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
I found the article to be very interesting. My husband is a born and bred New Yorker (long time apartment dweller) and I am from the midwest (house dweller) and we discuss the pros and cons of each until we are both blue in the face.
We just bought a townhouse and we are renovating it and he is already hopping mad that he actually might have to take out the trash (sort recycling) , change a light bulb, get his own dry cleaning, and call a plumber if we need one. I cannot tell you how strange it is for me as someone who was not coddled by a door man my whole life. I cannot convince him that outside of New York he would have a hard time surviving. “Dear? The toilet started running and overflowed and I almost drown because I did not know to jiggle the handle.” He he he….
But seriously I thought the article was honest about the thoughts of a lot of city dwellers. Its painful but true.
Absolutely 12:37. Reading the NYT gives the illusion that everyone in NYC is rich, and that if you’re not rich, you’re doing something wrong. My parents, ex-New Yorkers now living in CA, cancelled their subscription last year because of the increasingly superficial and bullshit content of the soft-news filler.
As I was reading that article yesterday, I had to flip back to the front page to make sure I wasn’t actually reading The Onion because it sure read like a parody.
I got a kick out of the woman who complained of the isolation her townhouse fostered as evidenced by the fact that her husband spent all his time cloistered in his study on a different floor. Sure sounds to me like her problem with her husband runs a lot deeper than her floor plan.
I am convinced by the comments from some here that there might be a fair amount more filth outside the front door in places like the West Village, but most of the whining had to do with truly inane inconveniences, which in my mind are more than made of for by the immense pleasures of townhouse ownership. Let me just say that I personally feel blessed and a tad bit guilty that I should have so much when millions of New Yorkers have real problems in terms of affording a decent place to live in the five boroughs.
this article really made me want to burmic.
funny, right before it came out, my mother (who lives in a different state) told me she has stopped reading the nyt because the non-news parts of the paper have started to feel like “life-styles of the rich & famous”. for anyone who’s ever worked their ass off to afford a shitty studio apt. on the 5th floor of a walk-up, this kind of article is a real insult.
That story was full of whiny losers. They’ll whine after they sell their houses and move into co-ops and condos, too. They would whine if they lived in HIcksville. (Actually, I would whine if I lived in Hicksville.)
I’m with ProfRobert at 10:56–brownstones are a lot more work, we give up some stuff to deal with them, but for a lot of people, it is worth it.
Also: Anybody fortunate enough to have *anyplace* decent to live in this town should shut their goddamned cakehole about how hard their lives are.
I also thought the article was dumb b/c you would assume (as with most high end real estate) that the prices aren’t rising as fast for townhouses and coops and condos b/c there is just less of a market of people with 5 million plus to spend on housing.
Everyday I become more convinced that a habitual diet of the NY Times will make you think that every Manhattanite is a millionaire whiner. Either that’s their demographic or those are their “writers”.
When I saw this in the Times, I knew we’d be having a field day today. Brenda – you said it best.
What a bunch of privileged whiners. If they really want something to complain about, try being homeless, or have your entire family live in a substandard rathole the size of their parlours. Then they’ll interact with family. These people should check out the Neediest column in the same newspaper, and make a sizable donation, and thank whatever Higher Power they believe in that they have it so good, even if you have to hose your house down daily. At least they have choices.
Having moved this year from a Manhattan, high-rise, luxury co-op to a Brooklyn brownstone, I can say there are trade-offs, but on balance I’m very glad I moved. I miss my doorman and my super, but I don’t miss the morons I served with on the board (not out of a sense of civic responsibility, but because I was afraid they’d destroy the value of my investment). I miss my river view, but I’ve quadrupled my living space (meaning I can house guests and throw big parties), and the backyard in the summer and the fireplaces in the winter more than make up for the lost river traffic. Plus, vertical living has dropped me two belt notches — whoo-hoo!