Matrix Blog

Buy a house and get a free Ferrari. Its a compelling presentation and I don’t have enough time to dig further but it gives me the creeps. They list offering prices by the developer (I assume) but show no closing prices.

You know the old saying, if its too good to be true, then it usually is…

Next property to move:

Swampland in Florida that comes with a free RV.

thanks LS!

Comments Off

The sale of unused common area can be a win-win transaction for both buyer and seller. The buyer is likely an individual apartment owner or purchaser. The seller would be the coop corporation (or condo association). As operating costs continue to rise, boards are considering other sources of income to operate their buildings and keep maintenance increases and assessments to a minimum. The sale of common area to in-house residents has become more commonplace in recent years and provides an opportunity for additional income. At the same time, apartment owners have had fewer purchase options as a result of the limited housing inventory in the Manhattan real estate market over the past five years. It may be easier for a shareholder to fulfill an immediate housing need by purchasing common space to enhance their apartment.

A typical scenario might go like this: A couple is expecting their first child and currently occupy a 1-bedroom coop apartment. They search for 2-bedroom apartment but cannot find any suitable choices in their price range with the level of amenities they currently enjoy. With the time constraints and inconvenience of moving, they approach the owner of the studio apartment across the hall. Since both apartments in this example are situated at the end of the hallway and the layout would be enhanced if the hallway is incorporated into the layout, the coop board was contacted.

The coop corporation would benefit from the capital infusion from the sale. The re-allocation of shares would result in increased revenue from higher maintenance charges paid by the shareholder in perpetuity. Both parties should seek out legal advice for matters such as the potential modification to the certificate of occupancy, zoning considerations, architectural integrity of the project, and approvals needed. Associated costs are usually paid by the purchaser. Our firm has seen include the end of a hallway between two apartments, basement storage room, a small closet adjacent to an apartment, double-height ceiling space over a basement garage, unimproved roof area, former elevator shaft and an unused rooftop water tank. How can market value of so many types of space be estimated?

Market value is defined by the Appraisal Institute as “The most probable price in cash, terms equivalent to cash, or in other precisely revealed terms, for which the appraised property will sell in a competitive market under all conditions requisite to fair sale, with the buyer and seller each acting prudently, knowledgeably, and for self-interest, and assuming that neither is under undue duress.” The sale of common area is not based on its market value, since it is not exposed to the open market and the buyer and seller are captives by its location. It usually has no practical use to any parties but the owner of adjacent apartment and the corporation. The space would not be sold to purchasers that do not own an apartment in the building or to an owner on another floor. Therein lies the problem since there is no “market” for the property. The value of the space is therefore termed “value in use” defined by the Appraisal Institute as “the value a specific property has for a specific use.” It is essentially the establishment of a reasonable relationship between the price and size of the space between the two parties.

The challenge to the board is to be fair to the purchaser yet responsible to the shareholders. The challenge to the apartment owner is to establish whether the finished result will provide additional value to the apartment, both in a financial and functional sense. As is often the case, there are usually no recent sales of common area within the subject building to use as a basis for comparison. Data on common area transactions are often not released because they are not representative of market transactions in a given building, although the release of such information would not impact market values in the building. In addition, these transfers are often combined with the purchase of an adjacent apartment.

A reasonable method of valuing common area is to abstract the relationship between actual common area sales and apartment sales within that same building on a per square foot basis. Although such transactions do not indicate market value on their own, they establish a relationship with the sales in their respective buildings. This ratio can then be applied to a representative price per square foot indicator in the subject building. This value indicator is based on the market segment the newly configured apartment will fall within.

It is important to note that the estimation of the common area value should not be subject to the actual condition of the adjacent shareholder apartment, but rather the typical condition of an apartment in the building. In other words, a shareholder should not pay more or be allocated more shares for adjacent common area based on the condition of their apartment. This is an important point and is consistent with allocation methods at the time of the conversion of the building.

Unlike the estimation of “value in use”, the share allocation should be made as if the space were incorporated into the adjacent apartment. The shareholder benefits from the additional space in perpetuity. Shares per square foot are the determinant factor because the space is usually incorporated into the existing apartment indefinitely and the shareholder enjoys an ongoing benefit. The original share allocation at conversion varies by many factors including floor level, number of bedrooms, square footage, outdoor space and view. The share per square foot ratio of other similar sized apartments on the same or similar floor levels should be analyzed and compared to the subject space.

The sale of common area can be a win-win scenario for both the coop corporation and the individual shareholder. The corporation benefits from a capital windfall and additional revenue in perpetuity. The shareholder benefits from an expanded apartment and additional value. Who says there isn’t value at the end of the hall?

Leave a Reply

After paying $15.5 million last November for a 3,000-square-foot apartment at the Carlyle, you would think the Hollywood power broker Brad Grey could rest easy knowing he had bought into a hot Manhattan luxury market.

But there is the little matter of the $455,352 a year that Mr. Grey, the chairman of Paramount Pictures, will have to cough up in maintenance charges. The storied co-op hotel on the Upper East Side, where President John F. Kennedy kept a penthouse suite, charges more per square foot in monthly fees than any other residential building in New York, according to Miller Samuel, a property appraiser.

Still, when you want the best pampering Manhattan has to offer, you find the money. Mr. Grey hasn’t been heard complaining about the $37,946 a month he has to pay to maintain his four-bedroom apartment.

After all, for the price of a new BMW each month, he gets the prestige and prized location of the Carlyle, at 35 East 76th Street, not to mention twice-daily housekeeping service, daily newspapers, and use of Frette bathrobes and 600-count Yves Delorme bedding. There are discounts on laundry, personal training sessions and room-service food and drink.

Sound like a bargain? That depends on what your priorities are.

For those willing to put down millions to own an apartment in Manhattan, a high tolerance for some of the highest monthly charges in the world is almost a prerequisite. Imagine the privilege of paying the equivalent, on an annual basis, of the cost of a new home in many parts of the country — all to ensure that you can get a cup of coffee, or a shirt ironed, at all hours of the day.

