;​</p> <p>Indeed,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Zeb&nbsp;Dropkin, the founder of&nbsp;RentHackr</a>, a website where renters post info on available apartments, considers the swiping function to be the "weakest" part of Skylight, more a way to capitalize on a trendy method of&nbsp;interacting with existing content, rather than a useful addition.&nbsp;<span id="docs-internal-guid-784d9897-bdf7-d1cf-9767-d548ebf27e82">“I have strong feelings that using the same firehose of listings and giving a different [user experience] to it is not a long-term positive or high enough value proposition to sway users to change the marketplace,” he says.</span></p> <p><span>At the end of the day, Skylight and Doorsteps Swipe offer a different way of looking at the same apartments that are listed elsewhere. That’s not nothing—a beautiful, intuitive way to see what’s out there is a boon for any bewildered tenant. But I’m not quite ready to swipe right just yet.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span>&nbsp;</span></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> A Mattress Startup Wants To Help New Yorkers Who Are Moving Over Labor Day Weekend Wed, 27 Aug 2014 15:52:00 -0400 Virginia K. Smith <p><img src=" shot 2014-08-26 at 6.17.50 pm.png" border="0" alt="casper mattress delivery"></p><p>Labor Day weekend is a time to soak in the last rays of summer, sure, but for renters, it's also one of the busiest moving weekends of the year. And the last thing you want to do is spend your time-starved days&nbsp;buying and carting a mattress to your new place.</p> <p>With that in mind, Manhattan-based mattress startup&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Casper</a>&nbsp;has announced a special promotion: from Friday to Monday, New&nbsp;Yorkers&nbsp;can get a mattress delivered to their (brand new) doorstep for free&nbsp;via "Bedmobile," a.k.a. an&nbsp;Uber van with the Casper logo and design. (There will also be "mobile showrooms" available at designated locations around the city if you want to test a mattress&nbsp;out before you buy.)</p> <p>Just enter the promo code&nbsp;<span>"</span>UBERSLEEP<span>" into the&nbsp;</span>Uber<span>&nbsp;app, and the foam-and-latex model will arrive in under an hour, the company promises.&nbsp;Casper usually delivers the mattresses&nbsp;</span>—&nbsp;<span>which arrive in a box the size of a small wardrobe&nbsp;</span>—&nbsp;<span>in about two hours with&nbsp;a bike messenger or courier.</span></p> <p>"Labor Day weekend is the biggest moving and mattress-buying time of the year, which means way too many people waste their holiday weekend getting scammed at a local mattress store," Casper co-founder and CEO Philip&nbsp;Krim&nbsp;tells us. "[The mattress] comes with a 100-day home trial, a 10-year warranty, and freedom from creepy mattress store salesmen."&nbsp;</p> <p>Prices range from&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">$500 for a twin to $950 for a California King</a>. And as for the actual mattresses? We tried 'em,&nbsp;<a href="">and are pretty big fans</a>.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> The 'World's Smartest Air Conditioner' Was A Real Pain To Use Thu, 07 Aug 2014 10:10:37 -0400 Virginia K. Smith <p dir="ltr"><img src="" border="0" alt="aros"></p><p>Summer may be nearing its close, but when it’s muggy outside and you’ve got a shoddy air conditioner, a month can feel like an eternity. And with ads plastered all over the subway pushing the<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;Aros—"the world's smartest air conditioner"</a>—we thought we'd take it for a spin.</p> <p dir="ltr">Developed by Quirky, a&nbsp;start-up-y offshoot of General Electric, the unit can cool a sizeable room of&nbsp;up to 350 square feet, and&nbsp;has three modes,&nbsp;including a power-saving "eco-friendly" option. (To add to its tech-world&nbsp;cred,<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;Uber ran a promotion delivering the Aros</a>&nbsp;earlier this summer.)</p> <p dir="ltr">Its biggest selling point, though, is that it can be controlled via the&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Wink app</a>, meaning you can use your smartphone to schedule&nbsp;when you want your room cooled down,&nbsp;monitor your usage (and approximate ConEd charges), and turn the system on while mid-commute. If you use it long enough, it can even adjust to your schedule and preference, turning off when you leave for work, on when you're headed home, etc.</p> <p dir="ltr">Sounds pretty impressive. But is the Aros really one air conditioner to rule them all? After a few weeks of using the model (and quite a few phone calls with tech support, unfortunately), here's what we we learned:&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Pros:</strong></p> <ul> <li>An air conditioner really has one job, and the&nbsp;Aros&nbsp;does it well—the unit got my sweltering room much colder, much faster than my clunky, dust-filled hand-me-down A/C, and the ability to set a specific temperature is handy.&nbsp;</li> <li>For a unit with so many bells and whistles, the Aros is pretty well priced, and&nbsp;runs for about the same cost as other energy-efficient models. Currently,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">it's marked down</a>&nbsp;from $300 to $279 on the company's website, and can be found for even less on Amazon.</li> <li>The “eco-friendly” mode is a great option, both to keep your electric bills from getting out of control&nbsp;<em>and</em>&nbsp;your room from getting frigid after a night of full-blast air conditioning&nbsp;(it will re-adjust its speed and cooling once the&nbsp;room has reached your desired temperature).&nbsp;</li> <li>I'll admit, the app itself is pretty cool. While I can't see myself getting too into the automatic scheduling&nbsp;feature&nbsp;<em>or&nbsp;</em>seriously curbing&nbsp;my A/C habits in response to its cost estimates, it allowed me to do two things I'd only ever dreamed of: cool down the room before I got&nbsp;home,&nbsp;and change the temperature without leaving my bed. That is, once I actually got the app to work (more on that below).</li> </ul> <p><strong>Cons:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Be warned: the paper&nbsp;instructions that come with the unit are missing&nbsp;a crucial step, which tells you how to attach the wing clips, without which the adjustable wings on each side of the unit won't stay in place.&nbsp;The only place to find a correct version&nbsp;of the instructions<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;is a correction on their website</a>, or through&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">the instructional video</a>.&nbsp;(Even online,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">the&nbsp;PDF of the full instructions</a>&nbsp;still omits the key<strong>&nbsp;</strong>step, oddly enough.)&nbsp;Mistakes happen, but it’s a fairly unfortunate oversight for anyone who doesn’t find&nbsp;installing, then un-installing, fixing, and re-installing&nbsp;a heavy A/C unit to be a particular joy.&nbsp;</li> <li>More set-up problems: I could not, for the life of me, get the app to install on my phone. The Aros requires specific changes to router settings&nbsp;in order to connect to certain types of wireless networks, which the A/C needs to reach in order to link up&nbsp;with your phone—something I wouldn't have known had I not called tech support. ("Oh yes, we get questions about this&nbsp;<em>all&nbsp;</em>the time," I was told by a technician after my first call.) I made the necessary changes, but after a cumulative hour and a half on the line&nbsp;with their (very pleasant and helpful)&nbsp;support crew, it was decided I should give up, and try it on someone else's phone or tablet. Lo and behold, the app worked when I tried it on an iPhone 5 instead of my slightly older iPhone 4.&nbsp;</li> <li>To add insult to injury, when I first started trying to get set up, this adorable, infuriating error message is all that&nbsp;I found on the app's FAQ page:</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<img class="center" src="" border="0" alt="quirky app" style="vertical-align: text-bottom;"></p> <ul> <li>In addition to a new air conditioner, you'll also be getting a&nbsp;<em>de facto</em>&nbsp;night light.&nbsp;The display on the Aros glows a&nbsp;<em>very&nbsp;</em>bright blue that could be off-putting, depending on its location and your sleep habits.</li> <li>For such a sleek, power-saving appliance, this thing is&nbsp;<em>loud</em>. Much louder than the aforementioned hand-me-down A/C unit, and noisy enough that I've taken to watching Netflix in bed on my laptop with closed captioning.&nbsp;When I've got the Aros running, it's loud enough that I'd miss half the dialogue&nbsp;otherwise. Even in the eco-friendly mode, it powers up and down&nbsp;loudly enough that I've actually been woken up by it once or twice.</li> </ul> <p><strong>The verdict:&nbsp;</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p>Hold off.&nbsp;Especially with just a few weeks of summer left, we'd wait on re-considering the Aros until at least next year, or until they've released an updated model. For what it's worth, Quirky reps were helpful and very apologetic about all of my issues (and claim that they aren't actually inundated with calls about the wireless problem), but regardless, it seems pretty likely that this product was&nbsp;rushed out in hopes of selling it in time for summer. While the idea is a great one, there are a&nbsp;<em>lot&nbsp;</em>of kinks that need to be worked out.&nbsp;</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> I Toured New York City's $250,000-A-Month Rental And Was Not Impressed Fri, 25 Jul 2014 15:34:00 -0400 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><span>For what I spend every month on rent, I could afford to live for approximately one afternoon in the&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Champagne Apartment</a><span>, a furnished penthouse on the top floor of the&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">New York Palace</a><span>&nbsp;hotel in Midtown. At $250,000 a month, the 5,000-square-foot triplex&mdash;with two bedrooms, three full bathrooms, two half bathrooms, a library and a 1,000-square-foot rooftop terrace with a&nbsp;Jacuzzi&mdash;is by far the&nbsp;</span><a href=";__hssc=109812634.7.1406144849207&amp;__hsfp=3554225390" target="_blank">most expensive rental on the market in the city</a><span>.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>The building itself has a storied history. B<span>uilt in 1982 by the late real estate titans Harry and Leona&nbsp;</span>Helmsley<span>, the hotel at 455 Madison Avenue and East&nbsp;50th Street has reportedly hosted&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">boldfaced names</a>&nbsp;like Derek Jeter and Michael Jackson, and stood in as the home of Serena Van&nbsp;</span>Der<span>&nbsp;</span>Woodsen<span>&nbsp;on "Gossip Girl."&nbsp;</span><span>It recently underwent a $140 million renovation, part of which carved a series of high-end rentals out of the upper floors of the 55-story hotel. (Another $250,000 a month penthouse, dubbed&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">the Jewel Apartment</a>, is already occupied, according to a broker handling the listing.)</span></p> <p><span>But if I&nbsp;had all that Van Der Woodsen cash swimming around my bank account, would I lavish it on this place? Probably not, as I discovered on a tour of the place Thursday afternoon.</span></p> <h3>Granted, the double-height living room with floor-to-ceiling windows is admittedly epic. (This photo is taken from a spiral staircase that leads up to the second floor.) It's the kind of entrance room that gives meaning to that oft-used phrase, "wow factor."&nbsp;<img src="" border="0" alt="image_4" />Also great: the views. You've got the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building on one side, One57&nbsp;and the under-construction 432 Park Avenue on the other, and far off in the distance both rivers.&nbsp;<img src="" border="0" alt="image" />But let's take a closer look at the details.&nbsp;Exhibit A: This is the kitchen. Seriously. This. Is. The. Kitchen.<img src="" border="0" alt="image_5" />The place is furnished,&nbsp;and the apartment's decorating scheme was&nbsp;inspired by Dom&nbsp;Perignon, which means champagne-colored walls in many of the rooms and this&nbsp;crystal pendant chandelier designed to evoke "the rush of bubbles to the brim of a champagne flute,"<span id="docs-internal-guid-ac6e69c6-6908-b805-a126-d987a20a15e2">&nbsp;</span>according to the marketing materials. To me, it felt like the rush of Jagermeister with a Red Bull chaser, the kind of design that overwhelms, rather than enchants.<img src="" border="0" alt="image_2" />The living room also features a 29-foot-wide&nbsp;mural by French artists&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Alex et Marine</a>, which contains the bewildering phrase,&nbsp;"Sir, I have given 26 bottles of the best&nbsp;wine in the world." Again, not bad &mdash; but a bold move in an apartment that comes furnished.<img src="" border="0" alt="image_1" />To be fair, there may be some aging&nbsp;rockstars&nbsp;or wealthy foreign politicos who go in for the mural&nbsp;and the chandelier and, below, the "wine cave," a little room full of shelves for your prized bottles.​<img src="" border="0" alt="image8" />But take a look at the guest bedroom, which has the feel of a run-of-the-mill hotel room (the partial headboards, the lack of furniture or art, the small windows and relatively low ceilings).&nbsp;<img src="" border="0" alt="image_11" />Not shown: the rickety two-person elevator that probably wouldn't fit all the shopping you could afford if you could swing the rent on this place.&nbsp;I'm not usually afraid of elevators, but this one freaked me out.&nbsp;Above, the second-floor library is inexplicably stocked with books on Andy Warhol and David Lynch. (Remember, this place comes furnished.)<img src=" copy.jpeg.jpg" border="0" alt="image copy" />Moving along, this is the master bedroom. For about $347 an hour &mdash; I did the math &mdash; you expect&nbsp;a paid escort&nbsp;or&nbsp;a&nbsp;real jaw-dropping bedroom, the kind that makes your average New York writer weep a little on the inside for the vast income inequality in this city. But this place? It's not much bigger than my own (admittedly good-sized)&nbsp;bedroom.