• Home
    • Services
    • Property Valuation
  • About
  • Listings
    • Sales
    • Rentals
  • Press
    News Blog
  • Closed Sales
  • Contact (current)
917.858.1915

SEARCH

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Search in posts
Search in pages

SEND A MESSAGE

Author: Living NY

Not so fast: REBNY urges agents to stay home

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Living NY
Not so fast: REBNY urges agents to stay home

New York real estate agents may not be going back to work so fast.

Hours after the Cuomo administration appeared to reverse its stance on whether agents are essential workers, the Real Estate Board of New York cautioned that the new guidelines are “not yet final.”

Posted in News

Will home offices move to the top of NYC apartment hunters’ must-have lists?

Posted on July 17, 2020July 17, 2020 by Living NY
Will home offices move to the top of NYC apartment hunters’ must-have lists?

Right now, many New Yorkers are working from home because they have to—and that may well be the case even after the coronavirus pandemic subsides.

Working from home was already on the rise in the U.S. and the pandemic is expected to accelerate the trend as more businesses see the cost and health benefits of having staff work remotely. Jennifer Christie, chief human resources officer at Twitter, told CNBC, “I don’t think we’ll go back to the same way we used to operate.”

Posted in News

New York’s Townhouses Poised for Comeback as Buyers Prize Space, Privacy and Social Distance

Posted on July 17, 2020July 17, 2020 by Living NY
New York’s Townhouses Poised for Comeback as Buyers Prize Space, Privacy and Social Distance

The past two years have seen a slowdown in New York City’s formerly gangbusters real estate market, with townhouses facing a particularly stark slump—median sales prices for Manhattan townhouses plunged nearly 35% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2019.

But as buyers look ahead to life after the coronavirus pandemic, the city’s single-family homes may hold fresh appeal, and are already generating market chatter.

Posted in News

Not Everyone Is Fleeing New York City. These People Can’t Wait to Move In.

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Living NY
Not Everyone Is Fleeing New York City. These People Can’t Wait to Move In.

As a teenager in Anand, Gujarat, in western India, Rushita Patel was obsessed with Gossip Girl. “It showed so much of the Upper East Side and the way people live in New York,” she recalls. “Like, are you kidding me? I was intrigued.” 

Patel decided that she would end up in the city one way or another. Now 24 with a new public relations job, Patel lives in Washington, D.C. But in two weeks, she’ll pack up her apartment and head to central New Jersey, where she’ll stay with her brother until finding her own place on Manhattan’s East Side.

Posted in News

A second exodus? Some NYC families may move if learning remains remote in fall

Posted on July 17, 2020July 17, 2020 by Living NY
A second exodus? Some NYC families may move if learning remains remote in fall

My older daughter received some disappointing news last week: The family of one of her closest friends is likely to move away this summer for good if schools in New York City do not reopen. They’re waiting for the Department of Education to release its plan for fall before deciding on a move to the Hudson Valley—or even farther away.

Posted in News

New York’s Millennial Homeowners and Where to Find Them

Posted on June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 by Living NY
New York’s Millennial Homeowners and Where to Find Them

On a police officer’s salary, Jakia Morton, 29, bought a brand-new townhouse last year for $265,500 in East New York, Brooklyn, near shopping, public transit and a community of first-time buyers.

Good luck finding the same: Ms. Morton was one of 12,200 applicants to apply for 83 affordable homes for sale in the city-subsidized development, a record for the program. That’s the equivalent of competing with 146 other prospective buyers for her home.

Home buying for most millennial New Yorkers, those born from 1981 to 1996, can feel like a bait-and-switch. Yes, mortgage rates are near record lows — in large part because of the coronavirus outbreak, prices are falling and negotiation is common. But the homes that young buyers can actually afford — because of lingering student debt, high cash requirements before and after closing, and restrictive lending rules — are just a fraction of the market.

Despite the obstacles, millennials are making inroads where the right mix of inventory and little-known programs for first-time buyers are helping them clear financial pitfalls. They are searching farther along subway lines, borrowing from their retirement funds and from family, and considering all their options — co-ops with nit-picky boards, income-restricted apartments, and even the rare house or condo within their budget.

The odds are not in their favor. In a five-year analysis of recent census data, 91,585 homes in New York City were owned by millennials — just 9 percent of all homeowners — and they earned a median household income of about $108,000 a year, according to the research firm Social Explorer. The median household income in New York was around $63,800 in 2018, and about two-thirds of households in the city rent, according to data compiled by the New York University Furman Center.

Millennials nationwide, by contrast, represented 38 percent of home buyers in 2019, and have been the largest generation of home buyers for seven years, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade group.

  • Thanks for reading The Times.

Subscribe to The Times

New York millennials also lag behind past generations of home buyers, when they were the same age. In an analysis of 25-to-34-year-olds, Social Explorer found that only 11 percent of New York millennials were homeowners in 2018, compared to 15 percent of Generation-X in 2000, and 17 percent of baby boomers in 1990.

“They’re off to a late start,” said Jonathan Miller, a New York real estate appraiser, largely because of the financial hardships they face. Many entered the job market soon after the Great Recession, stunting their income growth, just as a luxury real estate boom in the city pushed up prices in an already expensive starter market, he said. From 2010 to 2019, the median sale price of a Manhattan studio apartment rose to $475,000, up 23 percent from $384,800, according to an analysis by his firm, Miller Samuel.

Editors’ Picks

Jimmy Fallon Is Sorry. But What Does That Mean?

Scouring the South Bronx for an Income-Producing Home. Which Would You Pick?

A Museum Canceled a Show About Police Brutality. Here’s the Art.

Continue reading the main story

Millennial Buyers in New York City

The areas with the largest percentage of millennial homeowners, ages 22-37, from 2014 to 2018.