“It is a way of life that people really appreciate whose lives are quite busy and full,” said Kathy Sloane, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens who has sold apartments in the Carlyle. “They want everything to be organized for them, and they don’t ever want to question the standard.”

Aside from the Carlyle, which charges monthly maintenance fees of $10.23 per square foot on average, the buildings charging the most every month include the Sherry-Netherland ($6.03), the Lombardy ($4.24) and the Pierre ($3.37), according to Miller Samuel.

Then there are the condo hotels like Trump SoHo, which charges $7.60 per square foot, with Trump International, charging $6.72.

Some condops also rank high among the buildings whose residents are cutting the biggest monthly checks. The Mark charges $4.47 a square foot. At 995 Fifth — formerly the Stanhope Hotel — you’ll be paying $4.32.

By comparison, Manhattan co-ops charge an average of $1.70 per square foot in maintenance fees, while condos charge $1.57 a square foot on average for the common charge plus real estate taxes, according to Miller Samuel.

So what else do you get for the more than $10 a square foot you would pay at the Carlyle?

Well, there’s window-washing, heavy cleanings, bath amenities, cable television and telephone voice mail. Discounted services also include preferred pricing on treatments at the hotel’s Sense spa, and 20 percent off on parking rates in the garage.

But don’t delude yourself that you’ll get services like dog-walking, couriers and personalized flower arrangements. Those are all extra, said Jennifer Cooke, a spokeswoman for the hotel.

The full-time staff of 400 people — for the 187 hotel rooms and 51 residences — make the maintenance charges palatable to buyers, brokers said.

“You are really looking at buyers who, in order to maintain a staff in any residence that could deliver all of the things that are deliverable at the Carlyle, would have to look at spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on that staff,” Ms. Sloane said.

Brokers say they have to price apartments very carefully at the hotel co-ops. Emily Beare, a broker with CORE, said she had had clients looking to spend $10 million or less who had turned down the Pierre because of the monthly maintenance. But she said she had never had a well-heeled buyer looking to spend more than $10 million reject the idea of hotel living simply because of high monthly charges.

When a prized apartment in one of the hotels becomes available, “there is a very immediate market for it,” Ms. Sloane said. Before selling a unit in the Carlyle a few months ago, she invited a group of brokers to help her price it. “We settled on a price, but everyone said that with that maintenance, the apartment is bound to be there a long time.”

She sold it in four days, she said.

How does the Carlyle justify charging more than three times, on average, what the Pierre charges its co-op residents? Christopher Burch lived in the Pierre for about 20 years and headed the co-op board before his divorce from the fashion designer Tory Burch. He later spent more than a year at the Carlyle as well. He sees a comparable level of service at the two hotels, but says the ownership structure is different at the Pierre, allowing for lower monthly fees.

“The Pierre is a tremendous deal,” Mr. Burch said. “It’s a steal.”

Ms. Cooke said the “manner in which we charge at the Carlyle has been the same since the co-op was first formed in 1970.”

For many buyers the Carlyle’s Upper East Side address is simply more prestigious than the Pierre’s, closer to Midtown, brokers said. And some brokers claim that the elevators at the Pierre are not attended 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as they are at the Carlyle, though a spokeswoman at the Pierre says they are.

You buy into an iconic New York experience at the Carlyle. Where else can you hobnob with world leaders, rock legends like Mick Jagger and Hollywood aristocracy like Woody Allen, who performs with his jazz band at Café Carlyle?

President Kennedy was said to have sneaked Marilyn Monroe into the hotel for visits — most famously through a series of tunnels under the property — after she sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” at his birthday gala at Madison Square Garden in 1962, according to the author Nick Foulkes, in the book “The Carlyle” (Assouline, 2007). Ms. Cooke said nobody currently on staff was there in 1962, but “that is the rumor that has been passed through the years.”

That lore has value. The pampering tradition at hotels like the Carlyle has inspired developers to try to emulate much of that service experience in new condo developments like 15 Central Park West and the yet-unfinished One57.

It’s hard not to see those buildings as a bit of a deal compared with the Carlyle. The steel magnate Leroy Schecter has listed two apartments together at 15 Central Park West for $95 million. The common charge and taxes (with a 10-year tax abatement helping out) come to about $1.86 a square foot.

“Why not be in a building that is giving you everything you want and yet your monthlies don’t have to be astronomical?” asked Ms. Beare, Mr. Schecter’s broker.

Elizabeth Sahlman, a broker at Corcoran, can understand why that wouldn’t work for some.

At the hotels, “it is the twice-daily housekeeping that a lot of residents just love,” she said.

Comments Off

Gary L. Malin, the president of Citi Habitats, New York City’s largest rental brokerage firm, has seen the real estate market at its giddiest heights and its deepest despair. There should be little that surprises him. But when Mr. Malin’s company was preparing its latest analysis of the rental market, he was taken aback.

In March, the firm found, the average rent in Manhattan — now $3,418 a month — surpassed the all-time high set in the real estate frenzy of 2007. “Right now, landlords can go for pie in the sky — why not?” he said. “But when are people going to say enough is enough and look at other options?”

The last time rents shot up in a similar fashion, they were tied to a strong economy, low unemployment and booming business on Wall Street.

But this spring, Manhattan rental prices seem to be divorced from the larger economic picture. While the city has added jobs in recent months and growth in businesses like technology has helped make up for losses in the financial sector, much of country is still struggling.

That disconnect has only increased resentment levels among many tenants, already reeling from a year or more of rent increases.

“I felt trapped,” said Jaclyn Barrocas, who was recently hit with a big rent increase on her East Side apartment. “It was too expensive to move and too expensive to stay. And it feels like I am not even a person to the landlord.”

There is evidence that rising rents are driving prospective renters into the sales market. But for those who find buying a home in New York City is not an option — whether because of bad credit, tougher lending standards or lack of a down payment — the choices are limited and often unappealing.

Landlords and brokers say more and more young people are sharing, even if it means sacrificing a living room to add a bedroom or two. There has also been a surge of interest in the other boroughs, with many neighborhoods reporting record rents of their own.

