Why is everyone calling it a railroad flat? I thought a railroad flat meant rooms bumped right up against each other without hallways.

I don't mind this layout at all, only the size of the rooms and the price and the walk up and the brick.

Posted by: zuleika at November 4, 2009 2:33 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 32 Willow Place, #9

It's nicely redone, but the space is small and ordinary, and the ceilings in this building are not very high, as I remember. I'm guessing $400K at most.

Posted by: zuleika at October 28, 2009 3:33 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 200 Congress Street, #1A

ewwww. what a horrible apartment. Not enough windows, and not in the right places. And the photographs don't do it any favors. Makes it look like the ceiling is about 6 feet high.

Posted by: zuleika at October 20, 2009 12:07 AM in response to Co-op of the Day: 2 Grace Court, #4T

ewwww. what a horrible apartment. Not enough windows, and not in the right places. And the photographs don't do it any favors. Makes it look like the ceiling is about 6 feet high.

Posted by: zuleika at October 20, 2009 12:03 AM in response to Co-op of the Day: 2 Grace Court, #4T

Seconding Mopar:

I saw this apartment last weekend. It's small and feels shabby, and it's a long walk up.

I've been looking to buy for a year now, because I do have a sizable downpayment nest egg lying around, from selling another apartment. I could afford to spend $520K if I stretched, which I won't.

But who in his right mind would buy a place now when you can rent a better place for so much less?

Prices will have to come down drastically across the board before anyone rational chooses to buy over renting.

Posted by: zuleika at October 8, 2009 12:13 AM in response to Co-op of the Day: 25 South Oxford Street, #5

Of course you can sell or give away a perfectly good used mattress -- on Craigslist. That's where I bought our current mattress, and how I gave away and sold others.

No one with bedbugs would sell a mattress, obviously, but I would raise the issue anyway to make sure that they have never, ever had them -- even at a previous residence.

Posted by: zuleika at September 25, 2009 6:15 PM in response to Recycling an Old Mattress?

A mortgage broker told me there is a difference between a pre-approval and a pre-qualification. One is first-level and sort of general, and one is specific to a particular property (?).

Is this correct? I was preapproved for a certain amount, but then he told me I should go on and get pre-qualified, too. Is that necessary?

Posted by: zuleika at September 16, 2009 10:57 AM in response to Pre-Approval Amount?

Please elaborate or link to the story regarding the "human remains" found in Fort Greene?

(And where is Walworth Street?)

Posted by: zuleika at September 11, 2009 12:25 PM in response to Crime Down in Fort Greene, Despite Unease

I saw them last fall, and from the inside, they're not as nice. The kitchens overwhelm the living space; there's no separation. It's a busy corner and with those huge windows, I felt as if I'd be living on the street corner.

Posted by: zuleika at September 9, 2009 12:47 PM in response to Checking In On 587 Washington Avenue

The LR/DR is too small, the rest of the apartment is nothing special and not so large either, and the maintenance is insane. I don't know why anyone would pay more than $550 for it.

(And an elevator operator in this century? Is there someone on staff also to polish the spittoons and trim the candlewicks?)

Posted by: zuleika at July 16, 2009 11:22 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 35 Pierrepont Street, #3B

Umm, free speech? He's a public figure, after all. I don't the Secret Service gets involved with grocery store advertising!
People use Jesus and MLK Jr. and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to sell stuff -- why not Obama?

Posted by: zuleika at June 29, 2009 5:47 PM in response to Closing Bell: Obama Pitching Myrtle Deli

@woodys: If I am remembering correctly from my surfing of Craigslist last night, there are more than a few 2BRs at around $2000 -- $2100 (some w/heat and hot water included) in Park Slope, plus some just across 4th Ave in Gowanus and Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill. If you go to Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights or PLG, the rents are another $500 lower.

Posted by: zuleika at June 23, 2009 1:47 PM in response to Apartment for Rent at Meier's OPP

Rents all over are dropping. We've been paying $2500 a month to rent a 2BR that's big and reasonably well-located, but that has little else going for it.