.

LARGEST SHARE

SHARE

NEIGHBORHOODS

BOROUGH

17%

16

16

15

15

14

14

14

13

13

Greenpoint, Williamsburg

Murray Hill, Gramercy, Stuyvesant Town

Chelsea, Clinton, Midtown

Bushwick

Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene

East Harlem

Battery Park City, Greenwich Village, SoHo

Concourse, Highbridge, Mount Eden

Morris Heights, Fordham South, Mount Hope

Washington Heights, Inwood, Marble Hill

Brooklyn

Manhattan

Manhattan

Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Manhattan

Manhattan

Bronx

Bronx

Manhattan

SMALLEST SHARE

BOROUGH

SHARE

NEIGHBORHOODS

Pelham Parkway, Morris Park, Laconia

Howard Beach, Ozone Park

Tottenville, Great Kills, Annadale

Upper West Side, West Side

Jamaica, Hollis, St. Albans

Wakefield, Williamsbridge, Woodlawn

Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Rosedale

Castle Hill, Clason Point, Parkchester

East Flatbush, Farragut, Rugby

Co-op City, Pelham Bay, Schuylerville

Bronx

Queens

Staten Island

Manhattan

Queens

Bronx

Queens

Bronx

Brooklyn

Bronx

7

7

6

6

6

6

6

6

5

5

Source: Social Explorer; American Community Survey, 2014-2018

By The New York Times

But there are some bright spots for young buyers. In the five-year period ending in 2018, the last year census data were available, 17 percent of homeowners were millennials in the neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, the highest rate in the city. Others included Murray Hill in Manhattan (16 percent), Bushwick in Brooklyn (15 percent) and the Concourse section of the Bronx (14 percent). Neighborhoods with the lowest share of millennial homeowners included Ozone Park in Queens (7 percent), Tottenville on Staten Island (6 percent) and Co-op City in the Bronx (5 percent).

The challenges often go beyond asking price. Co-ops are generally less expensive than condos, but may require deeper cash reserves after closing. So even borrowers who qualify for bank loans or have sufficient cash could easily fail to meet a co-op building’s stricter financial guidelines.

Here are some ways young home buyers are making it work.

ImageShameek Bose, 37, bought a studio in the Concourse section of the Bronx for $200,000 with personal savings and by borrowing from his 401(k) account. 
Shameek Bose, 37, bought a studio in the Concourse section of the Bronx for $200,000 with personal savings and by borrowing from his 401(k) account. Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Express to the Bronx

Shameek Bose, 37, had been paying $2,000 a month to rent a fourth-floor walk-up studio on the Upper West Side, where he had lived for almost a decade, and was tired of throwing money away.

So last year, he bought a studio in a co-op with a doorman, elevators and parking for $200,000 in the Concourse section of the Bronx. His mortgage and maintenance, including utilities, is about $600 less than his Manhattan rent. He said he found a welcoming and diverse L.G.B.T.Q. community in the neighborhood, and with a nearby express train, his commute to Midtown is only about 15 minutes.

“My quality of life has significantly improved,” said Mr. Bose, who focused his search in the South Bronx, where prices were a fraction of what he saw in Manhattan, and co-op boards were more lenient. While co-ops in Manhattan often ask for 20 percent down, and sometimes significantly more, his building required just 10 percent. Mr. Bose, who works for the World Economic Forum, said he has six-figure student debt, but the board was accommodating, because he was on a steady repayment plan.

Image

Mr. Bose spends about $600 a month less on this high-floor studio apartment in the Bronx than he did on his fourth-floor walk-up rental in Manhattan.
Mr. Bose spends about $600 a month less on this high-floor studio apartment in the Bronx than he did on his fourth-floor walk-up rental in Manhattan.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

After being outbid on another apartment in the same building, he decided to offer 20 percent down — $40,000 cash — to convince the seller he was a low-risk buyer. He could not rely on family to help bridge the cost, but he had for years contributed the maximum amount to his 401(k) account, on the advice of a mentor. He borrowed about $20,000 from his retirement fund, and covered the other half of the down payment with savings.

Mr. Bose picked up other money-saving tips by attending home counseling sessions with Chhaya, a housing advocacy group in Queens. For instance, he qualified through his lender, HSBC, for a $7,000 first-time buyer grant that helped cover his closing costs. Several other large banks have similar programs for first-time buyers. And he also negotiated a $5,600 credit from the seller, because the closing was significantly delayed.

Owning a home has also become a point of pride for Mr. Bose, who immigrated to New York as a child from India. “It wasn’t something that was allowed for people without generational wealth,” he said. “I didn’t want to accept that.”

Low Prices, High Bars

Yet some of the best deals on the market are off-limits to many young buyers, because of prohibitive financial standards.

“You still have this Catch-22,” said Nikki Sun, an agent with Compass, referring to falling prices, but co-op boards rejecting buyers with less-than-sterling credit or inadequate cash reserves, for fear of that buyer hurting the building’s resale value. “The seller may be desperate, but not the building.”

This can be very apparent in Housing Development Fund Corporation co-ops, a category of buildings where units are reserved for buyers who earn below a certain income, but cash requirements can be onerous.

Image

Rita Wu, Weiguang Zeng and their son, William in their two-bedroom apartment in Harlem. They bought the apartment, in an income-restricted co-op, for $400,000 last year.
Rita Wu, Weiguang Zeng and their son, William in their two-bedroom apartment in Harlem. They bought the apartment, in an income-restricted co-op, for $400,000 last year.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Weiguang Zeng, 34, and his wife, Rita Wu, 33, wanted to buy a two-bedroom last year that was listed for $460,000 in Harlem, where similar apartments could cost twice as much. But the unit was in an H.D.F.C. building that required the buyers to earn a combined income of less than $112,000 a year. They qualified because Mr. Zeng, who worked in the metal industry in China, is unemployed while awaiting his work visa; Ms. Wu is a teacher at a private school on the Upper West Side.