Some tenants may be able to negotiate with their landlords, especially if they are long-term renters with good track records. But property owners have little reason to cut deals, because the vacancy rate in Manhattan is hovering around 1 percent.

And just 2,229 rental apartments are scheduled to be added to the market this year in Manhattan, a 30 percent drop from the average number over the last seven years.

The uncoupling of the national economy from New York rents is not typical, said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “When you see rents rising, it is usually reflective of a strong economy,” he said. “That is not the case now.”

Instead, he said, prices are being driven up by a tight credit market that forces people to stay in the rental market and limits new construction.

Some renters feeling the squeeze have resigned themselves to paying more for less.

When Ms. Barrocas, 26, first found her one-bedroom apartment with views of the East River on the 19th floor of a Murray Hill apartment building in 2010, it cost $2,550 a month. She and her boyfriend quickly signed up for a two-year lease.

With the lease set to expire in June, she recently received word that her landlord wanted to raise the rent by more than $500 a month. “I started freaking out,” Ms. Barrocas said. “It is a huge increase.”

She was not ready to buy, but she could not afford to stay in her current apartment. The landlord would not negotiate. But moving, even if she found a cheaper place, would most likely force her to shell out around $5,000 for broker fees, security deposit and moving costs.

Fortunately, a cheaper apartment was available in her building. It was smaller, had little natural light and lacked river views. But at $2,745 a month it was in her price range, and there was no broker’s fee. She made the move.

Ms. Barrocas says many of her neighbors feel similarly trapped. “People just want to leave,” she said. “I would have preferred to leave.”

Landlords like to have leases signed in the spring, when they can command the highest rent because so many people are moving for work or school. So across the city, thousands of renters are facing a similar dilemma.

Rental averages are up in every category, with one-bedrooms rising the most, by 6.5 percent over the past year, to $2,747, according to the Citi Habitats report. Studios rose 3.6 percent, to $1,953; two-bedrooms climbed by 6.1 percent, to $3,865; and three-bedrooms rose 4 percent, to $5,107.

Surveys by the other major brokerage firms show similar leaps in pricing.

Mario Gaztambide, the vice president for residential asset management of the LeFrak Organization, said interest in lower-priced neighborhoods had surged. In Queens neighborhoods like Rego Park and Forest Hills, rents are surpassing peak prices from 2007, Mr. Gaztambide said, adding that newly renovated one-bedrooms are commanding around $1,700 a month.

“The amount of rental supply that has come on the market in the last two to three years has simply not kept up with demand,” he said.

It is important to remember that New York’s rental market is not monolithic. Although the rental averages calculated by the brokerage firms are based on market-rate units, the majority of apartments in the city are rent-regulated in some fashion and are not included in the averages.

Similarly, it is hard to get an accurate snapshot of the rents that small landlords are charging, since many do not use the services of a major brokerage. Renters often find that small landlords are more willing to negotiate because they do not want to have an apartment sit vacant for a prolonged period.

Joseph Rosati, 25, and his roommates adopted a different strategy: Pay more for more.

Last year, Mr. Rosati and two friends were living in Murray Hill, paying $3,700 for a two-bedroom apartment that they had converted to three. When the landlord decided to raise the rent to $4,300 last July, Mr. Rosati decided to shop for a new place.

The group could not find anything acceptable for under $4,700. They decided that if they were going to shell out that kind of money, they might as well spend a little bit more to be in a neighborhood they liked better.

They found a two-bedroom apartment with an office at 37 Wall Street for $5,400. Although they are paying more, they are happy in their new quarters. They signed a two-year lease, fearful that they would get hit with another increase if they did not.

“I did not move to New York City to live in Hoboken or Jersey City,” Mr. Rosati declared.

Jonathan Wilf, a principal of Skyline Developers, which owns 37 Wall Street, says landlords looking to get top dollar must set their properties apart. That means renovated apartments and lots of amenities. His company also owns the building at 75 West Street. But prices there are more stable, he said, because the building is older and has not been renovated to the same degree as 37 Wall.

What would bring a halt to spiraling rents? It took a financial meltdown in autumn 2008 to topple the last rent peak. After the fall of Lehman Brothers, big landlords, able to pivot on a dime, started offering incentives like two months’ free rent on a one-year lease. Those incentives lingered until 2010.

Barring a similar event, experts say it may simply be an issue of supply and demand, and woes will ease once developers start to bring more new units to market. But for now, more pain may lie ahead: Mr. Malin of Citi Habitats said he did not expect relief for renters anytime soon. “This summer,” he said, “everyone is gearing up to push their rents until tenants say, ‘This is just too much for me.’ ”

Of course, one escape from the gut-twisting rental market is to leave it entirely.

Kimberly Kreuzberger and her husband, Bryan, both 32, were thrilled when they first moved into their loft studio at 666 Greenwich Street in March 2009.

The rent was $3,200 a month, but with the two free months they were offered, it worked out to just over $2,800. Last year, when the rent was bumped up to $3,450, they reluctantly signed on for another year. It was a lot to pay, but they loved living in one of the rare doorman buildings in the West Village.

Then they got word that the landlord was planning another increase this June. The rent would rise to $3,795.

“We were furious when we got it,” said Ms. Kreuzberger, who works in advertising sales. In the elevator, the increase was the sole topic of conversation among neighbors. “People will be like, I got hit for 13 percent, someone else 7 percent,” she said.

The couple made up their minds to move; but rents for the kinds of two-bedrooms in elevator buildings they desired would be at least $6,000 a month.

Their broker, Scott Elyanow of Citi Habitats, urged them to think about buying an apartment, and to look in neighborhoods they might not have considered.

At first, the idea of leaving the Village “was like a death to us,” Ms. Kreuzberger said.

But the more they saw of the rental market, the more convinced they became that the time had come to buy.

The couple settled on a two-bedroom apartment at 100 Jay Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn. They paid just over $1 million, putting 25 percent down, and recently moved in. Their monthly outlay is $4,250, which covers their mortgage, common charge and taxes.

“It was such a leap,” she said. “But we could not be happier.”

