Why Townhouses Are Priced at a Discount
Between 1997 and 2006, townhouses in Manhattan appreciated at a slightly slower rate than condominiums, according to Radar Logic. The reason, according to The New York Times, is basically that a house is a hell of a lot more work than an apartment. You hate when you come home from a trip with a lot…
Between 1997 and 2006, townhouses in Manhattan appreciated at a slightly slower rate than condominiums, according to Radar Logic. The reason, according to The New York Times, is basically that a house is a hell of a lot more work than an apartment.
You hate when you come home from a trip with a lot of luggage and have to drag it up the stairs, or you’re in a huge hurry to leave and you have to run back up to the third or fourth floor dressed up in high-heeled shoes because you’ve forgotten something, said Barbara Fox, president of Fox Residential Group, who lived for two decades with her husband, James Freund, in a 7,000-square-foot town house on West 73rd Street near Central Park. And you hate when you have to have repairs because there’s always got to be somebody there to answer the door.
So, townhouse dwellers, what are your greatest gripes about non-doormaned, vertical living?
Town House Living: The Untold Story [NY Times]
Photo by Littlekim
Thank you 11:24 PM for some insights.
BTW, 12:17AM, the converse side of what you wrote: we live in a house and know our neighbors VERY well. We have friends and family living in buildings where they barely interact with (and sometimes “hate) the neighbors…or just don’t know the neighbors.
Then again, we have friends who have a townhouse in Cobble Hill who are in a battle with their neighbors…and a couple in FG who are in a similar war of the houses…
It all “just depends” I guess.
i moved from owning a 2 story house to a condo, and i have been continually surprised at how great it is to have a really wonderful group of neighbors. it probably has to do with like minded people moving into a new bldg., etc.. but my neighbors before were never anyone who i’d be friends with. it’s great if you have kids who can play together. also, our bldg is really really quiet. i never hear the people above us. have to say some of this is just luck.
This article was a FAKE.
The NY Times makes all their ad revenues in the real estate section from CONDO BROKERS and developers. Of course the NY Times is going to do all they can to stop people from wanting houses more than condos, with all those condo buildings sitting around empty and unsold.
It was just ridiculous. And this is coming from me, a person who finds owning a 100 year old house a pain in the ass at times, and who totally understands why people prefer an apartment. And even I was able to see through this article as an advertisement for condos. The true headline for this post on Brownstoner should have been, “Condo developers go negative and take an idea from the Karl Rove playbook”.
I only know about 3 people wealthy enough to own one-family townhouses in Manhattan and trust me, all these people can afford full time domestic help in their homes. People in $5-10 million houses generally can do that. The townhouse owners who are doing it all by themselves are those of us here in Brooklyn. As for the stairs and the 4 stories, there are plenty 2-story houses in Brooklyn and they offer plenty space. We have one and I wouldn’t want anything bigger. The 3 sets of stairs I go up and down now make my ass and thighs so much more toned. I went down a pant size, in fact. What’s to complain about that?
TheGrammarLady here. I just had a chance to look at the article and the online slide show. Very funny! Did anyone notice the ragged carpet on the stairs with the gentleman getting the trash together?
And the insipidness of the holiday party with the waiter?
And that posed image of the young man sweeping up in front of the house! Very funny! Looks so awkward and posed. Giving an old lady a laugh today!
It’s a bit of an adjustment to maintain a big old house after looking after the smaller spaces most of us inhabited pre brownstone ownership where your responsibility stopped at the sheetrock, if it even extended that far. For me, it was a transition in every way cited in the article. On hiring and supervising plumbers, electricians, etc, I think it is legitimately hard for most working folks to comprehend an entire segment of the service industry that feels quite comfortable not showing up for designated appointments. It is also a bit of a shocker to own a house you take great pride in, but nonetheless rack up department of sanitation tickets because someone sat on your steps, drank their coffee and threw their coffee cup into your gutter after you’d already cleaned the gutter and then departed for work. All that being said, the people quoted for the article sounded like a bunch of whiny adolescents, which I have about as much patience for as plumbers who can’t make it to my house on time. I love my place, and included in that, I love the ritual of being aware of when the city picks up recycling and garbage and putting it out on the curb. It makes me feel like a grown up, which is a sensation I think a large portion of New Yorker spend most of their time trying to avoid. So let them live in condos!
And by the way, you go Brenda and Bob!
TheGrammarLady
I’m sorry to give my two-cents this late in a thread again. I had the third entry today but felt another go might help add something to the story.
Living in a house a yard allows me to grow roses and other flowers and native plants/trees as well as fruit. I made my own preserves this fall from the yard: homemade AND homegrown.
Our past life in 10028 in a doorman building with all the frills did not afford this precious and wonderful feature, a connetion to the land.
TheGrammarLady
It’ll be interesting to see how many brownstones come on the market in 2 years, when the novelty wears off for all the recent coop and condo-bred buyers.
Right 3:14–not even with a super, a doorman, a concierge, or a personal attendant to wipe my ass–you call it being “precious”–I call it being responsible for myself 🙂