The New York Times
January 16, 2015
That pinch you’re feeling when it comes to housing may be real.
The average price of an apartment in New York City has surpassed its last peak, 2008, before the recession hit and the housing market collapsed. And that new high, about $1.7 million in Manhattan, may cause potential buyers to draw in a sharp and painful breath.
Even median prices, which better reflect what’s going on outside the luxury market in buildings that aren’t snazzy Midtown spires, may prompt shock.
According to the Corcoran Group, the real estate brokerage, the median price of all apartments in Manhattan is now $916,000. The median price of a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is $710,000.
But median doesn’t have to mean mundane. Surprising results can be achieved if, say, $750,000 is deployed creatively in the resale marketplace, whether in Manhattan or the outer boroughs. After all, many prospective buyers prefer to stay in New York City rather than decamp to the suburbs.
“It’s so much cheaper here, and you get so much more for your money,” said Cosimo Tacopino, a salesman with Neuhaus Realty in Staten Island, making a pitch for a house facing a leafy park in Tottenville.
But Mr. Tacopino’s words could easily apply to several other listings in the city.
Manhattan (When Location Matters)
If Manhattan is indeed becoming a moated retreat for gazillionaires, the most affluent neighborhoods would seem to be a no-go zone.
But if prospective buyers are willing to give up the luxury of simply turning a key and moving right in, and able to commit to a renovation, they could come away with an address in a coveted neighborhood.
In early January, a prewar studio requiring a kitchen renovation, for instance, was for sale in the West Village for $725,000.
At 99 Bank Street, a brick printing plant turned residential co-op, the apartment, No. 5-S, offers wood floors, 10-foot ceilings and ample light, courtesy of views to the west along Greenwich Street. The windowless kitchen, though, is dingy, with few counters. A tiny dishwasher sat atop one of them.
But for views over meticulously maintained rowhouses in a landmark district, on a street paved with stones, and proximity to trendy restaurants and Hudson River Park, the extra cost of putting the kitchen to rights might be worth it, said Katherine Salyi, the saleswoman at Nest Seekers International who is listing the apartment.
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“It’s a fairly small apartment that needs some work in an amazing location,” Ms. Salyi said, adding that “there’s not a lot on the market, and what is, is very expensive.”
In the past 12 months in the West Village, the median sale price of all co-ops and condos was $1.5 million, according to StreetEasy.com, the real estate website.
Buyers might benefit from considering other properties at 99 Bank. Since apartments in the 126-unit six-story building don’t turn over that often, Ms. Salyi said, some have dated kitchens and baths, possibly qualifying them — and pricing them — as fixer-uppers.
Manhattan (When Space Counts)
For $750,000, buyers expect a one-bedroom to have certain things, including distinct places to cook and shower; and a door separating the living area and the bed. The veteran apartment hunter also might tend to assume a one-bedroom will have less than 1,000 square feet.
Which is why a listing for $679,000 for a prewar co-op at 115 Payson Avenue was so arresting. For that sum, No. 3E-F packs in not one but three bedrooms and about 1,470 square feet. The apartment, in an Art Deco elevator building, is in the coveted and often pricey 212 area code, in the neighborhood of Inwood, at Manhattan’s northernmost tip.
The apartment has two full baths, several closets and original details like sunken floors edged with metal railings. No. 3E-F is actually a pair of combined units, a studio and a two-bedroom, which in some ways has produced an awkward layout. Earlier this month, the studio’s former kitchen, still tiled, sat empty, awaiting a use.
But the space, which features lots of curves — ceiling beams, arches over doorways — seemed roomy enough to allow for a redesign project without dislodging the residents.
Striking out away from the heart of Manhattan is a time-tested strategy for finding more space, and it still works.
Of the 165 co-ops and condos in a StreetEasy search that provided square footage, the 12 with 1,000 feet or more were in Harlem, or north of it. But while some outlying areas are isolated or low on stores and services, Inwood is a well-established residential enclave, with block after block of grand apartment buildings, and lively retail areas along Broadway and on Dyckman Street.
Yet the most endearing feature of the neighborhood, many residents say, is its generous park acreage, an example of which looms out of 115 Payson’s windows. Across the street from the building is a steep rock-strewn slope that is part of Inwood Hill Park, which had the look of a Currier and Ives print on a recent snowy afternoon.