Comments Off

Gary L. Malin, the president of Citi Habitats, the city’s largest rental brokerage firm, has seen the real estate market at its giddiest heights and its deepest despair. There should be little that surprises him.

But when Mr. Malin’s company was preparing its latest analysis of the rental market, he was taken aback.

In March, the firm found, the average rent in Manhattan — now $3,418 a month — surpassed the all-time high set in the real estate frenzy of 2007.

“Right now, landlords can go for pie in the sky — why not?” he said. “But when are people going to say enough is enough and look at other options?”

The last time rents shot up in a similar fashion, they were tied to a strong economy, low unemployment and booming business on Wall Street.

But this spring, Manhattan rental prices seem to be divorced from the larger economic picture. While the city has added jobs in recent months and growth in businesses like technology has helped make up for losses in the financial sector, much of country is still struggling.

That disconnect has only increased resentment levels among many tenants, already reeling from a year or more of rent increases.

“I felt trapped,” said Jaclyn Barrocas, who was recently hit with a big rent increase on her East Side apartment. “It was too expensive to move and too expensive to stay. And it feels like I am not even a person to the landlord.”

There is evidence that rising rents are driving prospective renters into the sales market. But for those who find buying a home in New York City is not an option — whether because of bad credit, tougher lending standards or lack of a down payment — the choices are limited and often unappealing.

Landlords and brokers say more and more young people are sharing, even if it means sacrificing a living room to add a bedroom or two. There has also been a surge of interest in the other boroughs, with many neighborhoods reporting record rents of their own.

Some tenants may be able to negotiate with their landlords, especially if they are long-term renters with good track records. But property owners have little reason to cut deals, because the vacancy rate in Manhattan is hovering around 1 percent.

And just 2,229 rental apartments are scheduled to be added to the market this year in Manhattan, a 30 percent drop from the average number over the last seven years.

The uncoupling of the national economy from New York rents is not typical, said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “When you see rents rising, it is usually reflective of a strong economy,” he said. “That is not the case now.”

Instead, he said, prices are being driven up by a tight credit market that forces people to stay in the rental market and limits new construction.

Some renters feeling the squeeze have resigned themselves to paying more for less.

When Ms. Barrocas, 26, first found her one-bedroom apartment with views of the East River on the 19th floor of a Murray Hill apartment building in 2010, it cost $2,550 a month. She and her boyfriend quickly signed up for a two-year lease.

With the lease set to expire in June, she recently received word that her landlord wanted to raise the rent by more than $500 a month. “I started freaking out,” Ms. Barrocas said. “It is a huge increase.”

She was not ready to buy, but she could not afford to stay in her current apartment. The landlord would not negotiate. But moving, even if she found a cheaper place, would most likely force her to shell out around $5,000 for broker fees, security deposit and moving costs.

Fortunately, a cheaper apartment was available in her building. It was smaller, had little natural light and lacked river views. But at $2,745 a month it was in her price range, and there was no broker’s fee. She made the move.

Ms. Barrocas says many of her neighbors feel similarly trapped. “People just want to leave,” she said. “I would have preferred to leave.”

Landlords like to have leases signed in the spring, when they can command the highest rent because so many people are moving for work or school. So across the city, thousands of renters are facing a similar dilemma.

Rental averages are up in every category, with one-bedrooms rising the most, by 6.5 percent over the past year, to $2,747, according to the Citi Habitats report. Studios rose 3.6 percent, to $1,953; two-bedrooms climbed by 6.1 percent, to $3,865; and three-bedrooms rose 4 percent, to $5,107.

Surveys by the other major brokerage firms show similar leaps in pricing.

Mario Gaztambide, the vice president for residential asset management of the LeFrak Organization, said interest in lower-priced neighborhoods had surged. In Queens neighborhoods like Rego Park and Forest Hills, rents are surpassing peak prices from 2007, Mr. Gaztambide said, adding that newly renovated one-bedrooms are commanding around $1,700 a month.

“The amount of rental supply that has come on the market in the last two to three years has simply not kept up with demand,” he said.

It is important to remember that New York’s rental market is not monolithic. Although the rental averages calculated by the brokerage firms are based on market-rate units, the majority of apartments in the city are rent-regulated in some fashion and are not included in the averages.

Similarly, it is hard to get an accurate snapshot of the rents that small landlords are charging, since many do not use the services of a major brokerage. Renters often find that small landlords are more willing to negotiate because they do not want to have an apartment sit vacant for a prolonged period.

Joseph Rosati, 25, and his roommates adopted a different strategy: Pay more for more.

Last year, Mr. Rosati and two friends were living in Murray Hill, paying $3,700 for a two-bedroom apartment that they had converted to three. When the landlord decided to raise the rent to $4,300 last July, Mr. Rosati decided to shop for a new place.

The group could not find anything acceptable for under $4,700. They decided that if they were going to shell out that kind of money, they might as well spend a little bit more to be in a neighborhood they liked better.

They found a two-bedroom apartment with an office at 37 Wall Street for $5,400. Although they are paying more, they are happy in their new quarters. They signed a two-year lease, fearful that they would get hit with another increase if they did not.

“I did not move to New York City to live in Hoboken or Jersey City,” Mr. Rosati declared.

Jonathan Wilf, a principal of Skyline Developers, which owns 37 Wall Street, says landlords looking to get top dollar must set their properties apart. That means renovated apartments and lots of amenities. His company also owns the building at 75 West Street. But prices there are more stable, he said, because the building is older and has not been renovated to the same degree as 37 Wall.

What would bring a halt to spiraling rents? It took a financial meltdown in autumn 2008 to topple the last rent peak. After the fall of Lehman Brothers, big landlords, able to pivot on a dime, started offering incentives like two months’ free rent on a one-year lease. Those incentives lingered until 2010.

Barring a similar event, experts say it may simply be an issue of supply and demand, and woes will ease once developers start to bring more new units to market. But for now, more pain may lie ahead: Mr. Malin of Citi Habitats said he did not expect relief for renters anytime soon. “This summer,” he said, “everyone is gearing up to push their rents until tenants say, ‘This is just too much for me.’ ”

Of course, one escape from the gut-twisting rental market is to leave it entirely.

