Turn a New York Apartment from Bachelor Pad to An Adult’s Apartment
On Young Lawyers And Their Lovely New York Apartments| By Lorenzo |March 8, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Erin Geiger Smith | Mar. 4, 2010, 8:23 AM
Most New Yorkers toil as renters for way longer than they ever imagined.
Today’s Home & Garden gives us a peak at the fashionably-styled financial district apartment of Paul Weiss junior associate Colin Kelly. Kelly got a little help form decorators, who made it work on his $8,000 budget, which, the NYT helpfully points out, is “the exact amount of the 2009 first-time homebuyer’s tax credit.”
Click here to see how it was done for $8,000.
Topics: Decorating Tips & Ideas | Add Comment »
Filmed in New York: An Oscar Tour
NYC - Where all the best movies are fit to film.| By Lorenzo |March 8, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Published: March 6, 2010
In 1955, “On the Waterfront,” which ushered in a new era of film-making in the New York area, won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In the decades that followed, many of the hundreds of films shot on location in the city have been recognized by the Academy, including “West Side Story,” “The Godfather,” “Annie Hall” and “Raging Bull.”
This year two movies filmed in the city have been nominated for Oscars, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” with six nominations, including Best Picture, and “Julie & Julia,” with one nomination. In 2009, two New York City films, “Doubt” and “The Visitor,” were nominated for Oscars.
Read the full story, plus view the interactive map here.
Topics: NYC Gossip | Add Comment »
This is the New York we love!
It's not always about apartments for rent in New York.| By Lorenzo |March 8, 2010 | Add Comment » |
By JIM DWYER Published: March 5, 2010
The bike store had become a wine bar. The new apartments were breathtakingly expensive. Then kids from the neighborhood formed a protective guard around a gnarly old candy store on Avenue A and Seventh Street in Manhattan.
For the last month, a group of high school and college students has been running volunteer deliveries on Saturday nights for Ray’s Candy Store, an all-night chapel of East Village life packed with fond, fervent and freakish memories, but not exactly jammed with customers. With their deliveries — need an egg cream and Belgian fries at 3 a.m.? — the kids hope to drum up business for Ray’s until the spring, when more people are walking the streets.
How do the delivery teams get around? “Skateboards,” Arianna Gil, 16, said. “Scooters, bike and feet. All will be utilized.”
Already, friends and neighbors have run two fund-raisers to help the candy store’s owner, Ray Alvarez, pay thousands of dollars in overdue bills; another is planned for Monday night at the Theater for the New City.
In the age of bailouts, it turns out that not all rescue operations involve numbers ending in “illions.”
Topics: East Village, NYC Gossip, NYC History | Add Comment »
Renters Poised to Lose Upper Hand
| By Lorenzo |March 3, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Renters–the ones with jobs anyway–have been having a good run the past year or so. But the party may be drawing to a close. The evidence, apartment operators are gearing up to build new rental units.
This year, real-estate investment trusts, or REITs, are expected to start close to $1 billion in new multifamily projects, according to real-estate research firm Green Street Advisors. While that still is less than average, it is a significant increase over the $100 million of development starts in 2009.
They’re betting that limited new supply, combined with an improving economy, will lead to ideal market conditions nationwide starting in 2011 or 2012, writes Dawn Wotapka in Wednesday’s WSJ. From then until 2015 apartment investment trusts may start raking in cash, says one analyst who looks at apartment REITS.
In January, apartment vacancies hit a 30-year high and landlords scrambled to entice renters, even in New York City, traditionally a tough town on renters.
But already in Manhattan the days of mega-concessions seem to be seem to wrapping up, at least in the most desirable neighborhoods. In New York, Equity Residential, which has buildings on the Upper West Side, Chelsea, Murray Hill , the Financial District and elsewhere, said it has stopped paying broker fees for certain unit types. In better times tenants pay that fee, typically one month’s rent.
Landlords also are excited about demand. The 20-to-34 age group, prime renting age, is expected to increase by five million in the next decade, according to Hessam Nadji, managing director of Marcus & Millichap, a real-state-investment brokerage firm. People who moved home or who bunked with roommates during the downturn also might ink leases as the economy improves.
Of course, headwinds remain: A further drop in unemployment could push vacancy rates even lower. Still, we wonder if perhaps locking in a two-year lease is a good idea.
Topics: The Market | Add Comment »
Landlords Vs. Tenants: Who Pays When Bed Bugs Invade?
Hint: It ain't the bed bugs.| By Lorenzo |March 2, 2010 | 1 Comment » |
When bed bugs invade an apartment, who calls the exterminator and who pays? The conundrum in the emerging field of bed bug law is pitting landlords against tenants and filling court dockets.
