NYC luxury condo buyers will be pleased to note that mortgage rates for jumbo loans (more than $729,750), are coming down. For borrowers with a 20% down payment, the average rate for a 30-year fixed jumbo loan is 5.125 percent.

Mortgages – Lenders Loosen Reins on Jumbo Mortgages – NYTimes.com.

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Born last July, and adopted last October, my Bella and Pippa love to eat — and, I must confess, they spend quite a bit of time on the kitchen counter of my NYC apartment. Since our Sponsor forget to install utensil drawers, we’ve been using a temporary Elfa wire drawers. Bella climbs the Elfa drawers like a marine, then prowls the counters for yummy morsels. Recently, she’s taken to stepping into the deep kitchen sink to scavenge for tidbits. This video will be a useful reminder to her to lay off the snacks!

Fat Cat Can’t Jump on Counter.

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We have a wonderful view of the Empire State Building from our New York condo. At 8:30pm last night, the Empire State Building went dark in honor of Earth Day. We wanted to see how ESB would re-light at 9:30pm. A few minutes after 9:30pm, the needle of the ESB lit up in bright white. Slowly, the top of ESB lit up in a dull white, then brighter white. In a few minutes, the top of the Empire State Building was awash in pale peach and green hues. It was fun to watch.
New York landmarks Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge go dark in honor of Earth Hour.

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On Saturday night, a 250-foot crane crashed into the top of a 25-story building in Manhattan. Seems like the NYC building inspectors just can’t get it right.
250-foot crane crashes into top of 25-story building in Manhattan, sending bricks flying down.

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Have you been priced out of the upper westside nyc apartment market? Why not take a look at the huge apartments available for sale and for rent in Washington Heights?
Curbed NY: Washington Heights like ‘the Upper West Side in the 80s’.

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Daily Real Estate Definition

This poetic definition of Manhattan as it was some four hundred years ago is provided courtesy of a beautiful scan by google of “Historic Buldings…in New York”

“Where massive sky-scrapers now tower, primeval forests, un-
touched by the hand of man, fretted the sky line. At the
lower end of the island there were wooded hills and grassy
valleys where the wild strawberry, apple, cherry, and grape
fruited in their season, and wild flowers of every hardy kind
bloomed in profusion. Brooks, ponds, swamps, and marshes
covered the middle part of the island, and not far from the
shore at the lower end on the east side was a pond with a little
island in the middle to which the Dutch later gave the name
Kolloch. To the north were high rocky hills, covered with
dense forests, in which the wolf, the bear, the deer, and the
wild turkey had their haunts, and between the hills trickled,
tumbled, and foamed scores of limpid brooks, full of trout.

New Amsterdam lived on traffic, and was a lively place
from the beginning, for it was on the highway between the
northern and southern colonies. Life was remarkably cos-
mopolitan from the earliest days. Official edicts were issued
in French, Dutch, and English, and in 1643 eighteen languages
were spoken on Manhattan Island. The town, settled for
purposes of trade by a seafaring people, naturally long clung
close to the water’s edge. And here centred the social life of
the old Dutch town. ”

More later from this gorgeous work.

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A great definition from the classic Real estate Principles and Practices by Benson (1922) :

“Real Estate. — For all commercial purposes the term real
estate has two distinct meanings. First it is the article dealt
in, and in this sense it includes realty and all interests therein
whether they are legally real or personal property. Second
it is the name of the business engaged in by those who conduct
commercial transactions in real estate.”

Not much has changed in almost 100 years.

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Long article today in New York Times about bedbugs — and the trained dogs that sniff them out. We had a bedbug scare when we adopted two rescued kittens — I have 130 bites all over my body. Some speculated bedbugs — it turned out it was (only) fleas!!!

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Not until I recently became a cat owner and fell in love with our two adopted kittens, did I ever lament the “no pet policy” of many coops. In general, anti-dog coops support this policy because dogs are perceived as a nuisance on elevators, and their barking may disturb other neighbors.

For more information about pet policies, Stephen Lasser of Stark & Stark wrote an interesting article “New York Pet Laws Affects Boards and Dog Owners in Cooperatives and Condominiums.”

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Before you narrow down your search to a “No Fee” apartment, be sure you understand the Manhattan rental market. There are approximately 9000 available apartments for rent. About 50% of these apartments are available directly from landlords; the other 50% of apartments are rental apartments or coops and condos sublets represented by exclusive brokers.

When you rent directly from a landlord, the apartment is No Fee. If you rent a landlord apartment through a broker, the broker fee is generally 15% of the first year’s rent.

During slow markets, such as this past year, many landlords offer OP (“Owner Pays”) to brokers — this means that the landlord will pay the broker a month fee for bringing a renter who signs a lease. Therefore, brokers can offer these apartments as “No Fee.” Some landlords will offer one month OP to the broker or one month free rent to the renter.

Donn’t forget about the other half of the market: broker exclusives. Even though 95% of these apartment have a one month or 15% commission, the rent on these apartment may be lower than on landlord direct No Fee apartments.

My advice: renters should consider both landlord and broker exclusive apartments before deciding which apartment they want to rent.

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