Kimberly Kreuzberger and her husband, Bryan, both 32, were thrilled when they first moved into their loft studio at 666 Greenwich Street in March 2009.

The rent was $3,200 a month, but with the two free months they were offered, it worked out to just over $2,800. Last year, when the rent was bumped up to $3,450, they reluctantly signed on for another year. It was a lot to pay, but they loved living in one of the rare doorman buildings in the West Village.

Then they got word that the landlord was planning another increase this June. The rent would rise to $3,795.

“We were furious when we got it,” said Ms. Kreuzberger, who works in advertising sales. In the elevator, the increase was the sole topic of conversation among neighbors. “People will be like, I got hit for 13 percent, someone else 7 percent,” she said.

The couple made up their minds to move; but rents for the kinds of two-bedrooms in elevator buildings they desired would be at least $6,000 a month.

Their broker, Scott Elyanow of Citi Habitats, urged them to think about buying an apartment, and to look in neighborhoods they might not have considered.

At first, the idea of leaving the Village “was like a death to us,” Ms. Kreuzberger said.

But the more they saw of the rental market, the more convinced they became that the time had come to buy.

The couple settled on a two-bedroom apartment at 100 Jay Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn. They paid just over $1 million, putting 25 percent down, and recently moved in. Their monthly outlay is $4,250, which covers their mortgage, common charge and taxes.

“It was such a leap,” she said. “But we could not be happier.”

Comments Off

…Building expenses are then passed on to homeowners in annual fees, known as common charges or homeowner-association (HOA) fees, says real-estate appraiser Jonathan Miller of New York-based Miller Samuel. The homeowner association sets the budget for a building…

According to Mr. Miller, Manhattan common charges, including real-estate taxes, were $1.72 per square foot for the third quarter of 2013, up almost 9% from $1.58 per square foot last year…

Comments Off

Is there a formula or rule-of-thumb for adjusting the sales price of an apartment to offset high monthly maintenance fees or common charges?

When a condo’s common charges (or, in a co-op, the monthly maintenance charges, which include property taxes) are higher than average, you’ll need both a calculator and a grasp of psychology to figure the right price adjustment, say our experts.

Begin by calculating the amount by which the apartment’s monthly charges exceed the average.

In Manhattan, average monthly fees in a co-op are $1.68 per square foot, says New York City real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel. (In a condo, add common charges plus property taxes.)

“That means that a 1,000 square foot apartment might be expected to have a monthly maintenance of $1,680,” he says. “However, this is just an average and apartments vary greatly by their amenities, property types and financial condition.”

Agrees real estate broker Gordon Roberts of Warburg Realty, “I’d look at recent sales in the building in relation to comparable sales in the neighborhood and see if there was any discernable differential….There may be other factors, such as condition, views, or architectural qualities that could compensate for a higher maintenance, so it needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis.”

Say that you determine that the monthly charges are about $500 higher than average. Now calculate the amount of money that could be financed with a monthly payment of $500 and apply that to the purchase price, says real estate broker Deanna Kory of Corcoran.

For example, at today’s mortgage rates of around 4% for a 30-year-fixed loan, a $500 monthly payment would enable you to borrow around $100,000. Looked at this way, says Kory, the apartment should cost $100,000 less than a comparable unit with an average-sized maintenance.

In addition, says Kory, “it’s important to note that the formula above does not account for potential tax deductible portion of each. Mortgage payments have a much higher deductibility percentage in the initial years. And while maintenance charges in a co-op include property taxes and mortgage interest for the underlying mortgage payment, the tax deductible portion is usually between 30-50%.”

Now it’s time to factor in psychology.

“Small deviations [from average monthly charges] are tolerated by purchasers without adjustment but large deviations may require an even larger adjustment than a dollar for dollar figure, as the market punishes high maintenance and common charges and rewards low maintenance and common charges,” says asset manager and real estate broker Roberta Axelrod of Time Equities.

Higher monthly charges can and often do affect value far more than the actual real cost equation, says Kory. The amount can depend on whether the real estate market overall is hot or not.

“In a strong market, the concerns of high maintenance or high common charges are not as evident, but in a weaker market, buyers consider maintenance levels more carefully,” she says.

Desirability of the apartment, its location and supply and demand factors can all be influential, she notes.

“Right now, with interest rates so low, people would rather pay more in a mortgage than have a higher monthly fixed cost–if they have a choice,” says Kory, who notes that buyers often say to her, “you can pay down your mortgage, but maintenance rarely goes down.”

Comments Off

With ample swamps, hurricanes, and alligators, Miami may not have been the most logical place to start a city. And in the early years, many people seemed to pass it by. In 1900, the population was a mere 1,000. What a difference a century makes. Today, with 2.5 million people, Miami has blossomed from a sleepy backwater to a bustling metropolis, with an insatiable urge to keep growing. And much of that transformative push, which turned warehouses into galleries, spiffed up shopping districts, and added a forest of high-rises along the water’s edge—and most significantly, unequivocally made Miami into a luxury market—occurred in just the last two decades.

To be fair, there have been stumbles. Painful busts followed euphoric booms, like the one that flattened the housing market a few years ago. And not everybody’s idea of progress is a skyline of skyscrapers. Other brokers worry that the city is becoming divided into the “have-mosts” and everyone else. Yet one could also allow that Miami’s planners, brokers, and developers might want to take a collective curtain call for their efforts, as they’ve largely proved the old real estate adage: Build it, and build it right—with attention to detail, style, and comfort—and residents will come.

“Miami has become a magical place in the last 20 years,” says Russell Galbut, a longtime condo developer who also grew up here. Two decades ago, for instance, “you could roll a bowling ball through downtown and not hit anybody,” he points out, while these days the area pulses round-the-clock with clubs, hip eateries, and coffeehouses.

Galbut, who today is managing principal of the firm Crescent Heights, became among South Beach’s largest landlords, and he continues to develop there—his 87-room Gale South Beach hotel on Collins Avenue just opened in December. But he recognizes that the center of gravity has shifted somewhat to the mainland, especially along Biscayne Bay from 36th Street to Brickell. To wit: Zuma chose downtown as the location of its first US restaurant outpost.

