April 22, 2012
A Co-op With Elbow Room, The Times covers my work again!
The New York Times' The Hunt covers the often intense ups and downs of people searching for homes in New York City. For the second time this year, I'm privileged to have my clients profiled. It was an exhausting apartment hunt that I brokered, poetically culminating full circle, with my customers Evan and Natalie buying the apartment literally across the hallway from the one where I had met them months earlier, at an open house for one of my exclusives at 350 E 77th Street. It was a real roller-coaster of a search. Times writer Joyce Cohen tells the whole story in A Co-op With Elbow Room, in today's Real Estate section.
We saw over 50 Upper East Side apartments, had three accepted offers, with wrenching disappointments as two of them didn't work out. Throughout the process, I built a strong client relationship with Evan and Natalie. Few things motivate me to be on my best game more than the loyalty and sincere appreciation of customers like these. They relied heavily on my expertise as I helped to guide them through a fairly complex maze of available inventory. Helping to validate coop values, making strategically savvy offers, negotiating well, and closing on a great value for them. We encountered everything from difficult coops to sellers rescinding their acceptance. In the end we had a few laughs, and great satisfaction as we closed on their perfect, first, NYC home.
read the full article in The New York Times: A Co-op With Elbow Room
I heard a story about a coop Board turn down last week, when I went out with a customer to look at some Greenwich Village apartments. We dropped by to see a "Gold Coast" property off Fifth Avenue near Washington Square Park, which had just come back on the market. It was a lovely place, in a converted townhouse, with just five units in the building. As we were about to leave, I asked the listing agent why the apartment had come back on the market. It could be for any number of reasons like the buyer exercising a mortgage contingency, or an inspection problem — both of which seemed unlikely by the condition of the building, and the fact that the co-op required a 50% down-payment, which most banks would see as a low risk, loan to value ratio on lending. It turns out that the prospective buyers were the parents of the person whom would be the occupant/tenant of the apartment. The Board's due diligence process included online research of the tenant. It revealed a 'Facebook' page for the potential occupant which included pictures that raised an eyebrow with some the Board members. While I'm not privy to knowing exactly what the problem was, it seems reasonable that some owners became worried about loud parties and late night noise. It projected a questionable image, and the Coop Board turned down the application. 
There's a weekly show about real estate in the Tri-State area starting up its season on the local airwaves. 
There's an interesting thread about historical documentation running through this week's posts. From the 1930s NYC captured by 
