Discussion

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

With an eye on the weak dollar, American homeowners are increasingly seeking out buyers who come not from around the block or even a nearby town — but from other countries altogether. And foreigners, hoping for a deal, are more eager than ever to buy here. The upshot: The residential real-estate market is getting a small shot of globalization.Given the fact that buying homes — and even quickly reselling them — continues at a fervid pace, it would seem that U.S. homeowners wouldn’t have to go abroad to find buyers. But in places like California’s Orange County and New York, prices have climbed so high that the pool of potential purchasers has actually shrunk — to folks who already own homes in the area and have built up equity, or who have quick access to a lot of cash. Expanding a sales pitch to foreigners, especially those whose native currency has risen against the dollar, can help pick up the slack. Another bonus: Since foreigners find it more difficult to get financing here, they tend to pay all cash.

Comment: While we don’t get the sense that many foreigners are buying in Brooklyn, there clearly is a strong spillover effect of local buyers getting priced out of Manhattan by overseas house hunters whose strong currencies make U.S. assets look cheap.
Sold in Translation [Wall Street Journal - Subscription]

A reader responded to the former post by saying that he preferred the original format with only one blog. The problem with this is that it doesn’t lend itself as well to postings by readers or to sub-topics like the renovation. On the other hand, if people only have the time or interest to be reading the main blog, then that’s certainly worth knowing from our perspective so we can better allocate our limited resources. With that in mind, we thought this would be a good time to solicit everyone’s critical feedback about what you like, what you think needs improvement and what you think is missing from the site. We are limited in our efforts by that pesky full-time job, a non-existent trust fund and our own technical ineptitude but we will do our best to make this as useful and fun a forum as possible.
Cheers and bring it on!
B’stoner

In yesterday’s discussion of brownstone tax increases, there was a request for a thread on tenant horror stories. We’ll kick it off with a nightmare scenario described by an anonymous reader:

A couple years ago, I found out too late that I’d rented to a serial tenant; everything else checked out, but she’d never paid rent for more than a couple of months, then claimed the apartment was uninhabitable, changed the locks, and played the LT system for all it was worth. There were no judgments against her. But a litigation check would have revealed multiple settlements with previous landlords who had paid her to get out, as after she quit paying rent each time, she made life so unbearable for everyone in the building (screaming at the top of her lungs all night, accusing neighbors of being peeping toms, threatening to poison pets, etc.) no landlord could wait for months in LT court to wend through the inspections and evictions – all the rest of their tenants would have left in the meantime. And every settlement had a clause compelling the landlord to give her a recommendation to her next victim. She actually owed her previous landlord $16,000 at the point I rented to her; he was just grateful she’d disappeared and never bothered to enforce the judgment because he was afraid she’d kill him if he tried.

This is why we are going to try to lease or rental unit to a friend! Anyway, please share your renter horror stories and tips for avoiding them below.

There were a couple of articles in the New York Times in December about a movement to rein in the aggressive use of facade easements by owners of historic homes looking for a tax-break windfall. The value of the easement can equal up to 15% of the market value of the house and the tax breaks can be spread out over up to six years. Call us naive, but it hadn’t even occurred to us that we could profit by promising not to alter our facade–since we already are prevented from doing so by the Landmarks regulations. Clearly that is no barrier though: Basil and Eunice Whiting got a $189,000 break last year when they promised not to alter the facade of their 1850′s town house in the Cobble Hill Historic District–and several neighbors followed suit. We’d love to hear from people who have donated easements in already Landmarked areas–and from any lawyers or tax specialists who know whether this will be fair game this year.
Rushing for Tax Breaks on Historic Houses [NY Times]
Tax Breaks on Historic Houses Face Restrictions [NY Times]
Panel Advises Ending Breaks for Easements [Washington Post]

We got an email from a reporter at the New York Times researching a story about property tax increases. Evidently there are some unhappy homeowners in Harlem who have been hit with big increases as a result of significant renovations and/or C of O changes. We haven’t heard much griping from Brooklyn brownstoners, but we’d like to know if anyone has seen this happening. According to the reporter, those with 4-family houses have been particularly hard hit.