Similarly, consider the rebirth of Wynwood, whose warehouse-lined blocks have been enlivened with art galleries, eateries, and shops. And in a place that once eschewed foot traffic, people actually walk around there, encouraged by the bright murals that jazz up Northwest Second Avenue.

It would likely be music to the ears of late developer Tony Goldman, whose company still owns about two dozen buildings. According to real estate brokers who worked with him, Goldman—credited with the reinvention of New York’s Soho neighborhood in the 1970s—always thought that the area’s low-slung, pedestrian-friendly vibe had great potential, even if the rest of the city still believed the future was about building upward.

“I don’t mind high-rises where they belong, but I don’t think a whole city should be made up of them,” says Metro 1’s Tony Cho, a Wynwood-based broker and developer who is turning a denim factory into a Ducati dealership. But sky-high homes became a way of life in the last decade, and they remain popular, Cho points out. At Wynwood’s edge, buildings like 2 Midtown and 4 Midtown, which were built as condos but rented out many of their unsold units over the years, are completely filled up, he says.

While in the 1980s South Americans drove much of the demand for real estate, recent years have seen the arrival of buyers from other continents. There are also more full-timers than snowbirds, brokers add. When Ugo Colombo, president and chief executive of condo developer CMC Group, came from Milan to attend college at the University of Miami in the ’80s, you could count the number of Europeans “on your fingertips,” he says. Now, Colombo’s buyers also include Italians, Asians, and Russians, the post-Soviet oligarchs who are snapping up trophy homes in New York City, too; about half the sales over $1 million are estimated to be by foreigners. But Latin Americans are also still here. Brazilians seemed to come en masse in 2009 and 2010. Venezuelans, nervous about President Hugo Chavez’s socialistic reach, turned up in the past few years. Mexicans worried about crime in their country are big buyers. Plus, Argentines looking for safe havens for their cash, in the face of inflation in their native land, began picking up multimillion-dollar condos in 2012, too.

As the city has become an international magnet, Colombo has made it a point to craft interiors those new arrivals would find appealing. Projects like his 147-unit Bristol Tower on Brickell Avenue, completed in 1993, are awash in Italian marble instead of the plain tile that used to be common. “It’s stuff that everybody does now,” he says, “but 20 years back, it wasn’t so normal.”

To fully understand Miami’s journey, developers say, look to the renaissance of Miami Beach. In the 1970s, its buildings were run-down and inhabited by seniors, who had to contend with low-level street crime. But the Miami Design Preservation League, which was founded in 1976 by Barbara Baer Capitman and her son John Capitman, began to turn things around by restoring the area’s mesmerizing Art Deco architecture, with projects like the restoration of the Cardozo Hotel on Ocean Drive and advocating for historic districts.

Star turns in Hollywood and the media—in the movie Scarface, on Miami Vice, and as a backdrop for a well-known photo shoot for Calvin Klein’s Obsession—didn’t hurt its rebound either. Another factor that raised the stature of South Beach was developer Thomas Kramer’s 17-acre South Pointe project in the 1990s, which helped gentrify the area. Still, back then, a one-bedroom residence in South Beach could be purchased starting from $59,000, according to an ad in Ocean Drive’s premiere issue; today it might cost $750,000.

As the decade heated up, a gold-rush mentality set in, which often forced developers away from South Beach proper to points further north on the peninsula. Another hurdle was that increasingly assertive preservation laws in the Art Deco section made many large-scale developments off-limits.

Developers who flourished in the post-revival era of South Beach include David Martin, whose father, Pedro, emigrated to the US from Cuba in 1961 and continues to work alongside his son. The family’s Terra Group, formed in 2001, built several high-rise condos along Indian Creek Drive, near the Intracoastal Waterway, then jumped over to the Omni area as downtown picked up. Martin is now busy with projects in Doral, which was incorporated in 2003 in a testament to how Miami continues to push outward.

The city “has definitely undergone a revolution,” Martin says, explaining that cultural institutions have helped shed its beach-and-body image. Art Basel Miami Beach has drawn art buyers since 2002. In the rush to find the next cool spot, developers have not neglected historic sections. In fact, Coconut Grove, Miami’s oldest real neighborhood and perhaps its most verdant, has seen its fortunes improve in recent years, too.

Martin, for one, is now building the Grove at Grand Bay in Coconut Grove, a two-towered, 96-room condo project designed by Danish wunderkind Bjarke Ingels. Nearby, Peter Gardner, of Pointe Group Advisors, is preparing to break ground on Grove Village on Grand, a six-block mixed-use project aimed in part to spruce up the neighborhood’s shopping district, which follows other projects in recent years there. And Gardner may have a good perspective on what works. His great-grandfather, Frank Gardner, came to Florida in 1903 and built homes in Lake Alfred.

The youngest Gardner believes Miami’s new-found visibility has a lot to do with professional sports: The Heat, which came in 1988, and the Marlins, in 1993, became effective marketing tools for the city, like the Dolphins, at home and abroad. “You can probably hear 10 different languages at a Heat game if you are listening for them,” he says.

As the Heat surged anew in the mid- 2000s, developers, freshly euphoric about the city’s future, seemed to almost trip over themselves to put up condos. Leading the charge was Jorge Pérez, the billionaire founder of the global development giant the Related Group and a former local urban planner. Like mushrooms after rain, his condo towers sprang up across the region, such as 50 Biscayne and One Miami.

But the addition of about 100 towers by Pérez and others over the decade, including about 64,000 units introduced in 2006 alone, created a glut of housing that quickly outstripped demand. At the same time, a city that once unflatteringly had the reputation for “land by the gallon” real estate scams saw droves of investors buying and flipping apartments before kitchen counters were even in place, which ran up prices to unsustainable levels, compounding problems. By the end of the decade, condos sat dark and unsold. Between 2006, when housing prices peaked, and 2010, after the credit crunch, two-thirds of all sales in the city were distressed ones, according to an analysis by Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm.

