You got it, What. We'll give you a tour. Just contact us. Let's end this war and break some bread at Third & Bond.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at June 18, 2009 12:52 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 88

Mr B., I think your anti-Admiral's Row bias is clouding your remarks. As the interlocutor with Mr. Catsimatidis, I heard him say clearly that there were 2 types of supermarkets, the 10-12K supermarket for residents within a 4-5 block walking radius and 20-25K+ supermarkets that were more of a destination. Putting on my hat as a Board member of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I felt reassured listening to him that there wouldn't be redundancies between these 2 sites.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at May 8, 2009 5:20 PM in response to Catsimatidis Talks 202 Myrtle

JoeBushwick;
It's a lot of work to do these posts for 1 project, let alone multiple developments. However, we're very excited about our Bushwick rehab conversion. There's some info on our website at www.hudsoninc.com under New Projects.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at December 4, 2008 2:42 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 64

I'm curious how this collection of individuals is going to get a construction loan. Banks like to look at credit and guarantees. Who's going to be the deep pocket the bank looks to when things don't go well?

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at December 1, 2008 1:35 PM in response to Utopia in the City

Good list, Mr. B. I would have added somewhere to your 50 (in no particular order):
Dan Rice, Jehovah's Witnesses (they still have a lot to do/sell/develop)
John Sexton, NYU (their merger with Poly is going to have huge impact)
DeBlasio/Yassky
Tim King/Chris Havens/Brian Leary

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at October 24, 2008 1:59 PM in response to Number 1: Bruce Ratner

For starters, most of you need a time out.

As for some substantive comments;

Mr. Hancock, we look all over for development projects and are currently developing in Pike County, PA, New Haven and 5-6 sites in Brooklyn as an example of some of our projects. If you've got a great project, send it our way.

Guest 2:50, here's our math: The appraisal came in at $75/sf, with a 12% tax rate, the fully assessed rate will be approximately $9/sf/year or $0.80/sf/month which equates to $900. However, if you want to buy the unit for $2 million, please contact us.

Guest 4:49, we could do an 80/20 condo to retain 421-a, but we would lose 20% of the value of the project. Thus our comment that, if working backwards, the land value would suffer a 20% decrease.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at April 25, 2008 2:34 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 34

1:45, I think I confused you. We only pay $50K for a cap, a ceiling on interest rates. If we agree to a collar (cap & floor), we pay nothing.

2:01, I asked the guru, he replied that if the bond market starts to believe that the fed will lower the federal funds rate more than expected, than 2 year rates could fall. In June, 2003, the 2 year swap rate was as low as 1.5%. Woe!

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at March 6, 2008 8:58 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 27

The plan is for the super to be part-time.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at February 28, 2008 2:21 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 26

Here’s a lighting round/rapid response to today’s fans & detractors:

11:55, We actually think these issues are kinda interesting.
12:00, ESB wasn’t profitable for decades, so hopefully we’ll do a lot better than ESB.
12:18, These are not single family homes. The condo is an advantage for numerous issues of efficiency, such as having a super.
12:20, how long this is taking? Usually, we assume it’s at least a year to design/finance/bid/permit a project. We started working on this site in June 07.
Trudylou, we’re on schedule.
Johnife, I think you’re right, there’s no sheet rock on the job quite yet, it’s always better if foundations & structural work precede sheet rock.
12:33, never say ever. Things can get a lot worse.
12:37, Alison’s a she, David’s a he, we take turns writing this in a unisex style. But thanks for the compliment all the same.
12:50, Will be worth zero once…..guest 12:50 purchases 3 units
1:11, we said from Week 1 that we hoped that this would be educational for the Brooklyn community and that a by-product of this weekly work (which is not insubstantial) would be free publicity to a great focus group. We don’t need our offering plan approved, see the caveat above from our lawyers
1:59, thanks
2:03, waiting for Mark Burnett to call
4:33, good question, we’ll ask our attorney when he gets back from vacation
5:33, thanks honey, I’ll be home soon.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at February 21, 2008 6:39 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 25

Do I plan to lie when estimating common charges? Definitely, after I finish cheating on my taxes.

It's not exactly a win-win for a developer to establish artificially low common charges and then deal with angry residents. It sours every other conversation, and I think credibility still counts for something these days.