Now I'm seeing that in prime neighborhoods you can get an equivalent apartment for $2000 or around two-thirds the monthly payment it would cost to own it (mortgage plus maintenance). And that's not even counting your having sunk $70 or $100K into a downpayment.

I think the uneven ratio between sale prices and rents shows that the former still have a long way to fall.

Posted by: zuleika at June 23, 2009 11:50 AM in response to Apartment for Rent at Meier's OPP

Mopar: Where do you find foreclosed-upon houses that are available for sale? NYT? thanks, Z.

Posted by: zuleika at May 15, 2009 12:03 AM in response to Townhouse in Williamsburg

@Heather (if you're still reading Monday's thread):

Nobody's "circling the wagons" or talking about sealing the borders or having a closed economy. We all want to be able to continue to live well, and it would be not at all pleasant to exist without oranges or olive oil or coffee.

The point is that we may not have a choice at some point -- oranges and olive oil may become such expensive luxuries again that we'll have them much less often.

In the meantime, supporting local agriculture is not an either-or proposition. Buying locally grown foods doesn't rule out continuing also to buy foods that cannot be grown locally -- for as long as they're available.

For the people who live in far-off places that export foods to us, again, this is not about anyone *choosing* to opt out the "global economy." It's about distributors and importers finding it too expensive to continue -- or being forced to mark up prices to a point at which people with average incomes in the U.S. won't be able to afford them every week.

Posted by: zuleika at April 22, 2009 12:58 AM in response to Real Estate: The New Obscenity?

@basement:

Being wrong about one thing doesn't mean one is wrong about other things. In any case, Y2K problems were averted by preventive actions that were taken in part because of the alarms raised by Kunstler and others. And peak fossil-fuel energy and attendant economic and social instability is a fact of our times, as former Energy Secretary James Schlesinger and other non-controversialists have warned.

Energy prices are low for now, but China and India's growing demand combined with depleting oil fields and absence of sufficient other economically viable sources of oil mean that at some point, the s*** will hit the fan and oil prices will climb.

The moment at which this begins to affect daily life, in particular the food supply (American industrial agriculture is dependent on fossil-fuel inputs, for fertilizer and transport to market over thousands of miles) -- whether it's this year, or next year, or five years from now, I don't expect any pundit to be able to predict precisely -- only that it will happen sooner rather than later. Kunstler and others have been the few observers who weren't drunk/asleep at the wheel in seeing this and the fak-wealth crisis coming down the pike.

@Heather, buying and selling locally made products and home grown food is what makes local economies exist. Do you think the rest of the world is going to keep sending us cheap goods on our worthless promises of payment? Obviously no one is going to stop buying coffee from Guatemala as long as we can get it. It would be nice if we could keep getting most of our food trucked in from thousands of miles away, but it may not be economically supportable, in which case I am sure everyone will prefer "locovorism" to hunger!

Posted by: zuleika at April 20, 2009 11:40 PM in response to Real Estate: The New Obscenity?

@ basementalist:

Kunstler dislikes what the newer suburbs and exurbs have done to the American landscape.
He loves cities and has never predicted their death, but says that the biggest cities inevitably will shrink to some degree in the absence now of a phony-money economy.

Kunstler warned about the credit-caused economic collapse at least several years ago, before Nouriel Roubini and others, I believe.

The fact that he doesn't like the look or the social fabric of far-out suburbs has nothing to do with his analysis of why they are economically insupportable. As he notes, the suburban build-out was entirely dependent on borrowed wealth. That's a fact.

One gets further by assaying his arguments and evidence, I think, than by making an ad hominem attack on his aesthetic and social preferences.

Posted by: zuleika at April 20, 2009 5:14 PM in response to Real Estate: The New Obscenity?

from www.kunstler.com, James Howard Kunstler's weekly column:

"The truth is that we're comprehensively bankrupt, and no amount of shuffling certificates around will avail to alter that. The bad debt has to be "worked out" -- i.e. written off, subjected to liquidation of remaining assets and collateral, reorganized under the bankruptcy statutes, and put behind us. We have to work very hard to reconfigure the physical arrangement of life in the USA, moving away from the losses of our suburbs, reactivating our towns, downscaling our biggest cities, re-scaling our farms and food production, switching out our Happy Motoring system for public transit and walkable neighborhoods, rebuilding local networks of commerce, and figuring out a way to make a few things of value again.
What's happened instead is what I most feared: that our politicians would mount a massive campaign to sustain the unsustainable. That's what all the TARP and TARF and PPIT and bailouts are about. It will all amount to an exercise in futility and could easily end up wrecking the USA in every sense of the term."