&nbsp;<img src="" border="0" alt="image_15" />Here's the master bathroom, with a bidet, gigantic bathtub and walk-in shower that is, as one guest described it, "perfect for the odd orgy." But the faux pre-war crown moldings, mosaic tile and in-your-face granite (which is easier to see in&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">this listing photo</a>)? Kind of a turn off.&nbsp;<img src="" border="0" alt="image_13" />One bonus to living in the New York Palace is that you can access the hotel amenities, including a spa and fitness center, housekeeping,&nbsp;24-hour room service and those cute little bottles of shampoo and a shower cap. (Sample menu item: an "American" breakfast of eggs, potatoes and coffee for $40.)<img src="" border="0" alt="image_12" />Heading up to the third floor, there is a den with a fireplace.&nbsp;<img src=" copy.jpeg.jpg" border="0" alt="image_1 copy" />Sitting atop&nbsp;the hotel, the sprawling terrace is eye-level with the city's most iconic buildings, making you feel like you're really in the midst of things.&nbsp;<img src=" copy.jpeg" border="0" alt="image_3 copy" />Unfortunately, the midst of things also includes a&nbsp;ventilation system on the adjacent rooftop that has an unavoidable and disruptive whir (at least on the afternoon we were there).&nbsp;<img src=" copy.jpeg" border="0" alt="image_2 copy" />So, to sum up: there are better ways to spend $250,000 on real estate in this town, at least in my opinion.&nbsp;I'll stick with my place&nbsp;in Brooklyn, my&nbsp;<a href="">temporary wallpaper</a>, a&nbsp;<a href="">mattress designed by a tech start-up</a>,&nbsp;and everything else.&nbsp;</h3> <p><em>Related</em>:</p> <p><a href="">10 things to ask before renting that luxury apartment in New York</a></p> <p><a href="" target="_self">How to Rent a NYC apartment</a></p> <p><a href="">I want a building that will pamper me. Should I splurge on a condo/hotel hybrid?</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >This Is The $20 Billion Future Of Manhattan's West Side</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> How To Protect Yourself From NYC Real Estate's 'Kickback Economy' Wed, 02 Jul 2014 15:27:00 -0400 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="cash hand bribe kickback" /></p><p>You're all set to renovate your apartment. You've lined up a contractor and picked the fixtures you want. You've saved&nbsp;$100,000, which should even cover emergencies.</p> <p>But what you may not know is that hundreds or thousands of dollars of your budget may be going straight to your super, just to make sure the job goes smoothly&nbsp;(and maybe bend a building rule or two).&nbsp;</p> <p>Graft, payola, quid pro quo: whatever you call it,&nbsp;money passes under the table all the time in New York. Often it's comparable to a tip, a way to say thanks to people who help out; sometimes it slides into illegal territory.&nbsp;</p> <p>Either way, these informal payments may not be in your best interest. If someone refers you to&nbsp;real estate professionals or other businesses with the goal of getting paid, you can&rsquo;t be sure you&rsquo;ll get the best person for the job, or pay&nbsp;the right price. &nbsp;And anyone&nbsp;relying solely on shady referral fees to get business is likely not at the top of their game.</p> <p>&ldquo;From the consumer standpoint, when somebody&rsquo;s paying a kickback, you can be virtually assured you&rsquo;re not getting the best service and the best protection,&rdquo;&nbsp;<span>says&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Daniel Price,&nbsp;CEO of&nbsp;OneTitle&nbsp;National Guaranty Company</a><span>,&nbsp;who founded the title insurance firm with a focus on ethics, in part because he saw a troubling level of fraud in the title insurance industry.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>So what kickbacks&nbsp;should you be looking out for? We spoke to about 10 real estate brokers, building staff and other industry&nbsp;professionals to find out how you can protect yourself.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>THE GOOD (okay, not good, but more like forgivable) &nbsp;</strong></p> <p>One of the most common examples of money changing&nbsp;hands are&nbsp;<strong>tips from contractors to building staff&nbsp;</strong>like&nbsp;supers, doormen, elevator porters and handymen.</p> <p>A contractor may throw a super some cash simply to get a referral, sources say. If you're&nbsp;renovating your apartment be aware that the recommendation you received may have involved a cut of the action (more on that below). Nonetheless, you probably won't&nbsp;get a complete dud, even if&nbsp;the person isn't the cheapest or the most-qualified for the job. It&rsquo;s unlikely a super will recommend someone solely based on a payoff. But it's best to get several bids instead.</p> <p>&ldquo;The one thing [supers] want generally more than anything is for their lives to be easy,&rdquo; says one New York City residential construction consultant.&nbsp;&ldquo;They learn quickly that if they take a kickback from a contractor that&rsquo;s not a particularly good contractor, it&rsquo;s not worth it.&rdquo;</p> <p>More commonly, building staff will&nbsp;get cash and gifts from contractors and construction workers&mdash;a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the scope of the job&mdash;for any extra work they take on during a renovation.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s so common that contractors factor it into the cost of the job&mdash;often part of the &ldquo;general conditions&rdquo; category on the bid, covering miscellaneous expenses, says the construction consultant. (The practice is especially common in tony&nbsp;co-op buildings, such as on the Upper East Side, because it's so tough&nbsp;to navigate&nbsp;the scores of restrictions, sources say.)</p> <p>Supers usually get the biggest share of tips&mdash;anywhere from $200 to $400, says one building staffer&mdash;since they have the power to shut down an entire job, at least temporarily. But sometimes a contractor will slip the doorman $50 or pay for lunch, says one Upper East Side doorman.</p> <p>&ldquo;During the holidays, it would be very typical that you would go to a building and every person that helped you on your job would receive a Christmas present,&rdquo; the&nbsp;consultant says. &ldquo;You are kind of a pain in the ass to the building.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p> <p>For staffers, construction means more calls from peeved residents, more dust to clean up, more annoying jobs like shutting off the water in a line of apartments&mdash;so there&rsquo;s a reason why you&rsquo;d want your contractor to get on their good side. And if you&rsquo;re already shelling out thousands for the reno, it may not be the worst investment to drop a few hundred bucks on the men and women who work in your building.</p> <p class="rtecenter">*</p> <p>When it comes to&nbsp;<strong>movers, some&nbsp;pay referral fees</strong>,&nbsp;though for the most part, they seem to be more formal&mdash;a company referral program versus a fistful of cash at the door.</p> <p>For example,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">FlatRate Moving</a>&nbsp;has a website where industry pros&mdash;the majority of whom are brokers&mdash;can sign up and submit referrals in exchange for a percentage of the cost of the move, says Ryan Benz, the company's business development manager. Fees vary based on the type of job, such as whether the move is local, cross-country or international.</p> <p>Benz says this is&nbsp;"industry standard practice" and doesn't affect&nbsp;pricing for customers, who pay&nbsp;the same rate whether a referral fee is involved or not. In some cases,&nbsp;"the referrer gives [the fee] back to the client to apply to his or her overall move, which is a common, customer relationship-building practice," Benz says.&nbsp;Brokers can also use the website to donate the fee to a charity, which Benz estimates happens about 10 percent of the time.</p> <p>Bottom line:&nbsp;this practice could benefit the average New Yorker, and brokers aren't breaking the law if they take the fees. But if you have any reason to&nbsp;think your broker is recommending a mover out of greed,&nbsp;rather than customer feedback or personal experience, you may want to&nbsp;<a href="">go elsewhere</a>.</p> <p class="rtecenter">*</p> <p><strong>Brokers sometimes&nbsp;refer business&mdash;i.e. you&mdash;to other brokers</strong>&nbsp;if they&rsquo;re not the right person for the job, say if they mostly work with Upper East Side sellers but know someone looking for a rental in Bushwick. It&rsquo;s perfectly legal (though it may affect your broker's willingness to negotiate their fee).</p> <p>The standard referral fee is 20 to 25 percent of the commission on a sale and 10 percent of a broker&rsquo;s fee on a rental, says&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Jason&nbsp;Haber, a broker at&nbsp;Warburg&nbsp;Realty</a>, with the cost coming out of the paycheck of the broker who makes the deal. &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Property managers also get in on the referral&nbsp;game</strong>. Since they must be licensed as brokers to collect rent on behalf of&nbsp;landlords, they're legally allowed to collect this. If they know a tenant is moving, they may tip off a broker and collect 10 to 20 percent of the fee in return, says one source.</p> <p>Naturally, whether you take&nbsp;a broker's recommendation will depend on your relationship and level of trust.&nbsp;</p> <p><a href=""><strong>Keep reading at BrickUnderground &gt;&gt;</strong></a></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Here's What NYC Renters Wish They Knew Before Moving Into Their Apartments Thu, 22 May 2014 17:59:00 -0400 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="greenpoint brooklyn new york" /></p><p>You live and learn, they say. Well, if we had to do it over again, we'd tell ourselves that no,&nbsp;that fifth-floor walk-up was not the preferred method for sending less of&nbsp;our paycheck to Crunch every month.&nbsp;And no, it would<em>&nbsp;not</em>&nbsp;get easier to haul up the groceries, no matter what kind of fancy tote bag we bought.</p> <p>We're not the only ones with a nugget or two of wisdom won the hard way.</p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">RentHackr</a>--a New York-based website where renters post information about&nbsp;their&nbsp;apartments and lease expirations&nbsp;to get&nbsp;the inside track on other upcoming vacancies--has collected responses from hundreds of users about what they'd tell themselves about their apartments if they could travel back in time.</p> <p>The results are a capsule of New Yorkers' perennial complaints--crazy neighbors,&nbsp;lax building staff, maddening levels of noise--as well as a&nbsp;heads-up on&nbsp;the oft overlooked&nbsp;questions worth asking before you put your name on a lease.&nbsp;</p> <p>Below, the most enlightening ways of completing the phrase,&nbsp;<em>I wish I would have known....</em></p> <p><strong>Landlords, property managers and building staff &nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li>That my landlord would try to raise our rent by $600 a month because they made us sign a 14-month lease that put us into the summer season, where rents are high</li> <li>To ask more questions about the apartment management company and their responsiveness to questions</li> <li>How awful the landlord is about jacking up rent for lease renewals</li> <li>That I needed to be best friends with the super; the building is nice but super old and knowing the super is beyond critical.</li> <li>The super is not very quick to fix things. On the plus side, they're very laid back.</li> <li>The super is not on-site and does not fix things on the weekends.</li> <li>That the management system is horrible. They&rsquo;re so old school&mdash;no email, digital systems, communication, or super access.</li> </ul> <p><strong>The new place</strong></p> <ul> <li>How small 400 square feet really is.</li> <li>To look at the apartment during different times of the day.</li> <li>How important it is to have a big living room!</li> <li>How much I would miss a bathtub as this unit only has a shower stall.</li> <li>To peel off the plastic from the brand new stovetop before using it.</li> <li>The shower doesn't drain well.</li> <li>That the bathroom doesn't air out very well, which can lead to molding easily.</li> <li>It's important that each room has more than one electrical outlet; extension cords are a pain!</li> <li>The toilet has poor pressure and the door doesn't shut all the way.</li> <li>You won't open the curtains of your floor-to-ceiling windows because of the blocked view and office windows looking in.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Noise complaints</strong></p> <ul> <li>The apartment faces the street and the garbage truck comes every day at 7:45am.</li> <li>I should have checked the noise made when people go up and down the steps.</li> <li>Construction always takes longer than expected.</li> <li>The downstairs neighbor's dogs bark frequently.</li> <li>The first floor is loud.</li> <li>I can effectively use temporary walls for sound absorption to reduce the echo in the apartment.</li> <li>How much noise there is from the 24-hour garage and how poorly the building is insulated from noise both between the floors and from the hall.</li> <li>The church downstairs is the loudest thing that has every existed. Don't live here if you will be home Sunday mornings.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Neighbor issues</strong></p> <ul> <li>My downstairs neighbor blasts NPR all day.</li> <li>A band lives downstairs.</li> <li>A rambunctious child lives upstairs and stomps around dropping things left and right from 7a.m. to 10p.m.</li> <li>The upstairs neighbor is crazy, in the true sense of the word, and mean. She pounds on walls and doors at the slightest sound of noise.</li> <li>There's a lady upstairs that loves feeding pigeons.