But at their income level, they could only borrow $150,000, and fell short of the building’s requirement to have enough savings to be able to pay two years of mortgage and maintenance after closing.

“Unless the parents can chip in, it’s just impossible for many people,” said Ms. Sun, who represented the couple.

The seller was motivated, however, and the couple was able to negotiate the price to $400,000, a 13 percent price cut. With the help of contributions from family and savings, they agreed to buy the apartment all-cash. They moved in with their son, William, in April.

“We almost just wanted to give up,” said Mr. Zeng, after a lengthy back-and-forth with the board. “We feel very lucky.”

Image

One of the bedrooms in Mr. Zeng and Ms. Wu’s Harlem apartment
One of the bedrooms in Mr. Zeng and Ms. Wu’s Harlem apartmentCredit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

There are about 24,400 H.D.F.C. units across 1,010 co-ops, more than half of which are in Manhattan, according to Matthew Creegan, a spokesman for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. But only a small fraction are currently available for sale.

Condo Deals in a Down Market

Condos are typically more expensive than co-ops, but many developers are offering incentives amid softening demand that could change the calculus for some young buyers.

Image

A rendering of 111 Montgomery, a nearly finished condo complex in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where buyers are required to make only a 5 percent down payment — far below the threshold for most co-ops.
A rendering of 111 Montgomery, a nearly finished condo complex in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where buyers are required to make only a 5 percent down payment — far below the threshold for most co-ops.Credit…Rendering by Creative Soldier

At 111 Montgomery in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a nearly finished 163-unit condo complex close to Prospect Park with studios to three-bedroom apartments, prices for studios start at $499,000 and two-beds range from $899,000 to $1.5 million. There are certainly less expensive co-ops available, but in November the developer, CIM Group, sweetened the pot: buyers could put down as little as 5 percent cash.

“We’re now in a market where developers are willing to play ball,” said Christine Blackburn, an associate broker with Compass and the head of sales for the building. When the project began marketing in early 2019, they required 10 percent down. Recently, the developer also offered to cover a year of buyers’ common charges. That amounts to roughly $5,200 for a studio.

Image

A rendering of an apartment in 111 Montgomery, where studios start at $499,000.
A rendering of an apartment in 111 Montgomery, where studios start at $499,000.Credit…Rendering by Creative Soldier

“The majority of the market will give you transfer taxes without even blinking,” said Kobi Lahav, the senior managing director at Living New York, a brokerage, referring to a popular concession that could amount to about 1.8 percent of the sale price. And developers often offer more sweeteners on the back end, including closing cost credits, depending on their rate of sales.

Ms. Blackburn would not discuss sales figures, but said that more than half of signed contracts in the building are with first-time buyers, many of them millennials.

Knowing Where to Look

For Ms. Morton, the 29-year-old police officer, her opportunity came through an affordable housing lottery in the Nehemiah Spring Creek development in East New York, where one- and two-family homes were reserved for buyers making between about $50,000 and $154,000 a year.

Ms. Morton also qualified for the city’s HomeFirst program, which offers up to $40,000 in down payment or closing cost assistance, provided the owner earns less than 80 percent of the area median income ($59,760 for a single buyer), and agrees to live in the home for at least 10 years, with some exceptions.

She still needed to show adequate savings to complete the purchase, and in that regard, she had help: Until she moved into the new home in September, she had been living with her grandparents in the same neighborhood.

“I didn’t need to pay those bills,” she said about the money she saved on rent, and it allowed her to save roughly $14,000 for a down payment.

High rent remains one of the biggest obstacles to adequate savings for young buyers: 28 percent of New Yorkers were severely rent burdened in 2018, meaning they spend more than half of their income on housing, according to the New York University Furman Center.

Image

Ms. Douglas and three of her children in the backyard of her home in Jamaica, Queens. There’s a driveway, too, but the car will have to wait — her savings went toward the home down payment.
Ms. Douglas and three of her children in the backyard of her home in Jamaica, Queens. There’s a driveway, too, but the car will have to wait — her savings went toward the home down payment.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Anita Douglas, 43, while not technically a millennial, is part of a wave of New Yorkers making their first purchase later in life.

‘‘I realized my only hope was to get a home through the lottery process,” said Ms. Douglas, a procurement director for the city who recently made around $90,000 a year. She has about $300,000 of student debt. Last year she was selected to buy a 1,280-square-foot house in Jamaica, Queens for $456,000 for her and her five children.

Ms. Douglas used HomeFirst and a version of the New York State program called SONYMA (pronounced sunny-may) to help cover her down payment.

SONYMA, which stands for State of New York Mortgage Agency, provides low-interest mortgages with low down payment requirements, as well as down payment assistance for qualifying low- and middle-income buyers and veterans. The program, which is primarily for first-time buyers, can be combined with other grants. Down payment assistance of up to $15,000 is forgivable if the homeowner remains in the home for 10 years; those who sell or refinance earlier pay back a prorated sum, depending on the length of residency.

Though the program was created in 1970, it remains largely unknown to most buyers. From 2011 to 2019, SONYMA provided 2,689 loans in New York City, with the most loans issued in Brooklyn, with 912, according to a spokesman. Last year, just 173 loans were issued in the five boroughs.

Image

One of the children’s bedrooms in Ms. Douglas’s Queens home.
One of the children’s bedrooms in Ms. Douglas’s Queens home.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Ms. Douglas, who previously rented a two-bedroom apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn said the home search, up until the moment she qualified for this home, was extremely discouraging. “Everything in my price range was awful,” she said, recounting a subdivided house in the Bronx where she would have had to convert an extra kitchen into a bedroom. She applied for six different housing lotteries before being selected for this renovated house, which was part of the city housing authority’s Small Homes Rehab-NYCHA program.

