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
10:41 – I was about to bring up this point too. Also, there is so much hostility between neighbors in your average condo regarding noise, hallways and common areas, renovations etc. The amount of lawsuits going on is staggering. Having lived in a condo for years I can say – there is NO comparison. Privacy is everything.
Vertical living is great because I have control of what’s happening on the floors above and below me! The kids have their own floor and so do the parents. VERY important. We all hang out together on the first floor every morning and evening. Families will hang out together if they want to, regardless of how the rooms are laid out.
what a bunch of pansys. Who changes their diapers?
How about the horror of owning a unit in a condo or coop building and being at the mercy of the people who actually have enough time on their hands to be on the board? The same boards that let simple repairs become huge $10k+ assessments….
10:31: just because we may not understand an issue, doesn’t mean we’re not going to take firm opinions on it! this is brownstoner!
I read somewhere that Graydon Carter has vomit on his stoop many times a week. YUCK! There are photographs of his dumping a bucket of water on it — his house is really small and darling and no room for live-in help I guess. And how long can you leave it there while you call a guy?
Anyway, I do think maybe, just maybe, there are issues with Manhattan brownstoner ownership that brooklynites down deal with. OF course, that means you’ll all still make fun … I know that.
Ah yes, add to the many benefits of brownstone living that it is a healthier life style. Not only does God love you more when you live in a brownstone house, but you live longer and are healthier and happier.
What an impressive vocabulary 9:46 AM has.
As one who’s been roughing it through brownstone ownership for a couple of decades, I have to acknowledge that I was even deeper in the gutter before I bought…I was a tenant in a fifth floor walkup apartment in Manhattan that had NO doorman and NO elevator, and I had to take out MY OWN GARBAGE! So it was actually a step up to the horrors of brownstone living. But it was the Landlord from Hell who prompted my resolution to find a living situation where nobody other than Landmarks (no coop board, condo association, NOBODY) could threaten me, control me, or tell me what to do, as long as I respected my neighbors within the limits of the law. Stairs? Guess what: all those decades of running up and down ’em have kept me healthier than many of my horizontal-living contemporaries, who cringe at the idea of climbing when they visit. And I’ve saved so much money that I would otherwise have paid in rent, I may just put in an extension with an elevator if my legs should ever give out.
I’ve just had a crazy idea-maybe some people prefer houses and some people prefer apartments-I mean, could that be possible!…