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Repairs</strong></p> <ul> <li>To check if the appliances were installed correctly and to double check the outlets in each room to make sure they all work.</li> <li>About the leak in the bathroom.</li> <li>To ask the super to properly fix the window before moving in.</li> <li>The elevators are unreliable. They break down all the time.</li> <li>The plumbing makes odd noises, and the electric outlets are loose.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Decorating tips</strong></p> <ul> <li>The light fixtures are not the best. Almost every bulb needs to be changed and the sconce in the one bedroom is butt ugly.</li> <li>To be efficient with space. Kitchen is nice, and having two bathrooms is handy.</li> <li>To buy a shower curtain and rod before you move in.</li> <li>To buy newer couches.</li> <li>To get smaller furniture</li> <li>Not to move into an apartment with a partitioned off living room.</li> <li>To buy a butcher block because the counter space is super minimal.</li> <li>There&rsquo;s no overhead lighting. I wish I had additional lamps for the room</li> <li>The fixtures and many other things in the apartment were Italian-made and expensive to replace.</li> </ul> <p><strong>The building</strong></p> <ul> <li>The 5 flights of stairs don't get easier.</li> <li>A backyard does not replace a living room very well in the winter.</li> <li>Amenities aren't all they are cracked up to be.</li> <li>The elevators are super slow and break down all the time. Other than that, I like this building a lot.</li> <li><span>The roof deck never opened. We were told in May 2013 as we were viewing apartments that it would be open by February 2014. Still closed.</span></li> <li>They shut the water off at least once a month to fix some plumbing issue.</li> <li>You can't buzz anyone in. You have to go get them at the front door.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Pest control</strong></p> <ul> <li>There is a lot, a lot, a LOT of mice. Make sure all of the holes in the apartment are filled before moving in.</li> <li>If you leave crumbs, little bugs or mice will show up, but if you're not a slob, it's a gorgeous apartment.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Location, location, location</strong></p> <ul> <li>There is a pierogi kitchen on the ground floor. Onions every morning.</li> <li>It&rsquo;s good for nightlife, bad for practical things like a nail salon and grocery store.</li> <li>It's a hard location to travel to. Harder to get people to visit you a second time.</li> <li>The block gets really crowded when the elementary school kids are going to and from school.</li> <li>They were going to be tearing down and building a new building right next door (owned by the same management company).</li> <li>The apartment is 0.4 miles from the closest laundromat.</li> <li>There are a few new construction projects going on in the neighborhood&mdash;more concern with air quality and neighborhood cleanliness.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Temperature woes</strong></p> <ul> <li>To check insulation from the A/C unit by the windows.</li> <li>It's a hotbox in the summer, as the window is too big for an air conditioning unit, and the apartment is to small for a standing unit.</li> <li>The steam heat is ridiculously loud during the winter months and spits rusty water all over the bathroom.</li> <li>Exposed brick is beautiful in rooms but not the best insulator during the winter months. Rooms can get pretty chilly.</li> <li>Heating a large space is expensive, especially if it is electric heat.</li> <li>It can get cold in wintertime since I have five windows facing the river.</li> <li>How dry the apartment gets when the heater is on.</li> <li>The apartment has casement windows which make it drafty in the winter.</li> </ul><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> How To Soundproof Your Apartment Tue, 22 Apr 2014 17:15:09 -0400 Lambeth Hochwald <p><em><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="jackhammer" />Sirens. Dogs.&nbsp;Late-night revelers.&nbsp;Screaming children. Construction. And the salsa dancer upstairs who practices in her combat boots.&nbsp;New York City apartment living can be very, very loud.&nbsp;</em></p> <p><em>Nobody knows this better than&nbsp;Michael LaFratta, owner of&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Silentium Soundproofing</a>, and an expert on urban noise. LaFratta tells us how we can all get a bit of peace and quiet.</em></p> <p><strong>What are the common&nbsp;complaints&nbsp;that drive people to soundproof?</strong><br /><br />The vast majority of calls we get are always related to some form of "noise pollution" caused by the lack of a soundproofing plan when a building was initially constructed.</p> <p>This might include a noise from the&nbsp;elevator shaft&nbsp;that can be heard through walls, floors&nbsp;or ceilings. The sound of pipes whistling or creaking floors can be very annoying. Another typical complaint is related to people living in close&nbsp;proximity&mdash;people don&rsquo;t want to hear someone else&rsquo;s TV when they&rsquo;re trying to watch in their own living room.</p> <p>[<em>Pro tip: If you're buying a new place, have&nbsp;your attorney check the board minutes for noise complaints, and if there&nbsp;are, find out&nbsp;how audible they are from your prospective place.</em>]</p> <p><strong>Where do noise issues&nbsp;come from?</strong></p> <p>Most noise problems are deeply rooted in the design of how a structure was built. Builders don&rsquo;t always consider sound, which is transferred easily when there is not enough mass and space between walls, ceilings or floors. And&nbsp;if the materials used to separate rooms are too thin, sound will transfer quickly.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s tough&mdash;but not impossible&mdash;to tell in advance if your building might have a noise issue. Your best way to find out is to spend time in the apartment when your neighbors are around. Too often, people look at potential living spaces in the middle of the day when neighbors usually aren&rsquo;t home.</p> <p><strong>What are the worst building offenders for noise problems? Pre-war? Post-war?</strong></p> <p>It all depends on how the building was constructed. For example, some post-war buildings are new enough that they were able to incorporate sound isolation into the design, such as&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">resilient channels</a>&nbsp;[adding resilience, meaning space or insulation, to the&nbsp;walls and ceilings]&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=";Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1&amp;pl=1&amp;currentURL=%3FNs%3Dp_product_qty_sales_dollar%7C1&amp;facetInfo=" target="_blank">flex ducts</a>&nbsp;[insulation-based duct work as opposed to rigid sheet metal duct work].</p> <p><span>However, assuming the walls are sealed,&nbsp;and there are no gaps around the perimeter of the wall, outlets and between bricks,&nbsp;a pre-war building is usually quieter than a post-war because the construction is heavier and there are fewer flanking paths, like holes for lighting and duct work. It will vary from building to building though.</span></p> <p><a href=""><strong>Keep reading at BrickUnderground &gt;</strong></a></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> I Tried The 'Warby Parker Of Mattresses,' And It Was Great To Sleep On But A Pain To Move Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:23:00 -0400 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="boxfull" /></p><p>Despite their starring role in countless bedroom trysts, mattresses&nbsp;are not exactly sexy&mdash;and certainly not the stuff of tech fortune fantasies. At least until now.</p> <p>T<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">he five founders of&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Casper</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, a Manhattan-based mattress start-up, want to bring New Yorkers a high-end product at a competitive price, while using&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Uber</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;and bike messengers to get it to your fifth-floor walk-up when you need it. I test drove a mattress all weekend&mdash;more on that below&mdash;in anticipation of the official sales debut today.</span></p> <p>Unlike many mattress manufacturers, the company makes only one model: a mix of memory foam and synthetic latex, so it contours to your body while circulating air and staying bouncy. (&ldquo;The other biggest complaint about memory foam,&rdquo; aside from its tendency to trap heat, explains co-founder Luke Sherwin, &ldquo;is it&rsquo;s bad for sex&rdquo; because of that lack of bounce.)</p> <p>The mattress is available in six sizes&mdash;twin, twin XL, full, queen, king and California king&mdash;ranging from $500 to $950.</p> <p>That's more&nbsp;than what you might pay&nbsp;at&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">IKEA</a>. But the makers of Casper are pitching the young professional<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">that&rsquo;s willing to invest in something higher end but not ready to blow thousands of dollars on a&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Tempurpedic</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;at&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">Sleepy&rsquo;s</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p> <p><img class="float_left" src="" border="0" alt="package" /></p> <p>The founders'&nbsp;backgrounds inclu<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">de designing mattresses for famed design firm</span><a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;IDEO</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, selling mattresses on the Internet in the early days of SEO, and starting an online retailer while still at Brown. To date, the team has raised $1.85 million in funding, the company says.</span></p> <p>Casper says it can compete on quality with the best of them, and offer&nbsp;reduced prices by eliminating commissioned salespeople, traditional retail showrooms, long-term storage costs and overseas assembly.</p> <p>They're also doing something a bit different with delivery. Like other foam mattresses, the Casper is compressed. But the dimensions of the&nbsp;box, regardless of whether you get a twin or a king,&nbsp;<span>fit in the trunk of a New York City taxi or the backseat of a car.&nbsp;</span>Casper uses Uber or, depending on where you live, bike messengers to get you the product.&nbsp;</p> <p>That means&nbsp;<span>the company can&nbsp;deliver within 90 minutes of ordering and in a one</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">-hour delivery&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">window. (They also have units set aside in their office for pick-up or delivery within 30 minutes.)</span></p> <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="midunwrapped" /></p> <p>So how was the mattress? The first thing to keep in mind is that, even though the company claims the box is the&nbsp;<em>size</em>&nbsp;of a golf bag, the queen-sized version I got weighed 60 pounds, and it was difficult to move solo. Second, once you get the mattress out, it won&rsquo;t go back in, so if you&nbsp;move, your Casper will be just like any other mattress.</p> <p class="float_left"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Though it was a bit of a struggle to get the thing out of the box, once I got all the wrapping off, it opened just as co-founder Neil Parikh suggested:&nbsp;&ldquo;like one of those dinosaur toys you put into water.&rdquo; The package also comes with a slicer tool to make unwrapping easy.</span></p> <p>Most importantly<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, sleeping on the bed was lovely. The mattress had a spring to it but also felt dense enough to be supportive. </span></p> <p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I also noticed&mdash;and perhaps this was the power of Casper&rsquo;s marketing materials&mdash;that the surface was cooler than my regular spring&nbsp;mattress. It didn&rsquo;t feel like I had extra body heat trapped between the sheets and me.</span></p> <p>I slept soundly, woke up refreshed, and didn&rsquo;t feel any soreness or stiffness&mdash;which is even better&nbsp;considering that it usually takes 14 days to acclimate to a new bed.</p> <p><img class="float_left" src="" border="0" alt="casperunloaded" /></p> <p>For now, Casper has no plans to sell the model in stores, but they&rsquo;re hoping to let people stay overnight in their office, which is actually an apartment on Bond Street, to test it out.</p> <p>They also want to let interested customers&nbsp;do test drives via&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Airbnb</a>&nbsp;by putting a Casper mattress in an available rental in the shopper's hometown and letting them pay for a night's stay. (They've done this a few times for investors already, though Casper picked up the bill.)</p> <p>And lastly, customers can return the mattress within 40 days; the company donates returns to local charities.</p> <p>If you&rsquo;ve just moved to the city, Casper will also deliver your mattress on moving day, and they&rsquo;re working on partnerships with real estate brokerages, including&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Urban Compass</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Next Step Realty</a>, to get the word out. &nbsp;</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 5 Ways That Renting In NYC Is Unlike Anywhere Else Mon, 21 Apr 2014 16:26:00 -0400 Lucy Cohen Blatter <p><img style="float:right;" src=" shot 2014-04-21 at 4.20.25 pm.png" border="0" alt="apartments nyc" /></p><p>You already know that New York City is like no other place in the country, if not the world.</p> <p>You may not know--but will quickly discover--that this is also true of the rental market here.&nbsp;</p> <p>If you're planning to move to glorious Gotham, don't do it blindly.</p> <p>Here are the top five reasons the apartment hunt is different in&nbsp;the New York City.</p> <p><strong>1. The season matters a lot</strong></p> <p><span>With the annual influx of&nbsp;college grads starting new jobs in the city, New York is arguably a more seasonal rental market than elsewhere.