Now she and her five children, ages 9 to 19, have a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath spread, with a yard and an empty driveway — it was either a new car or the down payment, she said. The choice was obvious.

Posted in News

Real estate brokers switch to virtual open houses amid coronavirus outbreak

Posted on June 11, 2020 by Living NY
Real estate brokers switch to virtual open houses amid coronavirus outbreak

Real estate brokers from New York City spoke with the New York Post about their current situation. According to the report, brokers are struggling to show off properties when many of their clients are worried about infection.

“I had a seller in Manhattan say, ‘I can’t allow anyone who’s recently been to Italy, South Korea or China’ to enter his apartment,” David Kong, a salesperson for real estate company Keller Williams NYC, told the news outlet.

UBEREATS WAIVES DELIVERY FEES FOR RESTAURANTS AS CORONAVIRUS FORCES SHUTDOWNS

He also told the outlet, “We do not have any casual lookers coming by because screening is so tight.” According to him, “We’ve been dealing with this for a couple weeks now in Long Island.”

Kobi Lahav also spoke with the New York Post, saying, “In the open house itself people are not shaking hands, there is always Purell. Some brokers I noticed refuse showings right now — don’t want to get exposed.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The current situation has led Kong to start using remote 3-D tours on a wider array of locations. Previously, he reserved these sorts of tours for pricier listings or ones that might appeal to people from other countries who wouldn’t be able to visit in person.

When asked how long he thinks the situation will last, Kong told the New York Post, “I don’t think anyone has that crystal ball.”

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

He does, however, have a positive outlook, saying, “I think this’ll make for a lot of pent-up demand for when things get safe again.”

Posted in News

No more playrooms, pools or gyms as NYC resi buildings hunker down

Posted on June 11, 2020 by Living NY
No more playrooms, pools or gyms as NYC resi buildings hunker down

Pools are shutting down, along with playrooms, lounges and sleek co-working spaces that just a few days ago were among the most sought-after amenities at New York City luxury buildings.

Doormen are stopping delivery food workers before entering buildings, requesting they either sanitize their hands or leave the food at the door. Residents are giving each other side eye over recent travels and flu-like symptoms, while property managers mull the risks for workers to make in-unit repairs.

Welcome to high-rise living in the age of coronavirus.

The vast majority of New York City’s 8.6 million residents live in such buildings or other densely packed areas, adding a layer of complexity to attempts at social distancing and cleanliness.

In a letter to residents dated March 11, Glenwood Management announced the closure of common areas in its buildings based on a recommendation by the office of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “We regret this inconvenience but feel it is our responsibility to protect your health and well-being to the greatest extent possible,” said the letter, a copy of which was shared with The Real Deal.

Glenwood, a longtime owner and manager of luxury rental apartments, currently owns around two dozen buildings, including Barclay Tower, a 36-unit building at 10 Barclay Street; Paramount Tower, a 466-unit building at 240 East 39th Street; and the Bamford, a 250-unit property at 333 East 56th Street.

“I actually think it’s smart,” said Kobi Lahav, senior managing director at Living Real Estate Group, who lives in a Glenwood building. “You can’t trust people to self-quarantine themselves. Unfortunately, that’s the situation.”

Glenwood is not alone.

The Durst Organization has instituted additional and “continuous” cleaning of all public touchpoints — elevator buttons, door handles and mail rooms — at its buildings, a spokesman said. A Related Companies spokesperson also said the company implemented “ongoing” cleaning in addition to an “end of day deep cleaning and disinfection of all common areas.”

At Zeckendorf Development’s condo tower at 520 Park Avenue,  all alterations and non-essential work will be shut down until further notice, building manager Brown Harris Stevens said in an email to residents Monday.

But as major employers including Google, Airbnb, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs tell their New York metro-area employees to work from home, some buildings are seeing even greater demand for amenities including board rooms and lounges. With more bodies around, anxiety over the transmission of coronavirus is up among building residents. And now, some may have to pitch in on upkeep as property managers consider thinning out the number of onsite staffers.

“Not everybody wants to be cooped up in their unit,” said Jeff Hendler, CEO of energy consumption software company Logical Buildings, whose clients include Rose Associates, Stonehenge, Dermot Companies, L+M Development Partners, AvalonBay Communities and Invesco. “For buildings that have good connectivity structures… you have happy residents and tenants.”

Testing WiFi’s limits

As the work-from-home population booms amid the global health crisis, there’s a lot more foot traffic and higher energy loads in residential buildings.

Broadly speaking, Hendler said he expects the energy footprint of residential buildings to change and the most immediate effect will likely be that “people are going to notice their energy bills are going up.”

Some technicians also stand to gain from troubleshooting working-at-home snafus, like too many people trying to stream or multiple teleconferences on one network.

Danny Grossarth of TechDad Inc., a general contractor focused on selection and installation of building technology, said he’d noticed an uptick in calls to extend WiFi coverage.

“Now that people are spending more time at home and in their common areas,” he said, “they get to experience the weaknesses of their Wifi more.”

Within the buildings themselves, property managers are facing the task of fashioning procedures to address residents’ needs and protect building workers.

Holland & Knight, for instance, is advising its clients, condominium and cooperative boards, to shutter amenities if building managers learn that any resident has been exposed to coronavirus.

But Orsid Realty — which manages over 17,000 units predominantly in luxury condos and co-ops such as the Dakota — is shutting down amenities in some of its buildings due to a lack of available staff, according to Dennis DePaola, the firm’s director of compliance.

DePaola said Orsid has begun making copies of front door keys to hand out to residents in the event there’s no door staff, and engaging with private garbage carters, security and cleaning services in order to pick up work in case Orsid’s in-house staff aren’t available to come in. (Orsid’s executive and management team is now working remotely.)

