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
Im feeling exactly what Brenda expressed so perfectly. Shudder indeed.
SPOILED RICH WHITE FOLKS!
When I saw this article in the paper yesterday, I knew it would get picked up here – AND THEN all the defensive, thin-skinned huffing and puffing from ‘townhouse’ dwellers would ensue.
House and even brownstone apartment dwellers on this site LOVE to denegrate all other forms of shelter and raise to some sort of moral-virtue level the fact they live in these things. Underneath it is a fair bit of defensiveness and insecurity. It’s not enough that I live in what I think is a ‘wonderful home’, I have to make sure everyone else knows it. And comments posted on this thread already demonstrate it. They love to dish it out but can’t take an alternative view that doesn’t programatically accept that living with three flights of stairs is the only way to go.
Please continue, I look forward to ready the rest of your responses.
well, I wasn’t prepared for how much this house costs. there are too many times when a plumber/roofer/hvac guy can look up from his clipboard and say, “well it won’t be less than 15k”. I guess if you’re really flush it’s no big deal, but I’m not.
I disagree with Brenda. I rented a townhouse in West Chelsea (back when we called it “Chelsea .. but over near 10th”) for many years and cleaning up the front was sometimes really too much. So much that I don’t think it’s fair to spell it out here. Really gross.
I own a townhouse in Brooklyn now and have none of these issues — and I’m guessing you don’t really have them either on a daily basis — but I felt for the West Village guy.
The responsibilites are no big deal and I totally agree that complaining about taking out garbage is inane. But I do actually hate my 4 story house because of the isolation the article talked about. I hate having the kids bedrooms on a different floor than my bedroom and I hate having their play area on a different floor than the kitchen. I want a 2 story house with all the shared rooms on one level and all the bedrooms on another.
more and more, manhattan sounds like an alien planet. that said, they do have a point about in-house isloation: our friends lived upstairs from us but we still communicated mostly by cellphone, cuz really, who wants to trudge up all those stairs just to ask a quick question?
Just this morning I had to take the elevator down to the basement of my co-op to drop off my recyclables and a large bag of trash that wouldn’t fit down the chute. Then to make it worse, I had to walk up the steps once I got off the subway. Will this horror never end?
Brenda – very funny. And you are absolutely right.