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span>That means that in the&nbsp;peak spring and summer months, you'll face steeper rents and more competition for apartments.&nbsp;If you can't push off your move to&nbsp;fall or winter, at least try to schedule moving day for the middle of the month, when moving companies have less business and may offer you a&nbsp;discount.</span></p> <p><strong>2. We have these little things called broker's fees</strong></p> <p>Unlike almost anywhere else, here in New York City, we often&nbsp;pay for the privilege of finding an apartment.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>If you find a rental advertised on a listings website like&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Craigslist</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">StreetEasy</a>, and it doesn't specifically say "no fee," chances are you'll pay anywhere from an extra month of rent up to 15 percent of a year's rent to the broker marketing the apartment.&nbsp;</p> <p>To keep your costs on&nbsp;the lower end of the spectrum,&nbsp;try to negotiate the fee or search for "low fee" listings. (<a href="" target="_blank">Naked Apartments</a>, a BrickUnderground sponsor,&nbsp;is one site that offers this search filter.)</p> <p>Another low-fee option:&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Sign up&nbsp;</a>for the&nbsp;corporate relocation rate&nbsp;offered to BrickUndergrounders&nbsp;by our&nbsp;partner,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Suitey</a>, a tech-friendly brokerage that&nbsp;typically charges 10 percent of a year's rent.&nbsp;</p> <p>Finally,&nbsp;it isn't impossible&nbsp;to find a no-fee apartment.&nbsp;<a href="">Slap on some elbow grease and study&nbsp;up here on how other renters have done it</a>. Tried-and-true techniques include&nbsp;calling a building's management company directly, shopping in new developments, subletting an apartment until the lease runs out and then renewing directly with the landlord,&nbsp;and&nbsp;searching through websites that have a lot of no-fee listings (we've&nbsp;<a href="">rounded up the best of them here</a>).</p> <p><strong>3. Listings are full of white&nbsp;lies</strong></p> <p>Roosevelt Island becomes the Upper East Side;&nbsp;a convertible two-bedroom is really a one-bedroom with a tiny office;&nbsp;"cozy," obviously, means small. We're guessing that even listings in Duluth, Minn., bend the truth, but the extent of the subterfuge in a pricey&nbsp;market like New York is on a different scale.</p> <p>To get around the broker hyperbole, put more stock in readily available, objective information.</p> <p>Look at floor plans to get a sense of the layout and size of an apartment, Google the address to find out exactly where it is, and read up on neighborhood blogs for a clearer picture of&nbsp;what an area is really like.&nbsp;(You may want to check out our&nbsp;<a href="">Confessions of a Neighborhood Blogger</a>&nbsp;series, or our&nbsp;<a href="" target="_self">Transitions</a>&nbsp;column, where New Yorkers dish on moving from one neighborhood to another.)&nbsp;You can also look up crime stats on the&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">NYPD's official website</a>.</p> <p><strong>4.&nbsp;Don't assume you can build a wall</strong></p> <p>&nbsp;Lots of young (and not&nbsp;so&nbsp;young) New Yorkers are able to pay this city's&nbsp;outrageous rents because they split up bedrooms and living rooms with&nbsp;<a href="">temporary walls</a>, cramming more people in to less space. But beware:&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">buildings have begun cracking down on them</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p>Be sure to ask your broker or&nbsp;management company if they're allowed before you plan to move into a place and start putting up a wall. Most buildings will still allow&nbsp;<a href="">bookshelf walls</a>&nbsp;(yes, that is a real thing).&nbsp;But it's worth checking on those too before you sign a&nbsp;lease.</p> <p><strong>5.&nbsp;You'll probably need a guarantor</strong></p> <p>Most&nbsp;landlords here require that&nbsp;tenants earn an annual salary of 40 to 50 times the monthly rent. If you don't, they'll ask for&nbsp;a guarantor&nbsp;who &nbsp;lives in the tri-state area and makes 80 to 100 times the&nbsp;rent&nbsp;to promise&nbsp;to pay the balance of your lease if you stop sending the rent checks.</p> <p>Instead of a guarantor, some&nbsp;landlords will accept a higher security deposit (say, two to six months of rent) or prepayment of part of the first year's rent. &nbsp;Note that rent-stabilized buildings, which include many newer rental buildings, are not allowed to take a higher security deposit.</p> <p>In either situation, you may be able to use a service like<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;Insurent</a>, which acts as a professional guarantor for tenants with clean credit histories. You'll pay about&nbsp;80 percent of a month's rent if you have U.S. credit&nbsp;and&nbsp;110 percent of a month's rent if you are foreign with no U.S. credit record.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 5 Ways To Spot A Desperate Seller In The Real Estate Market Wed, 02 Apr 2014 16:40:00 -0400 Molly Socha <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="existing home sales" /></p><p>In the first three months of this year,&nbsp;<a href=";module=Search&amp;region=searchResults%230&amp;version=&amp;;_r=0" target="_blank">average prices for Manhattan apartments surged</a>&nbsp;by double digits, thanks in part to a&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">supply of condos and co-ops that can't keep pace</a>&nbsp;with the demand.&nbsp;With&nbsp;so few homes are on the market&nbsp;these days, i<span>t can seem like sellers have the upper hand, picking&nbsp;from&nbsp;a slew of offers and setting the agenda for any deal.</span></p> <p><span>But at least some of those sellers are itching to unload their properties as fast as possible, giving buyers&nbsp;a chance to score a deal or a speedy transaction. Here's how to find them:</span></p> <p><strong>Pick a stale property</strong></p> <p>Your first clue to the owner's mindset: how long an apartment's been listed. A seller who's been waiting on the sidelines for months, even years, may be fed up and ready to sit at the negotiating table.</p> <p>Generally speaking,&nbsp;a property listed for 100 days or more could indicate that a seller hasn't been realistic about his or her asking price&nbsp;and&nbsp;may be "vulnerable" to dropping it, says&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Jay Heydt,&nbsp;a senior managing director at Citi Habitats</a>. &ldquo;What it means for a buyer is that there is the opportunity to get a deal on a listing that could be on the market for a significant period of time."</p> <p>A few caveats:</p> <ul> <li>The days-on-market metric changes based on whether you're looking at average versus high-end homes:&nbsp;the pool of buyers in the market for a sprawling Upper East Side townhouse is smaller than those looking for a one-bedroom co-op, so you can expect the townhouse to stay on the market longer.&nbsp;</li> <li>Be mindful of the season, since there are fewer listings, open houses and deals signed during the cold months,&nbsp;notes&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Gea Elika,&nbsp;founder of&nbsp;Elika Real Estate</a>. "People just don&rsquo;t want to go out when it&rsquo;s freezing cold," he says.</li> <li>Prolonged&nbsp;time on market doesn't always mean the seller is serious. It's possible&nbsp;the owner&nbsp;will only part with her home if she gets that sky-high price.&nbsp;(After all, she doesn't have to pay the broker&nbsp;until the deal closes.)</li> <li>Treat listing dates with skepticism. &ldquo;The other trick that brokers use is to take it off the market and then after a few weeks or a month or two, put&nbsp;it back on the market because they&rsquo;re trying to avoid the property looking like a stale property,&rdquo;&nbsp;warns&nbsp;Jamal Syed of Coldwell Banker AC Lawrence.&nbsp;To subvert this subterfuge, look up the address on&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">StreetEasy</a>, which has listing&nbsp;histories for many apartments.</li> </ul> <p>Once you find a truly stale apartment, Heydt advises&nbsp;making an offer that is 10 to 15 percent&nbsp;off--and in some cases even 20 percent&nbsp;off--the list price.</p> <p><strong>Find out why the place&nbsp;is for sale</strong></p> <p>Why is the seller unloading the property? Pull a Sherlock and pin down the real motivation behind the sale and you may be able to make a bargain deal.&nbsp;<span>In the rare instance that a seller is present for an open house, ask them directly why they want to sell. It's fair game to inquire on the reason behind the listing. In other cases, your broker can do the asking for you.</span></p> <p><span>Sometimes, an owner will be upfront&nbsp;as a way to ease buyers' fears that a low price is evidence of a problem, Syed says.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s priced way below market value everyone wants to know, 'What&rsquo;s wrong with it?'&nbsp;In that type of situation the seller is likely to say, 'Well nothing&rsquo;s wrong, but I have to relocate,'&rdquo; he says.</p> <p>Another strategy is to hire a broker&nbsp;who works predominantly in one neighborhood or with a specific type of property, like Soho lofts or&nbsp;starter co-ops in Murray Hill.&nbsp;Not only will they know the all the listings in that segment through-and-through, they'll likely be familiar with the&nbsp;relevant buildings and their staff, either from visiting&nbsp;or&nbsp;doing deals there before.</p> <div>&ldquo;The agents that specialize have a true pulse of every aspect of the building and&nbsp;area&nbsp;and what's going on,&rdquo; says Heydt. "They know everyone from the dog walker to the&nbsp;porter.&rdquo;</div> <p>Because they're plugged in, they may be able to glean&nbsp;answers--or at least clues--as to&nbsp;why a seller has put their home on the market, particularly in instances where a listing broker either doesn't know or won't reveal the reason.</p> <p>"Being kind and a good communicator can often lead to learning what can be deal-changing information," says Elika.</p> <p><strong>Learn the language</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Desperate sellers don&rsquo;t put up a sign saying, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m desperate,&rsquo;&rdquo; says Elika, but&nbsp;terms like&nbsp;&ldquo;quick close,&rdquo; "must sell," "seller relocating" or "priced to sell" included in listings signal that a seller wants things done fast.</p> <p><a href=""><strong>Keep reading at BrickUnderground &gt;</strong></a></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> We Tried Breather, The Startup That Lets New Yorkers Rent Rooms By The Hour Mon, 03 Mar 2014 14:33:00 -0500 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><span><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="breather" width="480" />When I get to the front desk of 611 Broadway and tell the security guard that I&rsquo;m here for &ldquo;Breather,&rdquo; he seems vaguely confused. &ldquo;Breather?&rdquo; I say again. He doesn&rsquo;t seem to know exactly what I&rsquo;m talking about, but he waves me toward the elevators without signing in.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span>What is&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Breather</a>? is a pretty good question. Dubbed the &ldquo;ZipCar of rooms,&rdquo; the start-up and mobile app aims to provide &ldquo;a quiet space in the middle of the hustle and bustle&rdquo; where you can &ldquo;kick back, relax, take a nap, or get to work in some peace and quiet.&rdquo; It recently&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">launched in New York City</a>, and got a&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">spate of press</a>,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">some&nbsp;of which focused</a>&nbsp;on Breather as the company that rents apartments by the hour&mdash;with all the naughtiness that implied. But these are not apartments, which means they don't run afoul of the&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">state law forbidding apartment rentals</a>&nbsp;for less than 30 days.</span></p> <p><span>The Breather spaces in Manhattan are all in office buildings&mdash;in Soho, the Flatiron District and near Penn Station&mdash;and come equipped with WiFi, white boards, and conference tables. Co-founded by Canadians Julien Smith and Caterina Rizzi, Breather launched at a London start-up conference in mid-2013 and now operates four spaces in Montreal and three in Manhattan.</span></p> <p>&ldquo;Because of Airbnb, people immediately think of apartments,&rdquo; Smith says by email, &ldquo;but that&rsquo;s not accurate.&rdquo;</p> <p>The building at 611 Broadway houses architects, nonprofits, public relations firms and other companies you&rsquo;d expect to find in Soho, and the terrazzo-patterned hardwood, industrial light fixtures and curlicued metal railings fairly scream &ldquo;creative types at work.&rdquo;</p> <p>As for all the strangers entering the building, &ldquo;landlords are chill with it,&rdquo; Smith says, adding that Breather brings in fewer strangers than a doctor&rsquo;s office, for example.&nbsp;</p> <p>I tried Breather for a different reason than avoiding the hustle and bustle. I was itching to get out of my apartment. I had work to catch up on over the weekend, and couldn&rsquo;t fathom another afternoon spent sipping overpriced coffee beverages and jamming my earbuds in my ears for privacy.&nbsp;</p> <p><a href=""><strong>Keep reading at Brick Underground &gt;</strong></a></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 5 New York Neighborhoods Where You Can Still Find A Bargain Apartment Tue, 11 Feb 2014 13:25:00 -0500 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><span><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="battery park" width="480" />A few years ago, Michael Graves, a broker with&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Douglas Elliman</a>, had a young client who&rsquo;d made a fortune selling his tech company and decided to invest in north Brooklyn real estate. He took a stack of pennies and threw them on a map, and wherever a coin landed, he bought.