"The price I think is the biggest thing driving people higher [uptown]," said J.P. Kirk, a 41-year-old financial salesman shopping for a condo on East 109th Street. "New development has a lot to do with it."
The New York Times ran a piece last week about the Upper East Side's boundary blurring, so this week we decided to check out some open houses both below and above the traditional East 96th Street border. Read More
"I've never had a showing where women didn't ask about the closets. Men ask often, too, but always the women," said broker Bill Martin, who was showing 321 East 43rd Street, apartment 314, at an open house on Sunday.
Ample closet space, like an in-unit washer and dryer, is one of those coveted and elusive amenities most Manhattanites aren't accustomed to. This one-bedroom apartment had plenty of storage space for one person (or two), with closets in the kitchen, hallway, bedroom, bathroom and entrance area. Read More
"Everybody seemed to be targeting the East Village and West Village, but they're finding prices are better here," said the Douglas Elliman broker for 226 East 12th Street, apartment 4H, a prewar co-op on a tree-lined street. The one-bedroom apartment is going for $495,000 and was one of the hits of the day—it has a spacious living room and a kitchen big enough to move around in, which is more than we could say for some of the cheaper units we stopped by.
This week for Your Open House we took a look at one-bedrooms in the East Village, and most people we talked to noted that they were drawn to the tree-lined streets and vast entertainment options of the downtown villages, but wanted something less pricey than the west one. Read More
Buying a place in a quaint prewar building without a good air-conditioning system might seem like a good idea in the spring (the apartment has such charm!), but come July when that heat wave hits, an un-air-conditioned unit can turn into your own personal hell. Read More
Your basic Brooklyn apartment will get you a chic interior and hardwood floors, but little room for a kitchen table.
"Where do you put a kitchen table? Does no one eat around a table in New York?," asked one potential buyer on Sunday. Read More
We felt obliged to ask this burning question in the sweatiest dog days: How much is a washer-dryer worth to you, New York? Read More
The average price of a Manhattan apartment in the second quarter of 2011 was roughly $1.455 million, according to the various housing report released late last week.
What does that get you? Read More
An unanswered door at a Hell’s Kitchen open house set the tone for the rest of the afternoon.
Nobody showed up this past Sunday afternoon for three open houses in two Hell's Kitchen buildings—at least as far as we could tell. Despite a posh lobby and modest prices in the first building, it was slim pickings for the brokers.
“This apartment has been on the market about two months,” said Bryan Tomczuk, a broker for one of the co-ops, adding that at previous open houses he’s seen between three to five prospective buyers.
The studio apartment, located at 430 West 34th Street, was asking only $275,000 and although it was not exactly spacious—the kitchen probably could not fit more than one person at a time—it seemed like a steal considering its surroundings.
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“There’s really nothing else like this in the city,” said broker Marie-Ange Augustin, pulling the curtain back to reveal white picket fences, sprawling Victorian mansions and a tattooed hipster pushing a baby stroller.
Indeed, Ditmas Park, just across the park from Park Slope, feels more like an upstate suburb than a neighborhood off the Q-train. Read More
This Sunday on the Upper East Side was filled with sweaty palms, newly ironed shirts and a few jitters about the year to come.
It was the unofficial beginning of open house season, and for brokers who have sat out an unbearably lonely summer, it was time to see if the housing market’s rumored rebound Read More
A Central Park West address conjures images of glamorous apartments that seem as if they were made solely for the purpose of watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This weekend The Observer decided to check out what Central Park West had to offer, but we forwent the parade route and looked upward of 96th Street.
Although Read More
Greenpoint's West Street is on the waterfront, lined with brick warehouses and factory buildings. It's all grey and brown except for the weeds growing through the sidewalk. And except for the bright lobby, seen through glass panels, of the Pencil Factory.
"It's a contextual building," sales manager Hans Schenck said of the new condo development, located Read More
"In a house, maybe in the suburbs, one bathroom on the top floor is sufficient for all bedrooms," broker Purita Young said Sunday. "But not in the city."
She stood in the living room of a condo at 62 West 62nd Street, clutching a small water bottle and pointing out the apartment's amenities. At $1.8 million Read More
"It's a piece of garbage," a prospective buyer said Sunday as she left an open house at 61 West 9th Street. The co-op, in a prewar Greenwich Village building, is a fixer-upper. Patches of yellow paint have been scraped off the walls, tangles of wire droop from the ceiling, clusters of debris litter the otherwise Read More
A sign near the entrance of a $1.075 million three-bedroom apartment on 96 Schermerhorn Street politely asks visitors to remove their shoes.
"Eighty percent of contaminants come into the apartment on your shoes from the street," broker Cara Sadownick said on Sunday, in stocking feet.
The apartment, like many others in Brooklyn Heights, has been designed to Read More