Holland & Knight has also advised its condo and co-op board clients to warn residents that they may be called on to sort and distribute mail, bring their own garbage to the street, and sit at the concierge desk to permit access to the elevators if building staff were either barred from traveling in or ill. The law firm recommended to clients that if this were to occur all construction and visitors should stop.

“We hope it will not come to this, but we must be prepared,” the firm advised in its memo.

Orsid is also advising residents that its staff will be inquiring about their travel history and health history before moving forward with in-unit repairs, according to DePaola.

If residents are displaying symptoms, have been exposed to someone who is sick or have recently traveled to high-risk countries, they will hold off on the repair. But if the repair is urgent, Orsid staff will request that residents move into separate rooms or maintain a six-foot distance from them. Orsid is also supplying workers with masks, gloves and disinfectant, DePaola said.

“We have had very few cases in our buildings,” he said. As of March 12, DePaola said Orsid’s units under management had two cases of residents testing positive for COVID-19. But he expects the caseload to rise “exponentially.” New York City has 463 cases as of 11:30 a.m. on March 16, as recorded by the New York York State Department of Health.

Similarly, Blackstone subsidiary Beam Living, which manages Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, Kips Bay Court and Parker Towers, posted signs in each building informing residents that “anyone with visible signs of cold or flu-like symptoms will be politely asked to leave,” CEO Kelly Vohs wrote in a March 12 notice posted to Beam’s website.

A previous note to residents said the policy would be enforced in the Five Stuy Cafe, Stuy Fitness, appleseeds, Oval Studio and community center. The property manager is in the process of installing hand sanitizing dispensers throughout its portfolio, and has asked staffers exposed to COVID-19 to stay home. “As of today, staffing levels and subsequently, services have not been impacted by this request,” Vohs said.

READ MORE ABOUT HOW THE RESIDENTIAL BROKERAGE COMMUNITY IS ADDRESSING CORONAVIRUS

  • ”It’s a moral obligation:” Compass Leonard Steinberg calls for two-week ban on showings
  • Elliman shuts offices, Compass sends staff home as coronavirus cases mount in New York
  • New York real estate agent asked not to see clients after coronavirus scare
  • Coronavirus slams into Manhattan’s home listing season

Danny Fishman, co-founder and CEO of Gaia Real Estate Development, said his company suspended programming by Finch Living, a Gaia subsidiary that runs events and classes in its properties, which include the Corinthian at 330 East 38th Street and 416 West 52nd Street. Since Friday, Gaia employees have been working from home.

“We bought equipment and software and tested it last week,” Fishman said. Before that, the company did a deep cleaning and provided hand sanitizer and wipes throughout the office.

“We don’t want to scare our residents,” said Jacky He, CEO of DMG Investments, which owns residential buildings and student housing in New York and New Jersey. “But we want to protect them.”

Neighborly concern

As more individuals test positive for coronavirus — New York state now has the most cases in the country — anxieties over contagion have increased.

Attorneys are advising condo and co-op boards that they need to balance informing residents about a case of coronavirus or exposure with individuals’ right to privacy and anti-discrimination laws.

Attorney Leni Morrison Cummins at Cozen O’Connor is advising her condo and co-op clients to send a notice to residents and building workers encouraging them to self-report illness, travel history or exposure.

Both Morrison Cummins and Holland & Knight partner Stuart Saft emphasized, in guidance sent to clients, that personally identifying information about someone’s health should not be shared.

Morrison Cummins said her firm prepared its guidance rapidly after she began fielding a number of questions including, in one alarming instance: “I heard so-and-so traveled to China, should we let them back in the building?”

She’s also recommending that boards update their communications plans to ensure buildings residents can immediately receive information and empower building staff to report to the board any resident or visitor they observe displaying flu-like symptoms.

Saft’s firm is advising clients to require any contractors, food delivery workers and regular staff to wash their hands or use hand sanitizer before entering the building, and discourage people from congregating in the lobby.

The Real Estate Board of New York’s broker counsel Neil Garfinkel noted in a Friday email to all members that policies requiring hand washing, or allowing building staff to ask residents about their health and travel history before entering their units, are legal so long as they are applied equally to everyone.

“Put such policies in writing so that they are clear,” wrote Garfinkel. “It is crucial not to be selective as to whom these policies are applied to.”

Though Morrison Cummins admitted that her first call on how to respond to coronavirus was from “a tony Upper East Side co-op,” she said concern among owners is widespread.

“I don’t think the paranoia of the virus discriminates based on sales price,” she added. “It’s coming from across the board.”

Write to E.B. Solomont at eb@therealdeal.com. Write to Erin Hudson at ekh@therealdeal.com.

Posted in News

For a Designer, Less Is More

Posted on June 11, 2020 by Living NY
For a Designer, Less Is More

For nearly five years, Sanna Shah rented a studio on a pretty brownstone block in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Late last summer, she received a notice of nonrenewal. Her landlord, she said, wanted to renovate and raise the $1,650-a-month rent.

“My rent was such a steal that I knew I was going to have a difficult time finding a comparable rental,” she said.

But she didn’t mind leaving Fort Greene, where the streetscape was quickly changing. “The historic buildings that made the neighborhood charming were being overshadowed by the new developments,” she said.

ImageMs. Shah rearranges the furniture in her small studio from time to time.
Ms. Shah rearranges the furniture in her small studio from time to time.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Ms. Shah, an interior designer who graduated from Emory University and the Rhode Island School of Design, decided to move to Manhattan, where she had previously lived.

She set out to buy a co-op unit for around $500,000 to $600,000.