</span></p> <p><span>&ldquo;He has made so much money,&rdquo; Graves says, &ldquo;because those neighborhoods only go one direction. They only go up.&rdquo;</span></p> <p><span>Of course, not everyone has millions to throw around. If you're&nbsp;looking for a more scientific approach to determine where to buy, we&rsquo;ve enlisted the data experts at&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">PropertyShark&nbsp;</a>to crunch the numbers.</span></p> <p><span>By comparing median home sale prices in specific neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens to prices for the boroughs overall in 2013,<a href=";x=0.5208333333333334&amp;y=0.5154166666666666&amp;zoom=0&amp;basemap=competitively&amp;star=1&amp;tab=themes&amp;ll=40.7059545855928,-73.9501928506647" target="_blank">PropertyShark created an interactive map&nbsp;</a>(screenshot above;<a href=";x=0.5208333333333334&amp;y=0.5154166666666666&amp;zoom=0&amp;basemap=competitively&amp;star=1&amp;tab=themes&amp;ll=40.7059545855928,-73.9501928506647" target="_blank">&nbsp;click here for the full interactive experience</a>)&nbsp;that shows where price gaps are the widest. So, for example, the median price in dark red Tribeca is $2.7 million, or 179 percent of the median in all of Manhattan, which is $975,000.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span>To help you narrow down your search, BrickUnderground has taken a deeper look&nbsp;at nine New York City neighborhoods where sale prices are substantially lower than other parts of their borough.</span></p> <p><strong>MANHATTAN--$975,000 median sale price</strong></p> <p><strong><span>1. Battery Park City&mdash;19% lower</span></strong></p> <p><span>Battery Park City is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of place, brokers say. &ldquo;Either you&rsquo;re open to it and you really want it, or you don&rsquo;t. That has been the psychology of buyers for many, many years,&rdquo; says Graves.</span></p> <p>There are plenty of reasons to love Battery Park City, from good schools to acres of landscaped waterfront to the compressive subway access. But there are also a few reasons why the median sale price is only about $771,000, 19% below the Manhattan median.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span>Battery Park City sits on a 92-acre plot of land that&rsquo;s owned by the Battery Park City Authority, a public-benefit corporation created by New York State. Apartment owners&nbsp;must pay ground rent to the BPCA, meaning their monthly charges tend to be higher. (During the economic downturn, it was also more difficult for buyers to get mortgages because of this arrangement.)</span></p> <p>The neighborhood has also fought a reputation of being a ghost town at night and a permanent construction site, as the rebuilding of the World Trade Center has dragged on.</p> <p><span>While Battery Park City backers have been avowing for years that the nabe is set for a turnaround, this time it might really happen. Restaurants like Danny Meyer&rsquo;s Shake Shack have set up shop, and new high-end retailers such as Hermes and the swanky gym Equinox have signed on for space at Brookfield Place, a sprawling office complex on West Street undergoing a makeover.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised in the least once the World Trade Center is built and open if you don&rsquo;t start to see that appreciate better,&rdquo; says Jason Haber, a broker at&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Warburg Realty</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>2. Lower East Side<span>&mdash;42% lower</span></strong></p> <p>&ldquo;The Lower East Side is still seen as a new frontier,&rdquo; says Graves.</p> <p>Known for its grittiness, the area is increasingly being colonized by trendy hotels, speakeasy bars, fashion boutiques and contemporary art meccas like the New Museum. Pockets of the Lower East Side, such as the Bowery, are giving way to new condo developments.&nbsp;</p> <p>&ldquo;But even with that being the case, it&rsquo;s still a neighborhood that is a little more detached from the rest of Manhattan than other locations,&rdquo; Graves says.&nbsp;</p> <p>Parts of the Lower East Side, particularly closer to the river, have only limited subway access. A large swath of the neighborhood is home to Co-op Village, a 4,500-unit affordable co-op complex. Combine that with zoning laws that restrict how tall developers can build, and you&rsquo;d be hard-pressed to find a luxury condo building dripping with amenities.&nbsp;</p> <p>But the $576,000 median price is great for those who want a teeming nightlife on their doorstep rather than a high-end gym in their basement.</p> <p>In the next two years, Graves predicts, those slices of higher-end apartments will push the overall price of the neighborhood up.</p> <p><strong>3. Gramercy Park&mdash;13% lower</strong></p> <p><span>Gramercy Park is synonymous with swank, not only for housing Manhattan&rsquo;s only private park&mdash;you need to own a home on the perimeter to get a key&mdash;but also for having copious townhouses dating back to the mid-19th century. So why is the &lsquo;hood on the cheap side, with a median sale price of $852,000? East of the park itself (closer to First, Second and Third Aves.), there are relatively reasonably priced apartments available, brokers say.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re a deal seeker right now and you want to live in Manhattan, the eastern side of Gramercy is a fantastic value,&rdquo; says Graves.&nbsp;</p> <p>The gap is so severe that Graves estimates that an apartment he is selling on Second Avenue and East 23rd Street could fetch at least $1 million more if it were a few blocks west.&nbsp;</p> <p>The reason boils down to convenience: on the eastern side, transportation options are limited, as are the number of bars, restaurants and shops versus to an adjacent area like the Flatiron District.</p> <p>That said, within the next few years,&nbsp;the Second Avenue subway is set to come barreling down the corridor, connecting the area to Midtown and, brokers predict, bringing a major transformation. (As of November,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">MTA officials reportedly said construction was on track for a December 2016 opening</a>.)</p> <p>&ldquo;Right now, that neighborhood&rsquo;s a bit of a value play, and I think it&rsquo;s going to change,&rdquo; says Mara Flash Blum, a broker at&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Sotheby&rsquo;s International Realty</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>4. Kips Bay<span>&mdash;27% lower</span></strong></p> <p><span>Hugging the East River between East 23rd and East 34th Sts., Kips Bay suffers from some of the same problems as the eastern part of Gramercy Park. The area is not well served by public transportation, keeping median sale prices to a relatively inexpensive $710,000.</span></p> <p>&ldquo;People don&rsquo;t want to be over that far,&rdquo; Blum says.</p> <p>Another factor keeping prices down is the proliferation of co-ops in the area. &ldquo;If you have a neighborhood that has more co-ops than condos, your prices are going to be lower,&rdquo; Blum says, referring to the fact that&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">condos currently cost an average of 40% more per square foot than co-ops</a>.</p> <p>But the area is popular with first-time apartment buyers&nbsp;who are attracted by the abundance of smallish units. A stretch of the area is also occupied by the NYU Langone Medical Center Hospital.</p> <p><strong>5. Harlem&mdash;37% to 49% lower</strong></p> <p>As New York City real estate rebounds, Harlem is facing another wave of gentrification, which brokers expect will push prices up further than the current median, which ranges from $507,000 to about $611,000.</p> <p>Call it the Whole Foods effect, Haber says. The organic grocery juggernaut has the power to remake neighborhoods, and it&rsquo;s planning a new location at Lenox Ave. and 125th St. That will add to a bevy of bars and restaurants that have opened up in the last few years, like Marcus Samuelsson&rsquo;s Red Rooster.</p> <p>On the new development side, &ldquo;a lot of really good quality, luxury product is coming on, and people are interested,&rdquo; says Haber, noting that he has some clients who&rsquo;ve chosen Harlem over the Upper East Side.&nbsp;</p> <p>If prices are still cheaper, that&rsquo;s a matter of distance from Manhattan&rsquo;s core and a lack of ultra luxury options like you might find in Tribeca.&nbsp;</p> <p>Also, there is some variation across this part of Upper Manhattan. East Harlem has swaths of public housing projects, making it more difficult to build condos because of the relative scarcity of land, while West Harlem is close to the Columbia University campus, and Central Harlem has the brownstones, Haber explains. However, East Harlem&rsquo;s median price is higher than the rest of Harlem because it extends further south, which may skew the data.&nbsp;</p> <p><a href=""><strong>See more bargain neighborhoods at BrickUnderground &gt;</strong></a></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> How To Beat Out Your Neighbor When You're Both Selling Your Apartments Mon, 10 Feb 2014 15:45:32 -0500 Anne Machalinski <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="New York brownstones" width="480" /></p><p>In medium to large apartment buildings,&nbsp;it&rsquo;s not uncommon to find two, four or more units for sale in the same building at the same time. So how do you get the best price for your co-op or condo when there are other similar units for sale?</p> <p>From making modest updates to telling a story with staging, here are tips from brokers on making your unit the &ldquo;belle of the ball,&rdquo; as<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;Holly Sose, an agent with City Connections</a>, put it.</p> <p><strong>Spotlight the competition</strong></p> <p>If you&rsquo;re in unit 7A and hitting the market after 8A, note the differences between the apartments, both in your listing and marketing materials and during showings, recommends&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Mary Lou Currier, an agent with Bond New York</a>.</p> <p>If 8A is completely renovated and up for the same price as 7A, which is not renovated, there&rsquo;s only one thing to do.&nbsp;</p> <p>&ldquo;Market the apartment as an opportunity&hellip; something that needs TLC. Or needs work,&rdquo; she says, adding some buyers may want to make changes on their own.&nbsp;</p> <div> <p>If you're competing against a unit that is similarly sized (or priced) but with a different layout, another option is to emphasize&nbsp;the potential for more rooms, says&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Yair Tavivian,&nbsp;co-founder of the&nbsp;Tavivian Sporn team at Douglas Elliman</a>. If a one-bedroom unit has an alcove, for instance, call out the potential for a second bedroom, nursery or&nbsp;home office. Or you&nbsp;might even add a wall before listing to enter the two-bedroom market from the get-go.&nbsp;</p> <p>One of Tavivian's&nbsp;sellers on the Upper East Side used this tactic, taking&nbsp;a two-bedroom and adding a wall to create a third bedroom before listing. They closed at $2.825 million, the highest price-per-square-foot ever on the line and the highest price-per-square-foot since 2008 in the building, says Tavivian.</p> </div> <p><strong>Price higher</strong></p> <p><span>While a unit with the same layout may be four floors higher, if it&rsquo;s in poor condition and in need of a facelift, it may not automatically be worth more, and you&nbsp;shouldn't be afraid to list yours at a higher price.</span></p> <p>There&rsquo;s also&nbsp;something to be gained by&nbsp;undercutting the competition, although it&rsquo;s a strategy most sellers are reluctant to employ, says Currier.&nbsp;Often sellers&nbsp;are&nbsp;afraid that listing below the competition is going to get them a lower price, while the opposite is often the case. In fact, the lower price may get additional people in the door and it may actually end up in a bidding war situation, where the unit goes for above asking&nbsp;and above the price your competitor's&nbsp;unit gets.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sose recommends finding the unit listed in the building that's closest to yours&nbsp;and trimming 1% to 3% off the bottom line.</p> <p><span>Even if you price slightly low, &ldquo;the market is what determines the price of the apartment,&rdquo; says Currier. &ldquo;If the apartment is worth $1 million, it will stand up to its competition and you&rsquo;ll get $1 million.&rdquo;&nbsp;</span></p> <p>She adds: &ldquo;You want to be the hot ticket in the building. Price it a little bit better, make yourself competitive, sell quickly. That&rsquo;s the market we&rsquo;re in.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Get a facelift</strong></p> <p>Again, it's important to survey what the other apartments are lacking, and at least match them&nbsp;if you're going at or above their price.</p> <p>Although it may seem counterintuitive to make upgrades before selling, sometimes basic cosmetic changes can make all the difference, says&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Takk Yamaguchi &nbsp;of Town Residential</a>,&nbsp;noting that most people aren&rsquo;t interested in buying an apartment that requires a lot of work. &nbsp;Small updates and elements like a new dishwasher or washer/dryer&nbsp;can&nbsp;also set your apartment aside from the in-building&nbsp;competition.</p> <p>You &ldquo;don&rsquo;t have to spend $1 million and do the Calcutta marble, the deep soaking tub and the rainfall showerhead,&rdquo; Yamaguchi says. Just go with what the target market may want&ndash;-a more modern look in a new condo building or an&nbsp;updated classic look in a pre-war high-rise co-op, for instance.