Posted by: zuleika at April 20, 2009 12:40 PM in response to Real Estate: The New Obscenity?

The Corcoran listing put up by AnneReal has "SOLD" stamped on it. What gives?

Posted by: zuleika at April 10, 2009 2:32 PM in response to Open House Picks: Price Cut Edition

I'm guessing that a lot of real estate agents who read Brownstoner are inflating the prices on the widget. It's in their interest individually and collectively to do so.

I saw the apartment on Sunday, too, and was disappointed, despite some of the nice details.

First, the bedroom on the parlor floor overlooking busy 8th Avenue is absolutely untenable.

Just as bad, there are security bars on every window. It would feel like living in an expensive (and rather gloomy -- not much sunlight) cage.

Posted by: zuleika at April 7, 2009 6:18 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 32 8th Avenue

Otis posted that there is also a house that went for sale across the street (17) 2 weeks earlier for $650k. The house had a fire and has been vacant for several years.

I googled it and didn't find the for-sale listing (has anyone seen it?), but did come upon this passage from "Capote," by Gerald Clarke.

Clarke writes that in October 1946, to escape his mother's prying, Capote left their upper East Side home at 1060 Park Avenue to "as far away from her as he could get" -- what Capote described as "a little lost mews in darkest Brooklyn."

Clarke writes, "For the sum of ten dollars a week, an astonishingly low figure even in 1946, he was able to rent two sunny rooms. Filled with enough Victoriana to make even George Davis envious, the house, at 17 Clifton Place, in the Clinton Hill section, was clean, well heated, and as quiet as a church." But he stayed only a couple of months, it seems. "By December he and his mother had reconciled...although he kept his rooms at Clifton Place for most of the winter, he also spent many nights at 1060 Park, where a measure of quiet had returned."

Posted by: zuleika at April 6, 2009 9:28 PM in response to House of the Day: 20 Clifton Place

Tybur6, the windfall you cite (and year!) illustrates the bubble, not housing as a sound investment over time. Historically, according to the analysis I read (in a money magazine, or the NYT Sunday business section), housing is not a great investment.

Posted by: zuleika at April 3, 2009 1:46 AM in response to Co-op of the Day: 325 Clinton Avenue, #11E

Yes, it is a pretty story that 11217 tells. If only it were all the story.

To quote: "Some of you REALLY underestimate the mortgage interest deduction, especially in the first few years of buying a home. This place with 20% down comes in at $2100 a month, before the deduction, and probably around $1800 with."

But as a poster above notes, the mortgage deduction goes away if you lose your job (just when you most need it).

And as no one else has observed, the 20% down represents a sizable opportunity cost. You could take your $70K (20% down and closing costs) and invest it elsewhere in something that might actually earn you an annual return of 3 or 4% (at a minimum).

Did anyone else see the recent essay (in the NYT?) elaborating how housing historically just does not generate a return?

I like a couple of the Clinton Hill apartments that I've seen, but I don't believe that an apartment, especially, is a great place to park a lot of your money unless you really don't need to be earning anything on it. And you can get stuck in a co-op with rising maintenance costs year after year.

Posted by: zuleika at April 2, 2009 12:11 AM in response to Co-op of the Day: 325 Clinton Avenue, #11E

Corcoran's map has the building on Ocean Avenue, right across from Prospect Park. Much more appealing, though open-house-goers looking for it there will likely be distinctly irked.

Posted by: zuleika at March 24, 2009 12:55 PM in response to The Caroline Launches on Ocean Parkway

Corcoran's map has the building on Ocean Avenue, right across from Prospect Park. Much more appealing, though open-house-goers looking for it there will likely be distinctly irked.