She preferred a postwar building. “I feel like prewar is a can of worms for ownership,” she said. “For a rental, it is fine, but I wanted something a little more reliable in terms of the building systems. I have renovated prewar stuff and have seen things come up that people couldn’t have anticipated, so I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

  • Thanks for reading The Times.

Subscribe to The Times

Ms. Shah, 32, who is from the Washington, D.C., area, sought a no-frills building. “I learned quickly that you end up paying for a doorman,” she said. “Your monthly rollout goes up very quickly as you scale up. You are paying for those perks.”

In the fall, she contacted Kobi Lahav, an associate broker at Mdrn. Residential, whom she had met a few years ago when he helped a friend find a one-bedroom downtown.

Image

The studio has a separate kitchen.
The studio has a separate kitchen.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

In Midtown East, the housing stock included spacious studios in her price range. “Sanna didn’t expect too much for her money, which was a good place to start,” Mr. Lahav said.

Just east of Gramercy Park, a nicely renovated one-bedroom listed for $550,000, with monthly maintenance of just over $1,100, was in a 1930 building called Little Gramercy. It had exposed brick walls.

“I found that to be a shabby-chic aesthetic,” Ms. Shah said. “I wanted something more finished looking. Exposed brick is an overpowering interior feature.”

She also feared it might attract bugs. “I feel like things can live in a wall like that — nobody wants to say that out loud.”

Image

Her building is postwar, which she prefers. “I feel like prewar is a can of worms for ownership,” she said.
Her building is postwar, which she prefers. “I feel like prewar is a can of worms for ownership,” she said.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

She moved on, and the place sold for $610,000. “The brick wall made it popular,” Mr. Lahav said.

A few blocks south, a sunny alcove studio at Gramercy Park Towers, circa 1964, had an asking price of $599,000. Maintenance was around $850 a month.

It, too, was in pristine condition. But Ms. Shah was wary of the location on busy Third Avenue, and found the building’s swooping marquee too theatrical.

Editors’ Picks

Jimmy Fallon Is Sorry. But What Does That Mean?

Scouring the South Bronx for an Income-Producing Home. Which Would You Pick?

A Museum Canceled a Show About Police Brutality. Here’s the Art.

Continue reading the main story

“It was not the kind of ambience I imagined coming home to,” she said. “I wanted understated.”

The building also had a full-time doorman, as did many in the area. “I didn’t want all these people to greet when I came home,” Ms. Shah said. “It feels more hotel than home to me. Some people like all the service, but I wasn’t looking for that.”

Mr. Lahav showed her a small studio in another Gramercy building, for a temptingly low $465,000, with monthly maintenance of $800. It was smaller than most, he said, “but she actually liked it. She was not a typical buyer who is looking for square footage.”

Image

Ms. Shah passed up a studio at Gramercy Park Towers, circa 1964. She was wary of living on busy Third Avenue, and found the building’s swooping marquee too theatrical.
Ms. Shah passed up a studio at Gramercy Park Towers, circa 1964. She was wary of living on busy Third Avenue, and found the building’s swooping marquee too theatrical.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

She didn’t go for the Murphy bed, however, which seemed too labor-intensive for day-to-day living. “I didn’t want to do all these acrobatics to make it work,” she said.

Farther downtown, a modest SoHo building, circa 1962, had a studio available, with 475 square feet. Again, it was smaller than many places they had seen. But it was on the quiet side of the building, facing a courtyard, and the building had a landscaped roof deck.

“A girl was sitting on the roof enjoying her coffee,” Mr. Lahav said. “It looked like it was staged. Sanna could imagine herself sitting there.”

Ms. Shah loved everything about it. “I could totally tell that the current owner was an architect, the way the space was organized,” she said. “The studio was laid out in a considered way. I was happy to entertain and live and work and do everything in one open space. I know how to make that work for me.”

Image

At a studio on East 21st Street, Ms. Shah was put off by the exposed brick interior walls. She prefers a finished look to shabby chic.
At a studio on East 21st Street, Ms. Shah was put off by the exposed brick interior walls. She prefers a finished look to shabby chic.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times

The occupiable space was T-shaped, easily divisible into a sleeping area and a living area, and the kitchen was separate. “If you cook and entertain and host, a closed kitchen is better,” Ms. Shah said. “My guests are not privy to the mess in the kitchen.”

The price was $570,000. The monthly maintenance was in the high $600s, with an assessment of $100.

“I didn’t want to see any other apartments after I saw this one,” Ms. Shah said.

She bought the apartment — which did turn out to be owned by an architect — for $565,000, and arrived last winter.

Her new home suits her well. “It’s always a work in progress,” she said. “I can shuffle things around as I need to. With an open plan, you can always reinvent the space. If anyone can live in a small space, it would be me.”

Posted in News

Rental firms grieve over broker fees

Posted on June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 by Living NY
Rental firms grieve over broker fees

A judge may have given broker fees a stay of execution, but firms are still reeling from the near-death experience of their business model.

Last month’s surprise guidance from state regulators banning most tenant-paid broker commissions has already sparked panic across the industry. Now several rental brokerages are struggling to make heads or tails of the potential impacts, and looking for their best options in a worst-case scenario.

For many firms already grappling with last year’s rent law overhaul, relentless competition and hefty StreetEasy fees, the sudden news was a brutal wake-up call.

Manhattan-based Mdrn. Residential, for one, confirmed on Feb. 13 — less than 10 days after The Real Deal first reported on the Department of State’s guidance — that it would be acquired by competitor Living New York. Living said it planned to absorb 40 Mdrn. agents and staffers for a total headcount of 125, while Bond New York recently hired veteran manager Cammy Cutler as well as 20 agents from Mdrn.

Mdrn. founder Zach Ehrlich, who is not joining the consolidated firms, said the merger deal was motivated, in part, by market “headwinds.”