</p> <p><a href=";state=profile&amp;id=120&amp;name=Morgan-Graham" target="_blank">Morgan Graham, a West Side specialist with Miron Properties</a>,&nbsp;recommends focusing on upgrades in the kitchen and bathrooms. If you spend money making modest upgrades to your kitchen, &ldquo;that money is pretty much 100 percent recoupable--if not more,&rdquo; he says, noting that going classic, like stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, is easiest. &ldquo;You want to appeal to as many people as possible,&rdquo; he says.</p> <p>Think about things like adding dishwashers or simply replacing old medicine cabinets.</p> <p>&ldquo;The reaction for just teeny tiny things can be really big,&rdquo; Sose says.</p> <p><a href=""><strong>Keep reading at BrickUnderground &gt;</strong></a></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 3 Things To Remember If You're Shopping For An Apartment In Manhattan Thu, 30 Jan 2014 18:12:00 -0500 Leigh Kamping-Carder <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="Freedom Tower, NYC, Skyline" width="480" /></p><p>Manhattan real estate has one constant, and that's change. You can tell&nbsp;by walking the streets or, for the data geeks among us, by checking&nbsp;<span>out the&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">61-page survey of a decade in co-op and condo sales</a><span>, released today by appraisal firm Miller Samuel and residential brokerage Douglas Elliman.</span></p> <p><span>We&rsquo;ve slogged through it for you to find these&nbsp;three tips&nbsp;</span><span>that will give you a better idea of what to watch out for in today's market.</span></p> <p><strong>Buy co-op, not condo</strong></p> <p>If you&rsquo;re in the market for an apartment, ask yourself how important it is to buy a condo rather than a co-op&mdash;because for the same chunk of change, you can buy about 30 percent more co-op these days. (That&rsquo;s compared to about 25 percent more co-op in 2004.)</p> <p>While co-ops have always tended to be cheaper than condos, in the last decade the average price gap between the two apartment types has grown even wider, from a difference of $177 per square foot in 2004 to $299 per square foot in 2013.</p> <p>&ldquo;It speaks to the changing housing stock in Manhattan,&rdquo; says appraiser and market analyst&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel</a>&nbsp;and author of the report.&nbsp;&ldquo;The new product entering the market is luxury, and it&rsquo;s skewing higher.&rdquo;</p> <p>The average price for a Manhattan condo skyrocketed 56.8 percent over 2004, to $1,285 from $873 per square foot. By contrast, average co-op prices rose a not-too-shabby 41.7 percent, to $986 from $696 per square foot.</p> <p><strong>Stop counting bedrooms</strong></p> <p>We all know Manhattan apartments are teensy-weensy, but if you&rsquo;re in the market for a three-bedroom or four-bedroom, you should pay attention to square footage as much as number of rooms to ensure you get the space you want.</p> <p><span>That&rsquo;s because in the last decade, these supposedly larger unit sizes have shrunk, with three-bedrooms slimming down by about 750 square feet (to 2,000 square feet on average) and four-bedrooms by about 1,000 square feet (to 3,170 square feet on average).</span></p> <p>That&rsquo;s in contrast to studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms, which have stayed about the same size in the last 10 years. In 2013, the average Manhattan apartment was about 1,270 square feet.</p> <p>Over the last decade, developers have built apartments geared towards the growing number of families living in the city, but they&rsquo;ve downsized the units themselves to bulk up their profits.</p> <p>&ldquo;The developer is trying to maximize the price per square foot of the building,&rdquo; Miller says.</p> <p><strong>You snooze, you lose</strong></p> <p>Today&rsquo;s market for Manhattan co-ops and condos is moving faster than it has in years. That means that if you&rsquo;re a buyer, you should be prepared to move on a home immediately if you like it. If you&rsquo;re a seller, you can generally expect to sell your home much faster than you would have a year ago&mdash;if it&rsquo;s priced right&mdash;so make sure to have your next place lined up.</p> <p>You can see evidence of this in the data: In 2013, apartments took an average of 121 days to go into contract from the day of their last price cut, compared to 172 days in 2012. The number of homes on the market fell in 2013 to the lowest level in 14 years, with 4,164 available listings. And the time it would take to sell all the available units fell to 3.9 months from 5.4 months a year ago.</p> <p>All that has meant booming sales activity. In fact, the number of sales in 2013 reached the second highest level in a quarter century, hitting 12,735. (By contrast, in the four years following the economic crisis, sales bumped along the 10,000 mark. The peak for sales was in the boom year of 2007, when 13,430 co-ops and condos traded hands.)</p> <p>In short, get ready for the &ldquo;insanity that is the current market,&rdquo; says Miller.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> How To Buy An NYC Apartment Thu, 26 Sep 2013 13:22:00 -0400 Teri Karush Rogers <p><strong><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="dakota new york apartment building" />The first step in the NYC buying process is to decide if you are better fit for a co-op or condo.&nbsp;</strong></p> <p>NYC apartments come in two flavors: Co-op (short for "cooperative") and condominium.</p> <p>Older buildings (pre-1980s) tend to be co-ops, while pretty much everything built from the 1980s onward is condo. Beyond that distinction, your personal or financial circumstances, along with your lifestyle preferences and past experience, might guide you toward one or another.</p> <p>Or, like many people, you may simply decide to look for the best apartment you can afford in a financially sound building, be it co-op or condo.</p> <p>Here's a quick overview of the key differences and considerations.</p> <h2>Ownership structure</h2> <p><img src="" border="0" alt="" /></p> <p>Photo Credit / Barrons</p> <p><strong>CO-OP:</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;While co-ops are common in NYC, most people in other parts of the country are unfamiliar with their unique ownership structure.</p> <p>In a co-op, the entire building is owned by a single corporation. Instead of a deed, buyers get shares (stock certificates) in the corporation, and a proprietary lease that allows buyers to occupy a specific unit and lays down the rules and rights much like a lease in a rental building. &nbsp;(In fact, technically speaking, buyers of co-op apartments are referred to as &ldquo;tenants&rdquo; or &ldquo;shareholders,&rdquo; not &ldquo;owners.&rdquo; ) &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p><strong>CONDO:</strong>&nbsp;Buying a condo is very much like buying a single-family house. &nbsp;You get a deed to the apartment that gives you ownership of the interior of your unit and the surface of its walls, as well as an undivided interest in the building&rsquo;s common elements. This is the type of ownership almost everyone has in mind when they think about buying a home, and almost all newer buildings are condos.</p> <p>After you buy your apartment, you will largely find that the legal ownership structure has little impact on your use of it. However there are a number of quirks related to each that will be discussed further below.</p> <h2>Co-op and condo boards</h2> <p><strong>CO-OP:&nbsp;</strong>&nbsp;Shareholders elect a volunteer co-op board that--except in some very small buildings that choose to save money by self-managing--works with a property management company to oversee the care and maintenance of the building.</p> <p>The board also creates and enforces rules about everything from renovation inside units, to what&rsquo;s allowed to transpire on the roof deck, to whether you can speak on your cell phone in the lobby, or whether dogs will be allowed in the building. &nbsp;The board can levy fines against rule-breakers and, unlike condo boards, can even evict an extremely disruptive shareholder and force them to sell their apartment.&nbsp;</p> <p>Overreaching, power-hungry co-op boards are the stuff of legend here, and many of the stories are true. At least as many co-op boards are made up of volunteers with full-time jobs and families who try to make the best of what is a demanding and time-consuming role if done right.</p> <p><strong>CONDO:&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong>Condo owners also elect a board of directors that perform many of the same functions as a co-op board. Generally speaking, though, most condo boards tend to be more hands-off when it comes to rulemaking. &nbsp;</p> <p>That slightly more laissez-faire approach is partly due to philosophical underpinnings (more on that below) and partly because condo boards wield less enforcement muscle: They can fine owners only for the expense related to any rule infraction (or get an injunction to stop it from happening again). But because a condo owner actually owns his or her unit,&nbsp;a condo board, unlike a co-op board, can&rsquo;t evict an owner from an apartment.</p> <p>Note: In both co-op and condos, your voting power increases with the size of your apartment.</p> <h2>Monthly charges and assessments</h2> <p><strong>CO-OP: &nbsp;</strong>Co-op shareholders pay a monthly maintenance fee. Part of the fee goes toward the expense of operating the building. The other part is the amount of property taxes apportioned to each shareholder based on the number of shares assigned to each apartment. &nbsp;Particularly these days, when property taxes and fuel costs are rising sharply, maintenance fees are frequently adjusted upward each year (3%-7% annual increases are quite common).</p> <p>In addition, co-op boards can require shareholders to pony up extra cash from time to time to boost the reserve fund or pay for a specific project. &nbsp;In a 40-unit building, for example, an assessment to replace an elevator might run $8,000-$15,000 per unit, depending on how many shares you own. Typically, shareholders can spread their payments out over a period of time such as 6-18 months.</p> <p><strong>CONDO: &nbsp;</strong>The monthly charges in a condo building are referred to as common charges. Property taxes are not included; individual owners are billed directly by the government. This is an importance nuance to keep in mind when comparing carrying costs of co-ops to condos, because at first glance, condos may look cheaper on a monthly basis.</p> <p>Like co-op boards, condo boards also levy assessments when necessary.</p> <p>Monthly charges in both co-ops and condos tend to increase with the expansiveness of amenities and staff. However, larger buildings have economies of scale when it comes staffing and operation that are often reflected in lower common charges.</p> <h2>Approval to buy</h2> <p><strong>CO-OP:&nbsp; &nbsp;</strong>We&rsquo;ll go into more details about&nbsp;<a href="">the approvals process below</a>, but for now, let&rsquo;s start with the fact that a co-op board can turn down a buyer for any lawful reason. And because the reason need not be divulged, this means that in practice, unlawful reasons (race, religion, profession, sexual orientation, nationality, etc.) may also prompt a rejection. (Note:&nbsp;<a href="">If you buy an apartment directly from the sponsor</a>, you will not need board approval at all.)</p> <p><strong>CONDO: &nbsp;</strong>For various reasons, most condo buyers these days are subjected to nearly as much financial and personal scrutiny as co-op buyers. But rather than being turned down outright, pretty much the worst that can happen to a condo buyer is that they wither away on the vine while a board engages in deliberate stalling tactics. Stalling is about all an unenthusiastic board can do, except for buying the place outright via the right of &ldquo;first refusal&rdquo;&mdash;which virtually never happens.</p> <h2>Minimum downpayment and liquid assets</h2> <p><strong>CO-OP:&nbsp;</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;Most co-ops require buyers to put down 20-25% of the purchase price, about the same as what most lenders require these days. &nbsp; But the range can be vast, depending on the co-op&mdash;anywhere from 10% down (very rare) to 50% or more at higher-end buildings.</p> <p>Co-ops also expect you to have sufficient money left over (also known as &lsquo;liquid asset requirements&rsquo;). The required amount can range drastically, from a few months worth of maintenance payments to 1 to 3 times the purchase price of the apartment. Two years worth of mortgage and maintenance charges is about average.</p> <p>In addition, each co-op will expect you to meet a debt-to-income ratio, usually around 25%-29%. That means your total monthly payments--mortgage and maintenance--cannot exceed the specified percentage of your gross income. An excellent credit score is also required.</p> <p>Add them all up, and you will find that the average co-op's financial standards are much higher than the average mortgage bank...a primary reason NYC co-ops withstood the recent recession so well.</p> <p><strong>CONDO:&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong>The typical downpayment required in a condo building is around 10%, depending on the building&rsquo;s bylaws. Bear in mind, though, that if you&rsquo;re getting a mortgage, banks these days often require 20%, unless the building qualifies for an FHA loan, which carries a 3.5% downpayment requirement.</p> <p>Many co-ops and condos these days require buyers to put an additional one to two years of common charges in an escrow account as insurance against nonpayment. The odds of this happening to you increase along with the perceived 'riskiness' of your application, as measured in debt-to-income ratio, U.S. citizenship status, or a variety of other factors.</p> <h2>Cost</h2> <p>NYC co-ops are cheaper, on average, than condos. &nbsp;In the second quarter of 2013, for example, condo buyers forked over an average of $1,381 per square foot in Manhattan, approximately 40% more than co-op buyers, who paid an average of $983 per square foot, according to the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. (The firm's reliable quarterly market reports,&nbsp;<a href="">available for free online</a>, show pricing trends by size and type of apartment as well as by borough.)