The Broker That Never Sleeps

Ladies & Gentlemen -

The #EV3 2BR wait is over.  We are now QUIETLY MARKETING the 2BR’s in 58 E 3rd Street.  Call NILE for a private viewing (917-453-4526) BEFORE these units hit the “Public Market.”

This article, written by Joyce Cohen was featured in the New York Times section, labeled ”The Hunt” is about a family who sold their apartment and then purchased in Harlem.  My former colleague and close friend, Donna LaPerla of Corcoran, represented them on the sale and on their purchase.  Here’s the story:

“Twenty years ago, Nuna Alberts and Richard Kashuk moved their family from a Greenwich Village rental to a three-bedroom two-bathroom co-op nearby.

The market then was soft. “Our lawyer told us it was a bad investment,” Ms. Alberts said. Friends insisted “we were crazy, because nobody was buying real estate in New York, but we said, ‘This is where we want to live.’ ” The purchase price was $265,000. “Even for the time, it was cheap.”

Last year, with their elder daughter, Reesa, out of college, and their younger one, Eva, entering high school, they decided to downsize. Their monthly maintenance was inching up, to $2,400 a month. Though a porter did some cleaning and trash removal, the building was self-managed, with no reserve fund.

“Everybody had a job,” Ms. Alberts said. “My husband was the standpipe inspector. He had to get a license.”

But mostly, they worried about the expansion that New York University planned across the street, which would mean years of construction. Parking was sure to become difficult, and Ms. Alberts, a social worker and an editor, needs to drive to New Jersey several days a week. A garage would be an added expense.

So last summer the couple had their apartment staged to prepare it for sale. “It was beautiful,” Ms. Alberts said. “I said, ‘We could have lived like this for 20 years!’ Everybody who came to the open house knew about the construction, and nobody seemed to care.”

They listed the place for $1.695 million, but a bidding war brought $1.853 million.

“I suspected it was going to sell fast,” said their agent, Donna LaPerla of the Corcoran Group. “But I didn’t think we would have an accepted offer in less than a week.”

The family wanted a condominium with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Their price range topped out at $600,000. The hunt was “beyond depressing,” Ms. Alberts said. “I was so shocked by how expensive apartments were, because I hadn’t had to think about it for 20 years.”

In Chelsea, a tiny fourth-floor walk-up was listed for $485,000 — and the agent said higher offers were coming in.

So the couple turned to Harlem, where they found “very good value and really nice apartments,” Mr. Kashuk said. The location was convenient to Eva’s school in Midtown East. Whenever they drove up, they quickly found street parking.

At a walk-up brownstone condominium on West 126th Street, the top-floor apartment was available. It came with roof rights, which was exciting, because they would be able to garden. The couple offered the asking price of $475,000; monthly charges were just over $500. But the owners ended up accepting a previous bid.

This development greatly relieved a colleague of Ms. Alberts’s. “She said, I can’t tell you how many times I couldn’t discharge people from the hospital because they were in walk-ups,” Ms. Alberts said. She and Mr. Kashuk, both in their 50s, realized stairs could eventually become a problem.

A block away, on West 127th Street, an apartment with just over 1,000 square feet was on the market for $619,000. Monthly fees and taxes were in the $700s. A small balcony overlooked the street.

“I don’t mind a balcony in the back,” Ms. Alberts said, but a front balcony meant “everybody is walking by and looks at you.” The place later sold for $630,000.

Next up was an apartment in a former hotel called the Olga overlooking Marcus Garvey Park on West 120th Street. They all loved the narrow layout, which took full advantage of the 900 square feet. The price was $495,000 if fully renovated; negotiable if purchased “as is.” Monthly fees were around $1,100. But the conversion to condominiums was nowhere near complete; the units wouldn’t be ready for months. (The apartment is now in contract for $495,000.)

In any event, they were scheduled to see a duplex at a building on Fifth Avenue and 127th Street, recently converted to condominiums.

A duplex? “When I heard it was a duplex,” Eva said, “I was sold.” She had a hunch she would have a floor to herself.

All three were drawn to the handsome Beaux-Arts building, which Mr. Kashuk, a music therapist and former radio D.J., remembered passing by when he had run in marathons.

One duplex, with 1,800 square feet — almost too big — was $770,000. Another had 1,400 square feet, the same as their Village place, and had the requisite two bedrooms and two baths. The price was $535,000. They didn’t hesitate; the final sale price was $468,000. Monthly fees and taxes are almost $1,300.

The family, along with their dog, Nillie, moved in over the winter. With Eva downstairs, “I think we interact a little less,” Ms. Alberts said. “When you all live together on one floor, you naturally have to interact more, so that is something I miss.”

She used to be able to wave goodnight to Eva. Now, sometimes she texts her goodnight.

The neighborhood is less lively than they are accustomed to, especially after dark. “It’s a super-residential area,” Mr. Kashuk said, “and there are streets of apartments, apartments, apartments.” They used to be able to run across the way to a 24-hour supermarket. Now they plan major excursions to Fairway at 130th Street, or Ms. Alberts shops in New Jersey.