And Kobi Lahav, Mdrn.’s former chief executive officer and now head of sales and a managing director at Living, said if Mdrn. had to continue on its own under the new DOS guidance, it “would’ve killed half our business.”

Living has more exclusive landlord clients than Mdrn., in part because Living, unlike Lahav’s former firm, also provides property management services on top of brokerage services. Still, the ban on tenant-paid fees could take a big chunk out of Living’s bottom line.

“Short-term, [it’s] probably going to take 15 to 20 percent of our business, and that’s a lot,” Lahav said.

On Feb. 10, state Supreme Court Judge Michael Mackey put the new rule on hold while he hears a lawsuit from real estate leaders claiming the DOS guidance is unlawful. But while the panic is on pause, brokerages that represent landlords are still cycling through the stages of grief as they face the possibility of a world without tenant-paid commissions.

“If the Department of State is telling us that they read the law a certain way, I obviously can’t ignore it,” Lahav said. “I can’t say to my agents, go and do whatever you want … because at the end of the day I’m risking their license and my license.”

Denial

However, Douglas Elliman — the city’s largest residential firm, with some 2,600 agents — did challenge the idea that the recent guidance has the force of law.

“This Guidance is not the law, but rather a position taken by the DOS as it relates to licensed real estate agents and brokers,” Kenneth Haber, the brokerage’s general counsel, wrote to agents in an email obtained by TRD. “We do not believe that this Guidance is consistent with the law.”

Initially, Corcoran Group’s COO, Gary Malin, dismissed the DOS guidance as merely an “advisory opinion,” and went so far as to tell his brokers to disregard it — even before the court put it on hold.

“Until further notice, we recommend continuing to conduct your business in accordance with the law and all applicable regulations, not advisory opinions promulgated in haste,” he wrote, according to an email cited first by the New York Times. But executives walked that back in a Feb. 7 conference call with 1,600 agents, instructing them to follow the state guidance.

Triplemint initially appeared to follow suit. “We have been advised to operate with business as usual,” co-founder Philip Lang wrote in a Feb. 6 email to agents. But reached later for comment, Lang said Triplemint is adhering to the guidance and that the email was meant to reference a memo he sent earlier that day, which said, “we can’t collect a fee directly from a tenant. For now, please speak with your landlord about raising the rent.”

Indeed, right before the industry filed its Article 78 petition to halt the ban, a handful of landlords and property managers told TRD that they’re prepared to raise market-rate rents and make cuts to their leasing teams to absorb the additional costs.

Related: Rental chaos raises tensions between tenants and landlords

Within 36 hours of finding out about state regulators’ interpretation of the new rent law, Lisa Management initially said it would no longer hire outside brokers.

The management company has a five-person in-house team that handles leasing for developer Hudson Companies’ rental buildings, including 2,200 units, and until early last month worked with two brokers exclusively for leasing 200 apartments owned by third-party landlords.

But after the fee news broke, Lisa’s President Jorge Jorge said an employee would take over the brokers’ role. Jorge said he decided to make the cuts after the firm’s landlord clients said they can’t afford to pay broker fees.

“I feel really bad for those agents,” he said at the time, noting that if they decided to become Lisa employees they would be making less money. The company put the changes on hold after the judge granted the temporary restraining order that effectively suspended the ban.

Most New York City rental brokers are already on the lower end of the pay scale among real estate agents — especially compared to luxury sales brokers — as that segment is where many new brokers start out.

A rental broker’s fee is typically 15 percent of the annual rent, amounting to a median fee of $6,298 for a Manhattan apartment.

Meena Ziabari, COO of Next Step Realty, which focuses on helping people moving to the city for the first time, said her firm rarely has landlord clients and mostly represents prospective tenants. But she cut her teeth in rentals and sales at the boutique New York City brokerage Elegran and has sympathy for the brokers the new rule would impact, she noted.

“I think we’re going to be able to adapt maybe a little more easily than a lot of the other firms and a lot of other agents,” said Ziabari. “That being said, I completely feel for the livelihoods of [brokers who represent landlords], considering I was one of them.”

And for many rental brokers across the five boroughs, working in the business can be incredibly competitive and pretty thankless as it is.

Jared Goldman, an agent on the Wilder Team at Compass, which exclusively manages a rental portfolio of about 1,200 apartments, noted that brokers don’t just get a listing for an apartment and rent it out the same day. Sometimes, it can take upwards of 50 showings to ink a deal — and there’s no charge to look.

“Tenants don’t see that,” Goldman said. “They just see what they see.”

Anger

For many rental brokers and brokerage executives, such a radical change coming without warning was infuriating. Now, even with the temporary restraining order, many are scrambling behind the scenes to prepare for survival if the guidance stands.

“There’s a lot of anger, stress and frustration,” said R New York’s residential sales manager, Mike Walker.

There are roughly 58,000 licensed real estate brokers and salespeople in New York City, according to the DOS. That includes more than 20,000 brokers.

Though some agents work exclusively in sales, and some rental brokers only represent tenants, the scale of the rental sector and the prevalence of tenant-paid fees made the new guidance seem to many like an attack on the entire industry.

“Rentals are really the majority of what’s happening in New York, so as a state government, when you attack that, you’re going after the whole marketplace, really,” said Blair Brandt, co-founder and executive chair of Next Step Realty.

Feeling completely blindsided, brokers complained that regulators suddenly upended the business model of a huge segment of the industry without allowing for any time to adapt.

“I am shocked not only with the new law, but also that there was no warning or grace period,” said David Schlamm, who heads the rental brokerage City Connections, calling it “wrong on so many levels.”

In fact, it came with even less than no warning — the DOS actually released the game-changing guidance quietly on Jan. 31, but did not publicize it. The industry wasn’t widely aware of the new policy until five days later, when the Real Estate Board of New York circulated an email and TRD broke the news.