Given the exponential increase in bed bug infestations nationwide, landlords are leery of the possible financial repercussions. In New York City, bed bug complaints jumped from 1,839 in 2005 to 8,830 in 2008. Violations issued by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development rose from 366 to 2,757 over the same period. New York and New Jersey apartment owners are legally tasked with providing pest control for tenants. It’s the apartment owner’s responsibility to provide tenants with a pest-free living environment. With Ludlow Properties, LLC v. Young, Judge Cyril Bedford ruled in favor of a frustrated tenant who had refused to pay rent for six months because of a persistent bed bug problem, writing:
“Although bed bugs are classified as vermin, they are unlike … mice and roaches, which, although offensive, do not have the effect on one’s life as bed bugs do, feeding upon one’s blood in hoards nightly turning what is supposed to be bed rest or sleep into a hellish experience.”
Topics: Legal Issues, Tips for Renters | 1 Comment »
Ay, yay, yay… More Craigslist Apartment Scams…
It wasn't in New York, but it still shows the perils of using craigslist.| By Nadine |February 28, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Please folks, don’t let this be you…
A fellow Canadian was coming to LA for roughly the same period of time, so we jointly bragged that we found a total steal in paying $800 for what looked like a fabulous West Hollywood pad, complete with a pool, a fitness center and the pleasure of a lot of stuff actually being within walking distance. But shortly after our cab dropped us off in front of our alleged apartment building, this quickly and horribly turned out not to be the case. That’s right, we had become the victims of a craigslist scam, which turned our LA arrival into a nightmarish mix of lugging our bags back and forth through the city.
To quickly set up how the situation came to be: Two weeks ago, I went ape shit on craigslist ads for short term sublets. The best response I got was from a woman named “Carla Marie.” After about 20 e-mails back and forth, me & “Carla” had agreed that I was the perfect tenant because I was in New York and could come and meet her to sign a sublet agreement, go over the details and pay her – in cash. For those of you thinking I’m a total idiot for not suspecting anything, let me just make note, “Carla” gave me a bunch of references to e-mail (which, yes, she could have and obviously did just make up), even adding in little tidbits about a new TV
Please read the original post to see the level of intricate details that this scammer used.
And this is the perfect time and place for a shameless plug; use RDNY.com to find your apartment! The “Free” sites don’t work for you. They work for the brokers who buy their listing space.
Topics: craigslist | Add Comment »
Serious Apartment Porn
| By Lorenzo |February 26, 2010 | Add Comment » |
It’s in an 1837 landmark townhouse on Washington Square North and it’s a rental. The current tenant has been there 35 years. Oh, the problems some tenants have.
A Sublet Tenant Faces Eviction
| By Lorenzo |February 26, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Q. I sublet an apartment from a guy who said he was renting from the owner. I have since discovered that the apartment is rent-stabilized, that the person I was renting from was a sub-tenant of the tenant on the lease, and that the stabilized rent is half of what I’m paying. After having problems with the hot water, I called the management company to complain. When I told them I was subletting an apartment that was already sublet, they said that was illegal and they would begin proceedings to evict me. I have heard that I can take over the lease under the “illusory sublet” provisions of the rent laws. Is this true?
A. Robert Sokolski, a Manhattan lawyer who represents tenants, said that under what is known as the “illusory prime tenancy” provision in the rent laws, when a stabilized tenant sublets an apartment he has no intention of returning to, and the owner “knew or should have known” this, the department can require the owner to offer a rent-stabilized lease to the subtenant. But, he said, “this case is not a good candidate for an illusory prime tenancy finding” because there does not appear to be any collusion or knowledge on the part of the owner.
Mr. Sokolski says the owner can probably evict the prime tenant and any subtenants. At the same time, he said, because the letter writer has been overcharged, he can sue the person he is renting from for “treble damages” — three times the overcharge — plus lawyer fees.
Topics: Legal Issues | Add Comment »
Why landlords want to rake you over the coals when you apply to lease
What it means to a landlord when tenants don't pay the rent.| By Lorenzo |February 26, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Q. I leased my duplex apartment in Queens to two tenants who paid me the first month’s rent and one month as security. When the next month’s rent was due, they gave me a check that bounced. When I called them, they told me they did not have the money and would no longer be paying rent. I offered to cancel the lease if they would move out, but they refused. What can I do?
Ms. Heiberger-Jacobsen said that because legal requirements for eviction were “strictly construed” against landlords — in other words, a landlord must do everything exactly as the law requires — hiring a lawyer was probably worth the expense.
“Although the cost of hiring an attorney may be daunting,” she said, “most leases give landlords the right to recover their legal expenses if their lawsuit is successful.”
If the tenants truly have no money, a judgment against them for legal fees may be difficult to collect. “So the most important thing is for the writer to act quickly to prevent the tenants from inflicting any more damage than they already have,” she said.