</p> <p>Part of the reason co-ops tend to cost less is because they are typically older, lacking the bells and whistles of the tens of thousands of new condos constructed in the past decade. Many newer condos have also secured property tax abatements that enable developers to command higher sales prices than if buyers had to pay full tax bills right away.</p> <p>Another reason co-ops are cheaper is that buyers usually must be approved by a board. That process involves a mountain of paperwork, a personal interview, the possibility of rejection, and the total (and totally one-sided) opening of your financial kimono to folks you will share the elevator with for years to come.</p> <p>In addition to higher purchase prices, condos also have substantially higher closing costs if you&rsquo;re taking out a mortgage: You will pay a mortgage recording tax of 1.8% of the mortgage amount for loans under $500k or 1.925% for loans above that. &nbsp;Also, your lender will require you to buy title insurance, which costs about .5% of the purchase price. &nbsp;</p> <p>(Note: The New York State legislature is trying to extend the mortgage recording tax to co-op purchases as well.)</p> <p>If you're buying a new condo (versus a resale), transfer taxes (1.825% of purchase price for properties over $500,000, and 1.425% for properties under $500,000) are also your responsibility, though these can often be a point of negotiation with a developer, who is more apt to cover fees like this than reduce the sales price, which can affect future sales.</p> <h4>RELATED STORIES</h4> <ul> <li><a href="">How often do co-op maintenance fees go up? Do they ever go down? &raquo;</a></li> <li><a href="">Ask an Expert: How much should maintenance fees affect the price of an apartment?&nbsp;</a><a href="">&raquo;</a></li> </ul><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Here's Why Your Landlord Might Not Renew Your Lease Fri, 06 Sep 2013 10:04:00 -0400 Craig Roche <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="brownstone, ues, talent resources, bi, dng" width="480" /></p><p>Most market-rate leases in NYC are for one year. As their leases approach expiration, I&rsquo;ve noticed that I see my tenants less frequently, presumably because they&rsquo;re afraid that if they are too enthusiastic (or visible), I&rsquo;ll nail them with a punitive rent increase. &nbsp;Though this may be news to tenants, this isn&rsquo;t how most small landlords operate.</p> <p>The first question that I always ask myself is, &ldquo;Do I want to renew your lease?"</p> <p>There are lots of good reasons not to renew your lease even if you are a good tenant. Maybe I&rsquo;m planning to sell the building, and the new buyer may want it to be vacant. Or maybe I need to do major renovations, and I can&rsquo;t do them with a tenant in place.&nbsp;</p> <p>In these cases, there isn&rsquo;t much that you or I can do. &nbsp;I&rsquo;ll allow the tenants to stay on month-to-month leases, provided that they put up an additional deposit to guarantee that they&rsquo;ll leave on time, which I&rsquo;ll use to pay my lawyer if they don&rsquo;t. &nbsp;</p> <p>I&rsquo;ll also work hard to find them alternative apartments with landlords in my personal network (providing incredible references to the new owner for them), and sometimes I&rsquo;ll forgive the last month if they&rsquo;ve been very cooperative and flexible -- after all, if I can keep the apartment rented right up until closing on the sale of the building, I&rsquo;ll do a lot better than if the renter moved out earlier in the process.</p> <p>On the other hand, if I don&rsquo;t offer to renew your lease, it sometimes means that I really want you out. &nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Why I might not renew your lease&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p>You haven&rsquo;t paid regularly, or have lost your job, and I suspect that you will blow through your savings quickly. &nbsp;I don&rsquo;t use guarantors, because my tenants tend to be older and more established. Plus, I feel that trying to collect from a guarantor is more trouble than it's worth. And if you don&rsquo;t have a job and I have to sue you, it will show up on your credit, which many employers now check prior to making job offers, so it will be even harder for me to get paid. Bottom line: if you can&rsquo;t afford to live in my building, please move before I have to evict you.</p> </li> <li> <p>You are difficult to deal with. &nbsp;My house is not a hotel, and I&rsquo;m not your servant. &nbsp;I&rsquo;ve got a difficult job too, and if you aren&rsquo;t prepared to deal with that, perhaps you should find a full-service building. &nbsp;Likewise, if you are a wise-ass and start spouting talk about lawyers and tenants&rsquo; rights, I&rsquo;ll raise your rent so high that you&rsquo;ll get the message. &nbsp; In my building, we&rsquo;re a team, and if you don&rsquo;t cooperate, I won&rsquo;t either.</p> </li> <li> <p>You aren&rsquo;t taking care of the apartment, or are annoying to the other tenants. &nbsp;Basically, if you clomp around, make a mess that attracts vermin, create floods, don&rsquo;t recycle, or play music loudly, you aren&rsquo;t worth keeping around. I work really hard to curate my tenants and ensure that everyone gets along, and I don&rsquo;t want one bad tenant driving out the other good ones.</p> </li> </ul> <p><strong>Figuring out the right rent increase</strong></p> <p>Once I&rsquo;ve decided to renew your lease, the only questions are &lsquo;how much&rsquo; and for &lsquo;how long&rsquo;. Unlike larger landlords, my goal is not to bleed your wallet dry, or to make you indifferent about staying versus moving. &nbsp;Before I offer you a lease renewal, I&rsquo;ve carefully considered the following factors.&nbsp;</p> <p>Competitive rents in the neighborhood:&nbsp;I check with my small-landlord neighbors, visit open houses, look on Craigslist, follow the NYC Rent Guidelines Board, and talk to local brokers. Trust me &ndash; I know the market much better than you do, and my goal is to provide you with a good, but not great deal.&nbsp;</p> <p>Inflation:&nbsp;&nbsp;I generally start thinking about rent increases in the range of the actual inflation rate. &nbsp;Note that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is what you hear about in the media, tends to underestimate the true rate of my cost inflation &ndash;- the CPI includes a lot of cool electronic gadgets like IPads and computers that get cheaper and better each year, while everything else (e.g. my plumber) gets more expensive.&nbsp;</p> <p>Taxes, renovations, and repairs:&nbsp;&nbsp;Because I&rsquo;m keeping my rents below market, I&rsquo;ve got a fair amount of leeway in how much rent I can charge without having you threaten to go someplace cheaper. &nbsp;If my taxes and expenses have gone up, or if I&rsquo;ve renovated your apartment or provided new services, I&rsquo;ll raise your rent a bit more than usual.</p> <p>Your performance review:&nbsp;&nbsp;I give discounts to really good tenants -- I really want them to stay. &nbsp;I&rsquo;d rather give a $50/month break on rent to a cooperative tenant than have to take days off from work dealing with a less helpful one.</p> <p><strong>A few negotiating tips</strong></p> <p>When it comes to negotiating with your landlord, renewing your lease isn&rsquo;t like buying a banana at the supermarket &ndash;- you&nbsp;can&nbsp;negotiate. &nbsp;Just bear in mind that if you are dealing with a small landlord like me, who keeps his rents low, you probably aren&rsquo;t going to get very far asking for a further discount, and you may well encourage him to make a higher offer next year by trying. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>You might be able to sign a longer-term lease, however, or to get your landlord to commit in writing to additional upgrades, repairs, or painting. &nbsp;In my case, my tenant and I agreed to split a Community Supported Agriculture farm-share subscription (we get a giant bag of vegetables each week and we rotate picking it up and parceling it out) and to give him a guaranteed renewal at a fixed price.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>I also installed in new hotel-style shower-bars and retractable clotheslines because I thought that they were a cost-effective way of improving the tenants&rsquo; apartments.</p> <p>To give a concrete example: This year I determined that most small landlords were charging roughly 12-20% more than I was, notwithstanding the bloodsucker down the block who gets 30% more, but has a two-month vacancy every year when his tenants discover this and move. &nbsp; I estimated that my costs had gone up roughly 2.5%, and that I&rsquo;d added new services that cost .4% per year, and I&rsquo;d added some features to the tenants&rsquo; apartments to make them nicer, the depreciation of which was worth roughly 1%/year. &nbsp; So I asked for (and got) 4% increases from most tenants, and gave the best tenant a 1.5% discount off the list price.&nbsp;</p> <p>All tenants renewed. And now that the cycle of lease renewals is over, they've all come out of hiding, and all is well in our building.</p> <div><hr /> <div><em><a href="" target="_self">Lessons from a Small Landlord</a>&nbsp;is a bi-weekly column penned by a real-life NYC landlord whose pseudonym is Craig Roche.</em></div> </div><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 13 Lessons I Learned From Buying My First New York Apartment Tue, 06 Aug 2013 17:08:03 -0400 Elle Bee <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="apartment" width="480" /></p><p>After two years of on-and-off again looking at 60+ apartments, two attorneys, three brokers, and two co-op board applications, what did I learn? Here are a few takeaways I am happy to share...</p> <ol> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I wish I had gone to a &ldquo;first time buyer&rdquo; seminar so I could manage my expectations, understand the lending opportunities available, and really get a handle on whether I wanted a coop or a condo. (Even if you don&rsquo;t want to drill down to the fine detail, it&rsquo;s good to understand the lingo.)</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Understand what you can live with and what you can&rsquo;t. For me, living in a neighborhood with real street life turned out to be priority number one. I also learned that I was willing to sacrifice a little bit of space for a lot more light.</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If you're looking to buy on your own, it really, really helps to have a friend come with you. They will see the defects you don&rsquo;t and they will point out the possibilities you don&rsquo;t see. I still marvel that my friend, Chris, showed up for nearly every appointment. And helped me move, too.</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Find examples of what you like in your price range and find a broker who understands that. If a broker shows you more than three places that are not to your liking, either have a come-to-Jesus meeting or get a new broker.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">My advice on open houses: Unless you enjoy blood sports, I recommend trying to see things by appointment-only when possible. It was too stressful seeing the same people on the circuit, putting a face on the &ldquo;competition&rdquo; and being herded through the Sunday afternoon cycle. The minute I saw someone pull out a tape measure at an open house, I felt like I wanted to make an offer.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">DO NOT, under any circumstances, use a friend, relative or a friend of a friend as your broker or attorney. It makes it hard to be &ldquo;tough&rdquo; with them when they&rsquo;re not meeting expectations. It also allows them to feel like you can be on the back burner because as a friend or relative, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll understand&rdquo; when they&rsquo;re too busy to respond.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Get a handle on what those extras really cost. I started out with $300K as the top of my range. In short time, for &ldquo;only&rdquo; $25K more, I could have an extra window or built-in closets. For $35K more, a renovated kitchen. By sticking to my price range and being willing to consider modest renovations, losing a closet or window, trading in a rooftop view for a street view, I ended up spending $240K for my apartment. And, when I add in another $30K for renovations, I&rsquo;ll be right in the middle of my range and with an apartment pretty much to my specifications.</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Do not succumb to pressures to make offers beyond what you&rsquo;re comfortable with&mdash;either financially or time-wise.&nbsp;</span><a href="">Henri-Enrique lost me as a customer</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;when he called at 10:30 on a Sunday night demanding I make an offer or lose the Washington Heights apartment (coincidentally, I ended up a block away!).</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Call the listing broker on defects you see during showings. That huge water stain or crack in the ceiling did not happen overnight. If you see issues like that, if the building looks shabby and the maintenance is high, get the reasons why. If the broker can&rsquo;t (or won&rsquo;t) find the answer, move on, because something&rsquo;s probably shady.</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Understand all the deadlines and mark them on a calendar. No one was more shocked than me to have to prepare a co-op application overnight because my broker and attorney &ldquo;forgot&rdquo; to remind me&hellip;. After all, they both said, the date was in my contract. Yep.</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Have a real understanding of the commitment involved. For me, that meant knowing that I could not only afford my mortgage and current maintenance, but also having enough money left over after closing for insurance, repairs and renovations. Once you kiss your landlord goodbye, you&rsquo;re on your own.