“I first learned from our principal brokers that found out through the Real Estate Board of New York,” said Michael O’Brien of Bohemia Realty Group. “Because there was really no announcement. It just was dropped on the Department of State’s website with no warning. It was kind of surprising, actually, that all of a sudden a whole business model is changed overnight and no one bothered to tell anyone.”

Once the rule change started making headlines, brokers’ frustration turned from the lack of information to a flood of misinformation that only amplified the confusion. Several agents TRD spoke to complained that many media reports splashed bold headlines that implied that broker fees were entirely discontinued, even for brokers hired by tenants.

“It’s only on the landlord side,” said Compass’ Jed Wilder. “[Headlines] are basically saying, ‘I don’t care about all the brokers who make a living on the tenant side. I’m going to give news that sounds like there’s no broker fees in New York.’”

The greatest frustration for many in the brokerage community, however, is that amid the media frenzy celebrating tenants being freed from paying landlords’ broker fees, the impact on the brokers themselves is being forgotten.

Jordan Sachs, co-founder of Bold New York, said most of his firm’s commissions from rentals were already paid by owners, but he acknowledged it wasn’t the case for many.

“Do you know how many people are going to be out of a job?” he said.

Bargaining

To adapt to the new landscape, Living’s Lahav said, brokers might need to consider lowering the fees charged to owners or focusing more on the tenant representation side of the business. Or brokerages may just have to accept losing some landlord clients altogether.

In the meantime, many brokers have been negotiating with their landlords and trying to figure out what to do with their listings if the new rule is upheld.

“I think it did open the eyes of landlords that the tenant was paying the fee,” Wilder said. “I think it opened their eyes to: Oh, maybe I can charge more rent.”

“The whole issue with the law is that if you’re trying to make things more affordable for New Yorkers, which I’m all for, this is not the answer,” he added.

Compass also encouraged agents to “have conversations with your landlords immediately and try to revise your agreements” to protect their commissions.

“I think brokerages, to survive in the future, will have to have a component of management capability, whether they manage the buildings or provide brokerage services,” said Lahav.

Depression

In a populist political climate that produced not only the radical rent law on which the fee guidance is based, but also tax hikes on high-end home sales and growing calls for a pied-à-terre tax, brokers feel they are being unfairly vilified alongside big landlords and billionaire jet-setters.

“I’m tired of agents being seen as overcompensated enemies of the general population,” Warburg Realty’s CEO, Frederick Peters, said of the DOS guidance.

Despite the fact that many of the city’s rental brokers aren’t getting rich off their fees in the first place, the New York Residential Agent Continuum, a group that represents New York City brokers, said it is expecting income loss.

“We anticipate that tenants or landlords or both will decide not to use the services of an agent,” said Cathy Taub, a Sotheby’s International Realty broker and co-founder of NYRAC.

Jay Martin, who leads the Community Housing Improvement Program, an organization representing smaller landlords, said his members “will have to make really tough choices” about whether to use a leasing agent.

“I can see this as a death knell for a huge portion of the brokerage industry,” he said.

Rejection

With a big chunk of their livelihoods now in the balance, the mood among brokers and their firms is one of anything but acceptance.

The brokerage community is expected to fight the DOS guidance as hard as it did against the city’s proposed cap on broker commissions last year.

In February 2019, City Council member Keith Powers proposed a bill that would cap a rental broker’s commission at one month’s rent, which for some would have meant collecting roughly 8.3 percent of the annual rent versus 15 percent. The real estate industry rallied — even marching on City Hall — and a year later, the bill remains stuck in committee.

Schlamm at City Connections holds out hope that the guidance could even be pulled back by the regulators themselves.

“I am hoping that this will be reversed as fast as it was implemented,” he said.

Such a reversal is not unheard of: Late last year, regulators interpreting a state law on anonymous property ownership through LLCs walked back guidance that would have upended the city’s high-end sales market by including individual condos — but only after sponsoring lawmakers intervened to say that was not their intention.

That’s unlikely to happen in this case. One of the rent law’s sponsors, state Sen. Julia Salazar, said in a statement that “our intent is to eliminate barriers that currently prevent low-income and vulnerable people from obtaining housing.”

Nonetheless, the lawsuit filed by the Real Estate Board of New York, the New York State Association of Realtors and 12 brokerage firms including Corcoran, Elliman and BHS called the DOS guidance an “unlawful, erroneous, and arbitrary” interpretation of the rent law, arguing that the text doesn’t explicitly refer to real estate brokers.

“It is clear here the DOS has usurped the role of the Legislature and that its actions constitute an illegal exercise of legislative power,” the lawsuit said. “Clearly, if the Legislature had intended [the laws] to apply to agents of the landlord, or even more explicitly real estate brokers, it would have inserted those words into the statute.”

The entire rental brokerage community is waiting nervously for REBNY’s March 13 court date, but legal experts caution that, while there’s no need to fear the ban will be reimposed that day, the industry should not expect a resolution anytime soon.

“I doubt the motion will be decided then, and until it is, the TRO will stand,” said Lisa Faham-Selzer, a partner at Kucker Marino, which represents landlords and brokers. Calling the restraining order a “temporary victory,” she said, “it could take months before the underlying motion is decided and even longer before the case is decided.”

In the meantime, Faham-Selzer said, lawmakers could decide if the guidance reflects what they intended and amend the law to specify that.

“Then,” she said, “the law would have to be challenged.”

— Additional reporting by Kathryn Brenzel, E.B. Solomont and Sylvia Varnham O’Regan

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Mdrn. Residential would merge with competitor Living New York, but Living says it was strictly an acquisition deal. Kobi Lahav’s title in the story was also updated to head of sales and a managing director.

Posted in News

Posts navigation

Older posts