Topics: Legal Issues | Add Comment »
Financial District is finally getting some night life!
The new W Hotel Downtown kicks off the new scene.| By Lorenzo |February 26, 2010 | 2 Comments » |
The Financial District will get some much-needed nightlife this spring when W Hotels opens its sixth property in the city, the W New York Downtown, developed by the Moinian Group. With a “living room” lobby, rooftop bar and terrace bar (below) overlooking the streets, the hotel should provide this emerging residential area with some late-night oomph.
Topics: NYC Gossip, Wall Street/Battery Park | 2 Comments »
Can An Apartment Buildings Create a Bike-Sharing Amenity for Tenants?
Why not be the first in your neighborhood to implement a bike sharing program?| By Larry Rosenberg |February 21, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Paris, Stockholm, Vienna, Brussels, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Montreal, Lyons and even Washington, D.C. all have them with more cities on line to follow. A concept gaining traction with urban planners is bicycle sharing. The experience of several cities has produced enough data to show it’s popular with riders as well as another sustainable people transport strategy for cities. Whether your city does or does not have a bicycle sharing program, however, consider one for your own property.
With vacancies up, tenant attraction and retention are an on-going challenge for most multifamily managers. Why not be the first in your neighborhood to implement a bike sharing program? Bike sharing has been used to reduce the traffic and congestion crippling the arterial infrastructure, but it can also reduce the number of cars you need to accommodate in your parking structure.
With bikes and walking back in vogue, some cities are even daring to close parts of streets to vehicle traffic with rave reviews from the public. As the walking culture grows, bicycles can certainly be integrated into future designs that complement it. Studies showing that greater walkability can be a key component in stimulating retail sales and a strong local economy makes for a vibrant, attractive community.
New York City joined the fray by closing portions of the famous Broadway theater district to all vehicle traffic. It is a pilot program intended to decommission difficult intersections and further discourage vehicle use. If it works as intended, the Mayor has telegraphed his intention to close more city streets to vehicular traffic. New Yorkers appear to be generally ecstatic about the policy.
Topics: Worthy Ideas | Add Comment »
How you know you’re a New Yorker
There are a million ways. This is one of them...| By Nadine |February 21, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Once the guy at the deli below your apartment starts knowing your sandwich before you’ve even ordered it, then you’re no longer a stranger in New York City.
Bryan Greenberg – An up-and-coming fashion designer in HBO’s hot new show “How to Make It in America”
Another quote from Bryan:
I feel like there’s a rhythm to the city that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. Fall into that rhythm and things just happen. I love running into people on the street and just seeing crazy interactions between strangers. As an artist, you’ve got to be a sponge and there’s no better place to be a sponge than in New York. There are so many crazy stories that unfold every day that you’ll see just by walking the streets.
Topics: Humor | Add Comment »
More on the City Council’s new “Fair Chance Act” Tenant Protection
Landlord's who use screening reports must disclose name of screening company.| By Lorenzo |February 18, 2010 | 1 Comment » |
by Brooklyn Eagle (edit@brooklyneagle.net), published online 02-17-2010
MANHATTAN — The NY City Council at its meeting Feb. 11 approved the Tenant Fair Chance Act, legislation designed to assist tenants in accessing reports that many landlords use to determine a tenant’s suitability for housing.
Safeguarding millions of New York City tenants, the Tenant Fair Chance Act will give tenants a greater level of protection when applying for housing, according to Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Specifically, this law will require landlords and any other person who uses a tenant screening report to asses a potential tenant’s suitability for housing to disclose the name and address of the tenant screening company which prepared the report.
Topics: Legal Issues, Tips for Renters | 1 Comment »
A hidden architectual gem is under City Hall Park.
It's the abandoned GEM of the transit system.| By Lorenzo |February 12, 2010 | Add Comment » |
From an article in “2nd Ave. Sagas“, a fascinating blog.
by: By Benjamin Kabak
Three hundred feet south of the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall stop on the East Side IRT lies an abandoned subway station. Called “the world’s most beautiful former subway station” by Forgotten NY, this station is the City Hall stop that served as in the inaugural launching point for the city’s subway system in 1904.
The station is ornate with chandeliers and Guastavino arches embellished with green tiling and decorative skylights. The station is also impractical. It’s a one-way local-only stop 300 feet away from a big transfer point that features both local and express IRT service. It’s built around a very sharp curve that makes the gaps at Union Square seem small. The City recognized these shortcomings and shut the station on December 31, 1945.
For fifty years, there it lay empty and unused… It’s an incredible glimpse back in time, and as the station is unique among all of the rest of the city’s 100-year stations, it’s really something to see up close. Just take a look at these photographs.