Developers were hardly unscathed themselves. Pérez, for one, told Ocean Drive he lost between $1 billion and $2 billion because of projects like Icon Brickell, his opulent two-towered condo, whose struggles were typical of many projects in the last boom. As the market cratered, Pérez slashed Icon’s prices to unload its units, but in the end, lenders took back the property anyway. “Did I take a financial beating? Yes,” says Pérez, who started in 1979 with a 40-unit rehab job in Little Havana but estimates he’s developed “tens of thousands” of condos in Miami and nearby cities. “It was very humbling,” he adds.

But like a phoenix, Pérez, and the condo market, appears to have taken flight again. For starters, a surge in renters in the last few years has helped to absorb some inventory, analysts say, leading to something of a market equilibrium. In fact, dozens of new condo projects are now planned, including one from Pérez himself: One Ocean, which is to break ground in a South Beach parking lot at the end of Collins Avenue next summer. And to discourage speculative buyers at the 50-unit project, which will contain a weekend penthouse for Pérez himself, buyers will be required to chip in 50 percent of the price up front before construction even starts. “We have learned our lessons from the past,” he says. Still, Pérez is optimistic. “We are very lucky that the world looks at us as a place to be.”

Indeed, setbacks are temporary, say those who have been around Miami for decades, who observe that boom-bust cycles come with the territory. “But the booms are getting louder and more expensive,” jokes Martin Margulies, who since the 1960s has built about 4,000 condos, explaining that the overall trajectory has been positive. Margulies was also an early proponent in Wynwood; the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, his contemporary art pieces, opened in 1999.

Prices at his latest residential project, the Bellini on Williams Island—with 70 units across 24 stories, each with a private elevator—start at $1 million. But buyers will probably fork over cash. “Many don’t even try to go to the bank,” knowing that loans won’t be available for new condos, he says. Banks are still skittish about home loans, brokers add. But the wave of foreigners who are now buying homes in Miami usually don’t seek mortgages anyway, they say. Overall, Miller Samuel found that about 75 percent of all deals in the third quarter of 2012 were in cash.

For developer Nitin Motwani, a board member of the Downtown Development Authority, Miami’s biggest accomplishment in the last 20 years has been its urbanization, as it comes into its own as a city. More people are taking trains than they were before, for instance, and the All Aboard Florida rail project being considered for downtown, which would let people easily commute up and down the coast, could allow that trend to continue. Yet others say a train to Miami Beach needs to be built to make the city truly world-class.

But most importantly, developers explain, in looking across the huge swatch of neighborhoods that gleam along Florida’s southeastern tip, there’s finally a lot more there. “You have all these different pockets, with unique aspects,” Motwani says. “It’s got something for everyone.”

Comments Off

The sizzle is coming out of Manhattan and Brooklyn’s rental markets as more renters opt to become buyers.

Rents in January cooled in both boroughs, according to two real estate reports out yesterday.

The average price of a Manhattan rental apartment was $3,211, $23 less than in December, marking the fifth consecutive month of declines, according to a report from Citi Habitats.

A report from Douglas Elliman showed median rents in the borough rising by just 2.6% to $3,150, following a healthy 12-month stretch of 7.5% average annual increases.

The story was pretty much the same in Brooklyn, where the median rent was flat at $2,527.

“It looks like we are running out of gas, in terms of growth,” Jonathan Miller, CEO of appraisal firm Miller Samuel, which compiles the reports for Douglas Elliman, told the Daily News. “The march upward wasn’t sustainable.”

Rents in both boroughs are still sky high. But they are beginning to show pressure as renters like Laura Krattli decide it’s time to buy.

Krattli, a 29-year-old who works in financial services, got fed up last summer after her Manhattan landlord jacked up the rent on her Tribeca studio from $2,400 to $2,800.

“This is ridiculous,” Krattli told the News.

Krattli thought she would find lower rents in Brooklyn.

But she was surprised to see an owner at luxury Williamsburg condo The Edge renting out a one-bedroom apartment for $3,500.

With the help of Citi Habitats senior vice president Eugene Litvak, Krattli ended up purchasing a $795,000, 1,100 square foot duplex in the building, which has a 25-year tax abatement and low common charges.

“People realize interest rates are incredibly low,” Citi Habitats president Gary Malin told the News. “In many cases the buying analysis makes sense right now. People want to get on the train.”

While rents have eased, they could start to rise soon. Prices tend to go down in the winter and climb in the spring and summer.

And inventory remains tight. The vacancy rate in January was 1.37%, even with December, but up from January of last year when it was 1.3%.

“Inventory is so low, when people come to market, there is nothing out there,” Litvak said.

Some neighborhoods continue to command celeb-worthy prices.

One-bedrooms in SoHo/Tribeca, where the vacancy rate was a supertight .76% in January, went for a whopping $4,229, according to Citi Habitats.

But far less expensive apartments were available in the East Village where the average rent for a one-bedroom was $2,606 and the vacancy rate was 1.69%.

Comments Off

In New York City real estate, space is more prized than a perfect parking spot (or at least AS prized as that).

If you’re looking for the most amount of space for the least amount of money–and are willing to tolerate some potential downsides in exchange for the ability to turn around without bruising your elbows–here are a few places to look:

1. A first-floor apartment

On average, says appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel, “the price difference between a second and first floor apartment is 15 percent. The difference between a second-floor apartment and a third-floor apartment is probably another 10 percent”–meaning that the difference in price between a first and third floor apartment can be as much as 25 percent.

The reason? Market perceptions about security, privacy and street noise. “The exception, of course, would be a brownstone garden apartment,” says Miller, which will sell at a premium. The first floor in a walk-up is also a premium — think an inverse relationship of price to stairs.

When Jeff Appel, a loan specialist at Citibank, went apartment hunting recently, space was a top priority: He was relocating from the suburbs, has kids and a menagerie of pets, so he zeroed in on first-floor apartments.