Most of the line items we don't even calculate ourselves. The utility expenses are calculated by our engineers using their usage estimates. The insurance estimate is provided by our insurance broker. We focus on staffing & payroll, repairs, maintenance, etc. In fact, if you ask the J Condo residents, we purposefully used conservative union-scale wages in our estimates so that there wouldn't be an increase if the staff went union.

Finally, if the 421-a process is properly handled, buyers should expect to pay the taxes based on the Schedule A "Taxes with 421-a" and this amount should not change significantly because it should be based on the prior tax assessment from the year prior to the start of construction.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at February 14, 2008 6:06 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 24

12:37--We pay for all the marketing costs. As soft costs go, we spend far more on architectural & engineering fees. For brochures, we've spent as little as $10K and as much as $40K. We'll save money on floor plans on this project since there are only 5 primary floor plans to produce. We've currently budgeted $75K to produce (not design, that's a separate cost)all our marketing materials, from brochures and floor plans to bridge signage, stationary & baseball hats. We're currently making T-shirts: "Third & Bond...Endorsed by Mrs. Limestone" You can pick them up at the same place they make those Brownstoner sweatshirts.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at January 31, 2008 2:09 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 22

Re: guest 12:40, it's not that different than buying something with a brand name versus trying something different to save money. There's a risk/reward analysis that you have to consider, ie a huge savings in cost will pay for a lot of Tylenol if things don't go smoothly. The reason we initially met Wachovia in 2000 when they were First Union is that they gave us a great term sheet we couldn't refuse; it was so materially better than other bank offers that it was worth trying out First Union. If the rate had only been 10 basis points better, we probably wouldn't have switched to a new lender.

Re: guest 3:17, my advice would be to drive around your neighborhood looking for other new construction sites for smaller projects, sometimes the bank name is on the construction fence, or you could pull over and ask. The names that come to mind are Commerce, WaMu, Bank Leumi, North Fork.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at November 15, 2007 8:27 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 14

We'll stay away from the raging debate about capitalism, only to say, good point 11:44 and your numbers are way off, 12:38.

Now to focus on HVAC:

We didn't spend a lot of time considering water source heat pumps since they require a cooling tower. It's a more elaborate system that makes sense for much larger projects, such as J Condo where we used them.

We looked at heat coils. If the source of the heat coil is electric, it's prohibitively expensive. If the source is hot water, we thought fin tubes would do a better job of heating the spaces, reaching the perimeter of the apartments, and it's better if the heat vent is low down and not up at the ceiling level.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at September 27, 2007 2:29 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 7

And here we thought everyone was going to focus on tubs versus showers. To put in my own 2 cents to supplement Alison….

“Who wants an office with no windows?” Plenty of people. I’ve seen the “home office” used as a library, media room, storage room, and dare I say it, home office. I even have a friend who has 3 kids living in a home office.

“Light won’t stream through a deck.” Agreed, we’ll have to pick some mesh material for the deck that will allow light through to the lower level.

“I wouldn’t pay $700K for this unit.” One comp would be the lower duplex in the L3 Condo on Luquer Street. In those units, the lower level is only a rec room and 2 fixture bath. Those 3 units initially sold for $1,050,000 to $1,095,000. One of those units recently resold for $1.5 million. That’s how we came up with the range of prices for the online poll.

“Our neighbors have us by the balls/we’re doing an end run around the code.” We’re waiting for the Scarano analogies. The big difference here is that we’re counting the lower level as FAR (floor area). If the space is considered a freebie and not utilized as FAR, the limitations cited would apply.

“Third & Bond = New Orleans.” We have plenty of engineering to help us out that may or may not be comparable to other flood-worthy situations: a bathtub foundation, sewer ejector pit, detention tank, a continuous trench drain along the back of the buildings, and perhaps most important for this location, our lines drain into a 72” storm line on Bond Street that has a steep pitch. Having said that, there will always be concerns that are not unique to Third & Bond about what happens when the City’s systems shut down. We’re curious whether any of the problems noted in today’s comments are directly connected to the 72” Bond line.

Posted by: David from Third and Bond at September 20, 2007 8:42 PM in response to Inside Third & Bond: Week 6