Posted by: zuleika at March 24, 2009 12:53 PM in response to The Caroline Launches on Ocean Parkway

Thanks, Mopar. I think that comparables are selling for about $500 now. I thought maybe I should factor in an expected fall in price of 20% or so, too.

But probably I should just wait another few months and see if the apartment is still on the market.

Posted by: zuleika at March 9, 2009 3:06 PM in response to Making an Offer?

So, what would be an "offensive" bid on a high-maintenance apartment that's been cut from $550 to $520K -- would it be insane to bid what I can actually afford, which is about $380?

Posted by: zuleika at March 9, 2009 1:51 PM in response to Making an Offer?

So, what would be an "offensive" bid on a high-maintenance apartment that's been cut from $550 to $520K -- would it be insane to bid what I can actually afford, which is about $380?

Posted by: zuleika at March 9, 2009 1:49 PM in response to Making an Offer?

I agree, it would be great to have the smallest sales listed, too -- or maybe just the nicest-looking sales in the under-$650K listed.

Posted by: zuleika at March 3, 2009 12:19 PM in response to Last Week's Biggest Sales

I've seen these, and the interiors and finishes are rather awful. I wouldn't want to live in one of these, even if I could afford to!

Posted by: zuleika at February 23, 2009 1:52 PM in response to Condos of the Day: 417 Park Place

It's a nice apartment, but small. I think this is a 2007/2008 selling price, not a 2009 one. Whoever bought it will be gnashing his/her teeth six months from now.

Posted by: zuleika at February 6, 2009 12:17 PM in response to 147 South Oxford #3C Sells for 7 Percent Under Ask

I deleted my first comment accidentally. I think nobody's going to pay $769K and $1200+ monthly maintenance in this market for cramped (12 foot wide) LR with bad light, an awkward DR with little light, some cheap looking finishes, and only one bathroom. You could rent something better for considerably less than that (combined maintenance and mortage payment), and earn small interest on the downpayment saved in a CD at the same time.

Anyway, I wouldn't want it at $550K.

Posted by: zuleika at February 5, 2009 2:05 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 2 Grace Court, #6G

oops, I see mention of a roof garden, and the BR does have a window. still wouldn't want to live there.

Posted by: zuleika at February 5, 2009 1:29 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 2 Grace Court, #6G

oops, I see mention of a roof garden, and the BR does have a window. still wouldn't want to live there.

Posted by: zuleika at February 5, 2009 1:28 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 2 Grace Court, #6G

I'm confused about interest rates.

The Corcoran web site links to Manhattan Mortgage Finder, which continues to cite 6.5 as an interest rate.

Is that correct?

What are the current typical mortgage interest rates in New York? Do they vary depending on whether you're buying a co-op, condo or single family house?

Posted by: zuleika at January 29, 2009 3:00 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 30 Ocean Parkway 2 BR

I have good credit, a stable job, and 95K in savings to use for a down payment and closing costs. My partner makes enough to contribute another $1300/mo, but wouldn't be on my mortgage application. I pre-qualified for a 500K mortgage in August.
We are paying $2500 in rent; our lease is up in August. I've been looking at apartments, but this thread is making me interested in looking for a two- or three-family house instead in Bed Stuy.
How do you find out about and bid on foreclosures? Does anyone know a real estate agent or lawyer who can walk you through that? (Or maybe I should wait six months and see how far prices fall? I don't want to wait to the point that interest rates start going back up.)
And does anyone know if the houses on Hancock and Decatur mentioned by other posters are in foreclosure?

Posted by: zuleika at January 9, 2009 7:09 PM in response to Open House Picks

I suspect wishinone is all wet! People who can afford to buy a $700 thousand or $1M apartment are not going to settle for one bathroom.

Show me the sales, wishinone!

Posted by: zuleika at December 14, 2008 1:01 AM in response to Condos of the Day: 502 1st Street

Who is going to pay $795,000 for an apartment with only one bathroom?

Posted by: zuleika at December 8, 2008 11:56 PM in response to Condos of the Day: 502 1st Street