“Ground floor apartments are a double whammy — not only are they a better value, but they also often can be configured to be larger apartments,” says Appel, who bought a ground-floor condo on Walker Street in Tribeca. “I have a floor-through plus basement space. My apartment is 3,600 square feet and the others in the building were 2,300-2,400 square feet.”

Appel pointed out one potential pitfall when it comes to having such a big space. “I have the single largest burden in terms of property taxes and common charges… you need to look at the economics of all of those things” before buying, he said.

Resale value, though something to think about, shouldn’t be too big an issue.

“Buyers sometimes are worried from an investment standpoint that a low floor apartment might not being good value, but as long as you were able to get the apartment for a good price that won’t be a problem for resale,” adds Dominique Punnett, a broker with Stribling

2. A post-war apartment

While it may not have the romantic cache of a pre-war or the coolness of a new development, post-wars (meaning those built during the post-World War II housing shortage) can translate into more space for less money.

“Often people who have come from larger homes and are downsizing find this the best choice to be able to achieve the highest square footage possible for their dollar,” says Neil Binder of The Bellmarc Group.

As long as buyers are not bothered about the sterile, white brick exterior and the long winding hallways, says Stribling’s Punnett, “you will get a lot more bang for your buck in a post war. I always tell my buyers when you’re inside the apartment you don’t see the exterior anyway! I’ve seen gorgeous renovations of apartments where you would never know you were in a post war building.”

All things being equal, says Miller, “which is a HUGE disclaimer,” there tends to be a 10 to 15 percent price difference between pre-war and post-war, “but the differences tend to be that pre-wars have higher ceiling height, hardwood floors versus parquet, and better soundproofing.”

3. An apartment with a slightly higher maintenance

Obviously you don’t want to burden yourself with a large, unrealistic maintenance each month, but sometimes a slightly higher maintenance can mean a lower purchase price (and down payment).

It’s a trick that can helpful for those who want more space for a little less (assuming they have consistent money coming in each month).

But, our experts say, there are several reasons to be slightly wary of high maintenances.

“Any broker or appraiser will tell you that higher monthly chages impact the value of the apartment,” says Adam Stone, a real estate lawyer with Regosin, Edwards, Stone and Feder. “You also need to be sure to look into why the maintenance is so high. It may be something innocuous, like it has twice as many staff members as others buildings. But maybe there was litigation against the building, and there was a judgment they had to pay out, or maybe there are construction issues. That’s why you need to dig deeper into the financials, and speak to a managing agent to get details.”

Also, keep in mind that most co-op boards won’t allow buyers to take on a monthly maintenance that is more than 25 percent of their income, and ”you probably don’t want maintenance and mortgage to be more than 35 percent,” says Stone.

From the bank’s point of view, Appel says, they rely on appraisers to decide whether a high maintenance is “an impediment to the apartment-achieving market price.”

As a consumer, Appel says, he’d be wary of taking on a higher maintenance in exchange for a lower price “because the discount is a one time thing and maintenance is ongoing. Also, if a property already has a high maintenance, will it become disproportionately higher?”

4. An apartment with location issues

Heading far away from public transportation (think First Avenue on the Upper East Side or Avenue B in the East Village), and on the fringe of other popular neighborhoods (like Morningside Heights vs. Upper West Side), can bring you a lot more for your money. But note that prices can vary from one street to the next.

“On the Upper East Side, for example,” Miller says, “prices go down as you go further East of Lexington, but they go right back up again when you hit East End,” he says.

5. Non-doorman building/walk-up

Those willing to live in non-doorman buildings are likely to see significant savings — 10 to 15 percent on average, according to Miller.

For those who are able to live above the second floor of a walk-up, you’ll see even more significant discounts. “The discount is almost geometric as you go up,” Miller says. “Below the fourth floor, you’re looking at a price about 5 percent less on each higher floor. Above that, it’s even more.”

Keep in mind that some lenders are reluctant to offer mortgages above the fourth floor of walk-ups. Yet the very fact that a mortgage might be a little tough to get means that you’re likely to snag a deal… especially if you’re able/ willing to pay in cash (more on that below).

6. Apartments on which banks are reluctant to lend

Sellers often offer small discounts for apartments which they know are not popular with the banks.

Examples, according to one mortgage broker who wished to remain anonymous, include brownstones, walk-ups above the fourth floor, HDFC (income-restricted) co-ops, condos where a single entity owns more than 10 percent, recent conversions where many tenants are still rent-stabilized, and anything with more than 20 percent commercial space.

“Also in buildings with a hotel component, you’re not going to get financed unless you have A LOT of money and a private banker.”

“Of course, a cash buyer is always going to get a slightly better deal,” he added.

But before you jump on one of these deals (and/or try and muster up enough money to buy one in cash), think about why the lenders are wary.

“A purchaser may have the same concerns that the lenders are wary about,” says Stone. But sometimes the issue — like a fifth-floor walk-up for a totally fit person — can be overcome despite bank trepidations,” he says.

“If you can handle that, it’s an issue that’s easily overcome. But if it’s an issue like a sponsor still owns 50 percent of units — you really need to check with a lawyer about the risks. In that case, if the sponsor/investor falls on tough times, it could negatively affect everyone in the building,” Stone says.

7. A fixer-upper

“For a period of time we were in a market where you could put a wreck on the market, and it was no drag on its value — in some cases it traded on a premium — but that has changed a lot,” says Appel. “If you’re willing to do work, that’s another way to drive value. I think people are loathe to buy what isn’t livable today.”

Also, Appel says, look for potential combination opportunities, especially when thinking about resale, since the sum of two parts is worth more than the two parts independently. “I think buyers willing to do a combination can often seen an upside in that property if they’re the ones willing to do the work (again).”

Beware of high common charges/maintenance charges though, as combinations usually result in higher charges than for a same-sized apartment that did not result from a combination. 8. Challenging layouts

Open plans are most popular with buyers these days. People want more entertaining space (meaning larger kitchens/living rooms and dining rooms) and fewer bedrooms, Appel says.

So, those who don’t mind — or even prefer — more traditional floor plans, with closed off kitchen, dining rooms and living rooms — may get a lot more space for their buck, he says.

Comments Off