Steve Stampleman, a salesman at New Heights Realty, the brokerage that has the Payson Avenue listing, said there’s nothing quite like the park in Manhattan.
“I call it my private Central Park,” said Mr. Stampleman, who has lived in Inwood since the early 1970s, “without the mass of humanity.”
If you really want to stretch your money, of course, you could do what people have done for years, at least until Brooklyn got so fashionable: Head for the other boroughs.
These days it’s not as easy as taking a subway one stop from the old neighborhood, entering a new ZIP code and finding a discounted apartment, brokers say. Close-in neighborhoods, including Long Island City in Queens, have crept close to some parts of Manhattan in terms of price.
Another consideration: Some areas are dominated by rentals, particularly in the Bronx. Although affluent sections like Riverdale, in the northwestern corner, offer co-ops, condos and single-family houses, opportunities elsewhere favor the purchase of, say, three-family semidetached brick houses.
A search of the Bronx on The New York Times real estate website earlier this month produced 23 listings between $650,000 and $750,000, mostly for co-ops, condos and single-family houses, and most, or 19, were in Riverdale or neighborhoods often considered to be part of it, like Fieldston.
But for somebody willing to consider a property that turns him or her into a landlord, the list of for-sale properties in the Bronx also included Locust Point, a waterside finger of land in the Throgs Neck section.
Listed at $719,000, a two-family house there at 3258 Giegerich Place has three bedrooms in each apartment. It is actually an expansion of a single-story bungalow, examples of which still dot its densely packed street. Wood floors and flowing rooms are tucked behind bland siding; so are washers and dryers, in both units.
What little backyard there is on the tiny property had been covered by a deck, though that also allowed for a pool, a hot tub and a granite-topped bar.
To be fair, the area is remote. A single road leads in and out, past a hanging wood sign adorned with a dinghy, though an express bus, the BxM9, stops a few blocks away and makes the run to Fifth Avenue in Midtown in about 40 minutes.
But that faraway feel has upsides. Positioned where the East River spills into Long Island Sound, Locust Point offers views of glittering waves, as well as less organic though still enchanting sights, like the tall towers that suspend the Throgs Neck Bridge.
“They can have space here, they can have storage, they can have kids,” said Clarissa Rosado, a saleswoman with Re/Max Prime Properties in Scarsdale, who added that the unit on the ground floor of 3258 Giegerich Place now rents for $1,500 a month but could command $1,800.
“There’s no more space in Brooklyn,” she said. “There’s no more space in Queens.”
Staten Island
Suburbia in the city? The phrase gets thrown around a lot, whether referring to the colorful colonials of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, the Tudors of Jamaica Estates, Queens, or even, oddly, the ranch houses of Crotona Park East, in the Bronx, which rose from the rubble of burned-out buildings.
But block for block, the subdivided vibe of Staten Island, with its modest midcentury homes with driveways and garages, easily recalls a bedroom community in New Jersey or Connecticut.
If a buyer can shake off preconceptions about how vertical New York is supposed to look, then it might seem reasonable to park that $750,000 in a place that’s far more low-slung, like on the western side of the Verrazano Bridge.
Just don’t expect to go clubbing. “Young people don’t really want to come out here, because there’s no action,” said Mr. Tacopino, the Neuhaus agent. But, he added, “when you are finally willing to settle down, and still be in the city, but apart from the hustle and bustle, then this is the place.”
His listing, No. 149 Satterlee Street, that house in Tottenville, is an aluminum-sided raised ranch on a quiet block.
Listed at $739,900, the early 1980s house has three bedrooms, two baths and a breakfast nook with a skylight, as well as a wood-burning fireplace in its family room. The ranch faces Conference House Park, a 265-acre waterside spread that was the site of peace talks during the Revolutionary War.
The park, which has beaches and winding trails, and views to Perth Amboy, N.J., also includes a post marking New York State’s southernmost point. Being so close to the water, though, carries risks. Many blocks in Tottenville and Staten Island’s south shore were slammed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, resulting in deaths, though No. 149 Satterlee was spared by its perch on high ground.