</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The smallest, most friendly building might not be the one for you. As much as I loved the idea of getting to know all of my neighbors, I knew that major capital improvements to a small co-op meant few people to shoulder and share the costs of any improvements and special assessments. In the end, I opted for a larger, less charming building that had already done the major projects and that had 120 shareholders to shoulder future costs.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As soon as you are in serious looking mode, get the financial pre-commitment letter and if you are considering a co-op, start building your package. I did this by organizing folders for financial documents (more complicated for me as a freelancer with boatloads of documentation) and alerting potential references&mdash;even drafting letters for them.</span></li> <li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There&rsquo;s lots of advice out there for succeeding in the coop board interview--stay upbeat, appear animated, be yourself, etc. I never worried about it because as a journalist, I was used to getting along with New Yorkers from all walks of life. And, even after 60+ apartments, I was still optimistic about finding my home. And, that showed.&nbsp;</span></li> </ol><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> The Most Common Insurance Claims Among New York Renters Aren't What You'd Expect Tue, 30 Jul 2013 09:39:00 -0400 Gotham Brokerage <p dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src=" shot 2011-09-14 at 3.51.00 PM.jpg" border="0" alt="dog bark" />If you&rsquo;re like many people, you think that renter&rsquo;s, co-op and condo insurance is mainly for theft and fires. &nbsp;</span></p> <p dir="ltr">But according to&nbsp;<a href="">New York City apartment insurance broker Jeff Schneider of Gotham Brokerage</a>, vertical dwellers are far more vulnerable to other types of mishaps including bathroom overflows, dog bites, and leaks from PTAC a/c units.</p> <p dir="ltr">&ldquo;Burglaries and fires happen,&rdquo; says Schneider, who helps customers file around 500 claims a year, &ldquo;but they are relatively rare in comparison.&rdquo;</p> <p dir="ltr">Here are the top three claims, including the average amount of each claim (or, if you don't have the insurance, the amount you&rsquo;ll pay out of your own pocket):</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>1. &nbsp;Sink, tub, and toilet overflows</strong></p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Average claim size: $5,000-$20,000</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;This is far and away the primary type of claim we see,&rdquo; says Schneider. &ldquo;Kids leave things in toilets or sinks that clogs them up or people just forget the water is running.&rdquo;</p> <p>One recurring scenario involves buildings that stop the water temporarily to do&nbsp;maintenance&nbsp;work on&nbsp;pipes. &nbsp;</p> <p>Forgetting the water is off, &nbsp;"residents turn on a faucet, then turn it in the wrong direction to turn it off and go out all day,&rdquo; says Schneider. &ldquo;That happens pretty often. And if you&nbsp;leave&nbsp;the house at 9 a.m. and let steaming water run all day, it can warp&nbsp;floors, ruin artwork and more or less melt your bathroom&nbsp;walls.&rdquo;</p> <p>Overflows can damage the apartment below as well, and depending on where the water hits&mdash;an unused closet versus a custom painted wall hung with expensive artwork&mdash;claims frequently range from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand dollars, says Schneider.</p> <p><strong>2. &nbsp;Dog bites</strong></p> <p><strong>Average claim size: &nbsp;$10,000</strong></p> <p>If your dog bites and injures someone, and you are sued, apartment insurance will typically cover it. (Note: Some insurers will not cover you if you own certain supposedly aggressive-breed dogs.) &nbsp;</p> <p>The risk that your dog will bite goes up in the close confines of vertical living like, say, an elevator.</p> <p>&ldquo;We see a number of claims involving children bitten while petting someone else&rsquo;s dog in an elevator,&rdquo; says Schneider.</p> <p>The amount of a claim &ldquo;might be a few hundred dollars for medical expenses like stitches or injections,&rdquo; says Schneider--or much more.</p> <p>&ldquo;Wherever somebody is bitten, they always turn out to be a model for that part of their body&mdash;a hand model, a leg model, etc.,&rdquo; he says, half-kidding. &nbsp;&ldquo;A child who receives a facial scar, even if it&rsquo;s not disfiguring, could be awarded several hundred thousand dollars.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>3. &nbsp;Leaky PTAC units</strong></p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Average claim: $5,000, with a range between $2,500 and $150,000.</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">PTAC units (which stands for Packaged Terminal Air Conditioner) are heating and cooling units mounted radiator-style beneath windows. &nbsp;</p> <p>&ldquo;In the summer, when the a/c is turned on, these units use cool water and generate water flows from condensation. The water is supposed to be drained away but the drains often clog with dust or mold,&rdquo; says Schneider. &ldquo;Instead of being transported away, water will overflow for quite awhile before being noticed. Floors will start to buckle and water can be absorbed into your wall, ruining paint, wallpaper, and plaster--and water can run into the apartments beneath.&rdquo;</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re a renter, the cost of repairing the floor usually falls on your landlord. &nbsp;If you own, you may be able to replace a part of the floor. Sometimes, in order to match it, the entire floor may need to come up, which could cost $5,000-$50,000, says Schneider.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Hey Parents — Here's What You Need To Know About Renting An NYC Apartment For Your Grown Kid Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:27:00 -0400 Roland Li <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="new york city brooklyn brownstone" width="480" /></p><p>After years of making college tuition payments, parents of newly minted college grads may find themselves facing another test this summer: Helping their kids find a New York City apartment.</p> <p>We've already covered the basic of&nbsp;<a href="">buying an apartment for your grown kid</a>; today, BrickUnderground offers some tips on renting one. Here's what you need to know:</p> <p><strong>Best neighborhoods &amp; buildings for "shares"</strong></p> <p>Due to the high price of NYC real estate, an apartment suitable for roommates--a.k.a. "shares"--will not necessarily have a 1-to-1 ratio of bedrooms to humans. Doubling, tripling, and quadrupuling up and in many cases subdividing space (more on that below) is the name of the game here.</p> <p>However, not all buildings are "flex-friendly." Some landlords and management companies don't want the extra wear and tear on the apartment and--when repeated on a widespread scale--on the building itself that occurs when four adults share a space meant for one or two. Others are wary of their building taking on a post-college dorm atmosphere.</p> <p>Neighborhood-wise, &nbsp;if you're looking in Manhattan, the areas of Murray Hill and the Financial District have many share-friendly buildings. (See also&nbsp;<a href="">10 of the Best NYC Neighborhoods for Recent College Grads.</a>)</p> <p>In general, high rises are often more friendly to sharing than walk-ups.&nbsp;One indication of whether a building looks favorably on roommates is its policy on the use of temporary walls to subdivide and reconfigure a space. &nbsp;</p> <p>For more info on sharable apartments, see&nbsp;BrickUnderground's&nbsp;<a href="">6-Step Guide to Renting a NYC Apartment with Roommates</a>.</p> <div> <p><strong>Splitting up an apartment</strong></p> <p>These days, permission to install&nbsp;<a href="" target="_self">temporary walls</a>--long used to subdivide a pricey apartment into bite-sized pieces--is harder to obtain from the Buildings Department and landlords following the deaths of two Bronx firefighters who responded to a fire in an apartment with illegal temporary walls.</p> <p>One alternative is to use&nbsp;<a href="">&ldquo;bookshelf walls&rdquo; or "wardrobe walls"</a>&nbsp;which don&rsquo;t extend all the way to the ceiling and are therefore likely to be considered furniture rather than a wall. Be sure to check with the landlord or managing agent in the building to see if such modifications are allowed. Do it before signing a lease, and don't take a broker's word for it.</p> <p><strong>Roommate issues</strong></p> <p>If your child is planning to live with a roommate, he or she should sign&nbsp;<a href="" target="_self">a notarized agreement</a>&nbsp;with the person whose name is on the lease.&nbsp;<span>These agreements are legally binding and can be used in small claims court in a worst case scenario.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>"A sublessee or a roommate should certainly have a written agreement, and the primary tenant should should make sure he or she either witnesses the other person signing it or has the agreement 'acknowledged' by a notary so the agreement can be used in court, " says&nbsp;<a href="" target="_self">real estate attorney Steve Wagner of Porzio, Bromberg &amp; Newman</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sometimes the lease-holder will add in provisions about smoking, pet limitations and other preferences, and those too are legally binding, says Wagner.</p> </div> <p><strong>How to save money</strong></p> <p>One of the biggest places to save is by reducing or avoiding a broker's fee, which traditionally amounts to 12-15% of a year's rent.</p> <p>Summer is the most difficult time of year to find fee-less or "no fee" apartment, but it's not impossible.</p> <p>Begin your search online with one of the resources listed in&nbsp;<a href="">The 8 Best Websites for Finding a No-Fee Apartment in New York</a>. &nbsp;For best results, go guerrilla. Put on your walking shoes and scour your ideal neighborhoods for "for rent" signs. Chat up doormen. Reach out to your personal networks through email, Facebook, co-workers, and alumni groups. Get hold of a&nbsp;<a href="">list of management companies</a>&nbsp;and call them up to ask about upcoming availabilities that may not be listed anywhere yet. &nbsp;(See &nbsp;<a href="">"How I Found My No-Fee Apartment"</a>&nbsp;for real-life examples of guerrilla tactics.)</p> <p>You can also look for a "low fee" apartment. &nbsp; Rental search site&nbsp;<a href="">Naked Apartments</a>, for instance, you can search for "low fee" apartments only, which pulls up no-fee listings as well as apartments with broker's fees of 0-9%. &nbsp; Or you can find a a broker who charges a lower-than-normal fee. &nbsp; BrickUndergrounders can take advantage of corporate rates--typically around 10% of a year's rent--offered by&nbsp;<a href=""></a>, a referral network founded by a pair of young Yale grads inspired by the dismal and expensive rental experiences of their classmates and colleagues.&nbsp;</p> <p>In addition to saving money on a broker's fee, you can focus your search on certain types of apartments. Elevators and doormen are two things you'll pay a premium for in a New York City rental. While a doorman is nice, it's not always necessary. Some New York City buildings have remote doorman systems or full- or part-time security guards that could also be good options (and will likely bring rental prices down).</p> <div>&nbsp;<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 1.5em;">Walk-up buildings, meanwhile, tend to be cheaper than elevator buildings; it is not uncommon to save hundreds of dollars per month by forgoing an elevator.</span></div> <div><strong style="color: #222222; line-height: 1.5em;"><br /></strong></div> <div><strong style="color: #222222; line-height: 1.5em;">The guarantor game</strong></div> <p>If your child doesn't earn an annual income of 40-45 times the monthly rent, they'll likely have to put down a hefty deposit (often in the 4-6 month range)--or you'll need to act as a guarantor,&nbsp;&nbsp;providing documentation that your annual salary is 80 times the apartment&rsquo;s monthly rent, which works out to around $120,000 for a (cheap!) $1,500 per month Manhattan studio.&nbsp;</p> <p>Guarantors don't need to be at the lease signing, but they need to send pay stubs, tax returns, a letter of employment and sometimes submit to a background check. If you're self-employed, a letter from a licensed public accountant and proof of taxable income will be required to confirm salary. &nbsp;</p> <p>Most landlords will accept only one guarantor per lease--so if your child has roommates, you will be on the hook for the entire rent, not just your kid's portion.</p> <p>If that's not very appetizing, or if you don't earn enough to meet the requirements or simply don't want to complete the intrusive application process, many landlords will accept&nbsp;<a href="" target="_self">Insurent Lease Guaranty</a>--an institutional guarantor that&nbsp;can act as a guarantor for a fee of around 80 to 110 percent of a month's rent.</p> <p><strong>Timing it right</strong></p> <p>When it comes to New York City rentals, the early bird doesn't get the worm. The market is so fast and competitive that apartments are typically available only 30 days in advance of the occupancy date.</p> <p>For the lowest prices and least competition, it&rsquo;s best to search for an apartment during the winter--from November through February--says&nbsp;<a href="" target="_self">real estate agent Shannon Aalai of Citi Habitats</a>. &nbsp;Inventory is higher and rents are typically at their lowest.</p> <p>That timing doesn't often work out well for students who graduate in May, but if you live close enough to New York that your child could live at home for a few months, you may want to encourage that.</p> <p>No matter what time of year it is, parents (and their kids) are encouraged to begin looking at listings about a month in advance of the move-in date.</p> <p><em>Related posts:</em></p> <p><a href="">8 ways to get more space for less money in a NYC apartment</a></p> <p><a href="">How to Rent a NYC Apartment</a></p> <p><a href="">Find a roommate online: Six websites that do the heavy lifting for you</a></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p>