But there are advantages to the calm, which is broken only by an occasional siren. “Other than that,” Mr. Kashuk said, “you don’t have any idea you are in the city, so I feel I am in the country in terms of sound.”

Before, near night life and noise, “we were able to get used to it, but here we didn’t have to get used to anything.”

Source: NY TIMES, BY JOYCE COHEN

56 Leonard Street (aka Jenga Tower)

A recent post from Bloomberg.com by Ohsrat Carmiel reinforces the sentiment we’re feeling across the board with the hot sales and luxury market in Manhattan.

Manhattan apartment prices climbed in the first quarter as buyers competed for properties amid the biggest inventory decline in more than a decade.

The median price of all co-ops and condominiums that changed hands in the three months through March 31 rose 5.9 percent from a year earlier to $820,555, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report today. Purchases rose 6.3 percent to 2,457, even as the number of properties on the market plunged 34 percent, the most in more than 12 years of record keeping.

“The defining characteristic of the housing market is a lack of supply, and that’s why we’re seeing upward pressure on prices,” Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel, said in an interview.

Prospective buyers, spurred by record-low interest rates and apartment rents that are poised to surpass their 2006 peak, are finding little to choose from. Owners are in no rush to list their homes in a market where prices have remained relatively flat for three years, according to Miller. Those who bought during Manhattan’s market peak and saw their values drop in the slump may not have built up enough equity to sell, he said. The supply of newly constructed units is also thin, after builders halted projects following the credit crisis.

In the first quarter, 17 percent of all deals were at or higher than the asking price, Miller said.

Tax ‘Hangover’

Other reports issued today on the Manhattan sales market showed a decrease in the median price because of a decline in super-luxury sales, following a frenzy to offload property in the fourth quarter before an expected capital-gains tax increase this year. Sales for more than $10 million declined 47 percent to just nine deals, said Gregory Heym, chief economist at Terra Holdings LLC, owner of brokerage Brown Harris Stevens.

“It’s a hangover from the fourth quarter, with the tax law changes that were coming,” he said. “It’s a mistake to look at this and assume that prices are declining or stagnant, because that’s not what’s going on in the market right now.”

StreetEasy.com, a property-listings website, reported a 27 percent jump in the number of listings where sellers increased their initial asking price. Buyers signed more than 3,000 purchase contracts in the first three months of the year, the highest of any first quarter since 2008, when StreetEasy began tracking the data, said Sofia Song, vice president of research.

‘Frustrated Buyer’

This “is the year of the frustrated buyer,” Song said. “You have all this pent-up demand, people who have been holding back, watching the market, watching our site, ready to pounce.”

A separate report from the Corcoran Group said inventory slid 26 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 6,225 homes. It was the eighth straight year-over-year decline.

On the Upper West side, the median price of condo resales climbed 20 percent to $1.26 million, while co-op resale prices rose 4 percent to $730,000, Corcoran said.

Prices declined on the Upper East Side, with the median for previously owned condos falling 3 percent from a year earlier to $975,000, Corcoran said. Co-op prices dropped 17 percent to $726,000, as lower-priced studios and one-bedrooms made up more than half of all sales, according to Corcoran.

“Since the East Side is home to so many luxury co-ops, it saw a significant effect from the decline in high-end sales in the first quarter,” Brown Harris said in its report.

Luxury Listings

Listings for luxury apartments, the top 10 percent of all sales by price, didn’t decline as sharply as the broader market as owners were inspired to try their luck after record prices paid for co-ops and condos in 2012, Miller said. Luxury listings fell 15 percent to 1,025, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said, while the median price of completed deals fell 2.7 percent to $4.02 million.

Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire founder of SAC Capital Advisors LP, is seeking to sell his 10,000-square-foot (930- square-meter) duplex at One Beacon Court for $115 million, two people familiar with the matter said last week.

A triplex penthouse at the Pierre hotel that belonged to Martin Zweig, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash, is also on the market, for $125 million, the New York Times reported March 29.

In new developments, the inventory of apartments fell 42 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said. The median sale price climbed 36 percent to $1.33 million.

Two Days

Dottie Herman, president and chief executive officer of Douglas Elliman, was interested in purchasing a two-bedroom condo at Extell Development Co.’s Helmsley Carlton House, which began showing units to prospective buyers on March 28. Herman arrived two days later to have a look.

“They were gone,” she said of the two-bedroom units, most of which were listed for $4 million to $4.5 million and have two full baths and views of Madison Avenue.

“The best time to buy was last year,” Herman said of the Manhattan apartment market. “But at this point, if you’re seriously looking to buy something, people know it’s not going to get cheaper.”

CREDIT:  From Bloomberg.com by Ohsrat Carmiel

Dallien Realty Senior Associate Laura Rubin represents purchaser of 40 E 84th Street apartment #2D!  Karen Connolly of Douglas Elliman represented the seller.  The purchase price was at $3,450,000 and Miss Rubin states, “That because of the hot sales market, the apartment sold at the ask price.”  This sale represents the first of many by Miss Rubin and Dallien Realty!  Congratulations!

Call Nile at 917-453-4526 for more information or to set up a private viewing.