Topics: NYC History, Noteworthy Buildings | Add Comment »
Were you ever curious to see what Joan Crawford’s NYC apartment looked like?
Neither were we.| By Lorenzo |February 12, 2010 | Add Comment » |
But it’s an interesting period piece. Kind of shlocky for a woman of her wealth. But there’s something sort of refreshing about her down-to-earth pedestrian furnishings. Take a look here.
Topics: NYC Gossip, NYC History | Add Comment »
Landlord Housing Court screening must be disclosed to applicants
| By Lorenzo |February 11, 2010 | Add Comment » |
New York, NY – 
Most renters don’t know companies buy copies of Housing Court files and sell them to landlords, Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) said. Many are given no chance to fix mistakes or explain why they were in court.
“They’re wildly inaccurate,” said Quinn. “A process being in place that basically penalizes tenants for exercising their rights, without any knowledge, is inherently unfair.”
The new law would require landlords to tell applicants which company was providing the records, so they can get their own copies and correct problems.
Landlords could be fined $500 for violations, but Quinn said the real estate industry is not opposing the bill.
Topics: Legal Issues, The Market, Tips for Renters | Add Comment »
Bloomberg: The Transformation of Broadway Is Here to Stay
The NEW Broadway, the Broadway with chairs and tables in the street, is here to stay!| By Lorenzo |February 11, 2010 | Add Comment » |
by Ben Fried on February 11, 2010
Eight months after New York City changed traffic patterns in midtown Manhattan, transforming Broadway and reclaiming acres of urban space for pedestrian plazas at Times Square and Herald Square, Mayor Bloomberg announced this morning that the trial has proven successful and the changes will be permanent. Streetsblog will post a full report, including data collected from the trial period, later today. Stay tuned.
Update: We’ll post highlights shortly from a very interesting press conference and Q&A with the mayor. If, in the meantime, you want to comb through the data in DOT’s evaluation report, here’s the PDF.
Topics: Midtown West | Add Comment »
Did you know there are Rent Stabilized parking spaces in NYC?
We didn't know it either...| By Lorenzo |February 11, 2010 | Add Comment » |
NYC’s Rent-Stabilized Parking: A Hidden Subsidy to Drive
by Noah Kazis on February 10, 2010
We say it a lot here on Streetsblog: cheap parking is bad policy. Without putting the right price on the scarce space that cars take up, people have more incentive to own and drive automobiles. In New York City, thanks to everything from free or cheap on-street parking to subsidized garages and parking minimums, distortions in the parking market are all around us. They also come from some unexpected places. Like rent stabilization laws.
Re
nt stabilization covers fully one half of all rental units in New York City [PDF] — nearly 900,000 apartments where the government sets a firm limit on the annual increase in rent.
Many of the city’s rent-stabilized apartments, it turns out, also come with rent-stabilized parking spaces — giving some New Yorkers a publicly subsidized inducement to own and drive cars.
David King, a Columbia urban planning professor who researches parking behavior, put it simply: “The goal of rent stabilization is to make it affordable to live in New York City. Rent stabilization is a way of subsidizing the cost of housing, but by including parking with that, we’re subsidizing parking use.”
Topics: Legal Issues, Tips for Renters | Add Comment »
We’ve all heard about the fiasco at Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village
Here's what the residents have to say about it...| By Lorenzo |February 11, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Topics: NYC History | Add Comment »
Sad and Uplifting at the same time: Death of two elderly dogs at an 84-unit apt. in NYC strengthens the human-canine bond
| By Lorenzo |February 7, 2010 | Add Comment » |
Last weekend, The New York Times reported that a pair of 14-year-old dogs died of natural causes only one day apart at an apartment building on New York City’s West 86th Street. Harry, who “held court at sidewalk cafes and was known as the Mayor of 86th Street,” died on Friday evening; and Bix, who had been had been “the ringleader of a 9 a.m. play group since 1997″ on Saturday.
As they became older, these dogs were given privileges that usually are reserved for humans, like having first dibs on entering and exiting the elevators.That the dogs died on the same weekend shocked the building’s residents. It seemed to mark the end of an era, according to Harry Ahrens, a 62-year-old dog owner who took no offense at being referred to as “Human Harry” so as not to be confused with the canine Harry.
“Losing those two longtime residents, it kind of reminds everybody of their own mortality,” Harry commented. “They were a more pleasant part of the building’s culture than some of the people.” A doorman, Rafael Curbelo, a dog lover who kept a stash of treats in the lobby, shed tears upon hearing the double dose of bad news. “Harry was my best friend here,” said Mr. Curbelo. Recalling a pet dog named Johnny that his family had in Cuba, he said that losing Harry hurt even more.
Topics: Uncategorized | Add Comment »
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