For buyers whose impression of the housing stock in Queens is based on what they have seen from the window of a speeding cab en route to or from La Guardia Airport, Douglas Manor will come as an eye-opener.
Wood-frame homes from the early 20th century, in Arts and Crafts, Mediterranean and Tudor styles, nestle on a point ringed with water, and seem to have more in common with the moneyed communities of the North Shore of Long Island — a not-too-strenuous rowboat ride away — than the humdrum attached brick offerings by the Grand Central Parkway.
“Buyers are surprised that this is still Queens,” said Ann Carlucci, an associate broker with Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty who often works in the area.
Along those same lines, this is not a part of Queens where that $750,000 will go too far. Few of the elegant manorlike houses here sell for less than $1 million, and prices of $2 million to $4 million are not uncommon.
But to squeeze into this area, where social life for some residents involves swimming and swatting tennis balls at the private Douglaston Club, a buyer might consider purchasing an outbuilding of a historic estate.
One such property was on the market earlier this month for $728,000. The one-bedroom stucco cottage at 320 Kenmore Road was once the garage of the handsome six-bedroom Tudor mansion next door.
The space isn’t voluminous, but it is cozy. A well-equipped kitchen has been installed in a corner; the upstairs, with a glimpse of Little Neck Bay — in winter, at least — easily accommodates a queen-size bed.
And from the living room, French doors open to a wide stone patio that seems to have replaced part of a driveway.
Families might find the cottage a tight fit; older people may not like the stairs leading to the sole bathroom upstairs. Also, the building nuzzles the Tudor mansion, so a harmonious relationship with the neighbors is probably required.
Unless, of course, the buyer is crabby and rich, and also snaps up the big house, for sale for $2,998,000, as well as the lot on the other side of it, No. 300; the three properties altogether cost about $4.7 million.
Much ink has been spilled in recent months about how Kings County has pulled even, in terms of price, with Manhattan, and even raced ahead in some places. And measured a certain way, either looking at monthly rents or sale prices, there are recent examples of an apartment in popular Dumbo, say, trading for more than a similar one across the East River.
But over all, Brooklyn still seems to offer discounts. The median price of a resale condo there in the fourth quarter of last year was $690,000, according to a Douglas Elliman market report. Even though that figure was up 7 percent from a year ago, it still trailed Manhattan, where the median in the fourth quarter was $1.4 million. A less official analysis of one-bedroom listings suggested the same: For a similar amount of money, buyers can snap up more square footage in prime neighborhoods in Brooklyn than in most of Manhattan.
And increasingly, Brooklyn provides the types of condos that Manhattan has constructed for years. So if a buyer has a heart set on recent construction loaded with amenities, this goal might be satisfied in Brooklyn for a little less cash.
Among the options was a one-bedroom one-bath unit at Clermont Greene, a 74-unit condo at 181 Clermont Avenue in the Fort Greene neighborhood. This apartment’s 750 square feet includes nine-and-a-half-foot-tall ceilings and a walk-in master closet; there’s also a narrow balcony. The unit, No. 204, was listed earlier this month at $750,000, or about $1,000 a square foot.
Clad in gray metal panels, the 2007 condo, which actually consists of two buildings wrapping a landscaped courtyard, stands in sharp contrast to the historic brick and brownstone structures across the street. “This is kind of unique,” said Diny Ajamian, a saleswoman with Douglas Elliman, on a recent tour. “It’s juxtaposed against all these turn-of-the-century rowhouses.”
Those differences extend to the lobby, which offers a video screen that alerts residents if they have waiting packages or dry cleaning. There’s also a gym, a seasonal rooftop garden and a parking garage, though it has a waiting list.
If the desired object is a condo in Fort Greene, whose namesake park is three blocks away, there aren’t many choices. A search in early January revealed just six active listings, with two of them at 1 Hanson Place, the converted Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. A two-bedroom there was $1.65 million, or about $1,300 a foot. A studio in the same building was $599,000, or $1,200 a foot. Although that building is considered top-notch for the borough, another two of the resale condo listings were also slightly higher, on a square-foot basis, than 181 Clermont, making it a deal.
And versus Manhattan? Still a bargain: The average per-square-foot price for similar apartments there last quarter was about $1,550.
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