Open House Picks

First of all, Rob, quitcherbitchin’ already about the TOREN. For goodness sakes, maybe you could manage to actually BUY a place there with the FHA loan (split infinitive alert!).

Now, Brown Harris Stevens often doesn’t offer enough photos on their listings for my taste. The Cheever Place is an example. Can they show more than FOUR photos for a house asking this kind of price? Is this eBay? They don’t seem to invest much in photography. Certainly Corcoran does…but you often get the impression they have them heavily worked so they end up looking fake…or are stretched so wide they’re in Cinemascope!

Meanwhile, BHS did manage to have a lot of photos of the PLG house, but this is because the owners had their own professional photography done since the wife is the designer. Disclaimer: not my taste.

I have to say I agree with many above that this PLG house is, sadly, overpriced for the location and the owners may end up just breaking even or even… It’ll be one of those life lessons I guess.

I kind of felt this when they put the house on the market which was immediately after a big “PR campaign”, if you will. I first spotted the house when Cara at Casacara@blogspot and OTBKB (never understood that name for a blog but anyway…). I had a light argument with Cara over her use of “ethnic” in her effusive blurb but we ironed it out. I feel the house is, unfortunately, an example of the very, very recent, and suddenly out of fashion “my kitchen’s cooler than yours” movement and must more appropriate for Manhattan or a better location in Brooklyn. It might fly on Apartment PsychoTherapy still but on Brownstoner, in cynical New York City/Brooklyn, times they are a changin’…

http://www.jonathantasini.com/

While Goldman Sachs Reaps, America Weeps

New Yorkers joined us on January 21st at noon in front of the Goldman Sachs building, to protest the massive bonuses handed out to the very bank tycoons who caused this economic meltdown.

It’s time for these modern-day robber barons – and their apologists in the media and Washington – to hear the voices of a people who demand economic recovery for everyone, not just those in the top 1%.

http://nowallstreetbailout.com/

“This is scare tactics to try to do something that’s in the private but not the public interest. It’s terrible.” — Allan Meltzer, Carnegie Mellon School of Business
“It’s a straight subsidy to financial institutions. You’re essentially giving them money. — Martin Baily, former Clinton Administration Council of Economic Advisers

“There’s a tendency for people to think these are stocks and bonds and you know what the price is. The problem is people are operating in a world in which nobody knows what the hell is going on. There’s some naïve assumptions about how this would function.” — Bruce Bartlett, former Reagan Administration economist

“This administration is asking for a $700 billion blank check to be put in the hands of Henry Paulson, a guy who totally missed this, and has been wrong about almost everything.” — Dean Baker Center for Economic and Policy Research
“If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public — all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims.” –William Greider, The Nation
“I am concerned that Treasury’s proposal is neither workable nor comprehensive, despite its enormous price tag. In my judgment, it would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted.” — Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)
“It sounds like Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator, for a limited period of time.” –Historian John Steele Gordon
“The plan is stupid…Voters will break against anyone who votes for it. I thought if [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin had written that, I’d understand it.” — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
“This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it’s un-American.”– Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky

The Avocado Room in the VanBuren house is the sweetest thing I’ve seen in ages. I’ve built and propped a few hundred commercial photography sets in my time and this one beats them all for its picture perfect sincerity and thematic vision. Prospective buyers should insist on the furnishings here.

Frederick Law Homestead, the house you keep talking about as “nearly identical” to this Maple Street house on the same block was identical only in layout. This one has 3 bathrooms (huge stunning ones) not 2, central air conditioning, beautifully finished basement, very high end kitchen. Sure, if a gorgeous house isn’t selling then it’s clearly not priced correctly for this very moment in time, but the notion this house should be priced under a million or even just at a million is absurd.