Consider a NYC Green Home. Featuring all of the amenities of traditional doorman, luxury hi-rises; eco-friendly buildings offer something even more: peace of mind.

Set your mind at ease. Not only will you purchase a home which is built from re-used, recycled, reusable or sustainable products, a home in which the air and water is filtered, and the rainwater reused to keep the grounds beautified, but you will also purchase a house in a micro-market that seems to be weathering the current economic downturn. According to Lydia Depillis’ article in the November 13, 2008 “New York Observer Article” the market for environmentally friendly housing in New York City is “…going strong: Driven by growing demand for eco-friendly living and working space, developers are forging full steam ahead on plans to obtain green certification.”

With many new LEED certified buildings in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, you’ll have a variety of neighborhoods and styles to choose from. Of course, you’ll have to do your due diligence by reviewing the building’s financials and having a lawyer look over your contract before purchasing.

Have questions? Want more information on LEED certified buildings? Would you like a tour of the newest eco-friendly condos? Ask Lala.

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There are many reasons to hire a real estate professional to help you with your search.  It’s picking the right person to handle all your real estate needs that really matters.

Here are some considerations in finding the right agent or broker:

1. Does your agent have access to all the co-brokered listings?
2. Do they have expertise in the areas you would like to live?
3. Are there other agents in the company that would help manage your search if your agent becomes unavailable?
4. Is your agent punctual in responding?
5. Does your agent seem to understand the market?
6. Does your agent have the support of his/her agency? If this is a less experienced agent, do they have the advice of more experienced agents at their company?
7. Is your agent always reachable?
8. Does the agent you’re working with have the upper hand on technology?

The right agent will show you apartments in your budget and just above your budget to allow for negotiations.  To figure out your budget, they will ask you questions about your income and assets.  If you’re buying there will be additional inquiries into what you have to put down, where money is coming from and what assets you will have after down payment, closing costs and other charges associated with buying a co-op.

It is important to work with the agent you feel comfortable with.  Real estate professionals work on commission, and commission alone.  If you searching for the right agent do so only in the preliminary process.   Due to REBNY rules, all REBNY members share the same listings.  Stick with the agent you have come to know and trust.  Of course, if your agent is not representing your interests, it is always advisable to find a new agent as quickly as possible.

If you have any questions, Ask LaLa!

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Even though the NAR gets away without paying any fines or damages, the settlement is a big victory for consumers – NAR-affiliated multiple listing services can no longer allow members to withhold listings from “virtual office websites,” or VOWs – brokerages that use Internet technology to deliver real estate services at a discount. Traditional brokerages didn’t like competition from these upstarts, so instead of becoming more efficient themselves, they tried to keep the online brokerages from getting any information. In one egregious case, all of the brokers in a market withheld their listings from the single VOW in the community, which then had to shut down.

This settlement also vindicates our approach to real estate services at MLX.com. It doesn’t affect us directly – the dominant trade association here is the Real Estate Board of New York, which doesn’t belong to the NAR – but as an “upstart” brokerage that tried to use the Internet to create efficiencies, and pass those efficiencies on to the consumer, we’ve had our own run-ins with the traditional brokerages and their captive organizations and regulators. (See the previous item for news of our antitrust settlement with REBNY.)

Amazingly, the NAR still doesn’t get it. In a New York Times article, an NAR spokesperson calls the case “a five-year education of the Department of Justice” – as if they had begged to be allowed to give up their restrictive practices. Well, whoever educated the folks at Justice, we’re glad they saw the light.

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A little history: The Real Estate Board (aka REBNY), a trade association that is controlled by the big brokerage firms, started a residential listing service a few years ago. These exclusive listings come from REBNY members, and their distribution is tightly controlled. The independent brokers who subscribe to our BrokersNYC service would have to pay through the nose to access them in any readily usable form. When we asked REBNY if we could disseminate the listings to our members through the BrokersNYC website, REBNY refused.

We filed an antitrust suit in 2004, saying it was anticompetitive to prevent services like BrokersNYC from distributing these listings to independent brokers at an affordable price. (And of course, the lack of competition doesn’t just hurt BrokersNYC and the independent brokers; it hurts consumers, too.)

Our lawsuit asked that REBNY be required to deal with any listings information service that, like BrokersNYC, operates on behalf of REBNY members, and to integrate directly with our software so that independent brokers could get a product equivalent to what the majors were getting. We also asked for at least $78 million in damages.

Last August, a judge threw out REBNY’s motion to dismiss the case. In January, we met with Magistrate Judge Dollinger and agreed to settle, and the settlement went into effect recently. While we didn’t get everything we asked for (that’s the point of a settlement), BrokersNYC is now free to compete on an equal footing with its competitors that service the brokerage community – and our clients, and ultimately the consumers, will get a better deal. We’re looking forward to rolling out new features for BrokersNYC very soon.

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A good landlord means quick and attentive help with problems. A good landlord means a painless living situation. A good landlord means concern for tenant well being.

A bad landlord can mean living in a unclean or unsafe building. It can mean having your concerns ignored, getting ripped off, or even having your civil rights violated.

But frankly, we don’t need to tell you what makes a good or bad landlord, because you know from your own experience. As always, we’re interested to hear from Ask LaLa readers about their experiences. So tell us: Who are the best landlords in New York City? Who are the worst ones? We’d love to hear how different landlords youv’e come across- as either a tenant or as an apartment hunter- rate on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), or any other comments you have about New York City landlords.

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Yes, brokers are supposed to represent their clients, but – just like attorneys – their representation is supposed to stop at the point where the client asks for help in breaking the law. Brokers also have a larger responsibility to the communities where they live and work, and steering is a betrayal of that responsibility.

Discriminating against would-be renters doesn’t just hurt the individuals who are discriminated against (which would be reason enough not to do it); it hurts us all by making New York City an even more difficult and expensive place to live. Middle-class couples have a hard enough time raising kids in the city, and brokers shouldn’t be helping to drive them out. Think about it – one of the couple in the lawsuit is an ER doctor. Do we really want to lose our ER doctors?

We also have to ask why brokers are willing to go along with this kind of behavior. Generally it’s not because they hate children (or blacks, or gays, or whoever). It’s because they only get paid when they rent an apartment. When they spend time showing apartments to tenants they think will be rejected, they lose money.

This is why alternative brokerage models are needed – an idea we’ve been promoting at MLX for many years. Successfully renting (or selling) an apartment shouldn’t be the only way for a broker to get paid. Apartment seekers should have the option of hiring brokers and paying them for services rendered, whether or not they close the deal. Under this type of arrangement, brokers know they’re only working with serious renters (or buyers) and not wasting their time with window shoppers. This allows them to price their services more reasonably, and – getting back to the original subject of this posting – it takes away their incentive to accommodate landlords’ prejudices.

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For background on Klickads v. REBNY case, click here.

Inman article Manhattan real estate antitrust lawsuit proceeds, click here

Real Deal article BrokersNYC suit against REBNY progresses click here.

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The bill looked like a shoo-in to pass.

After nearly a year of painstaking analysis and tough negotiations, the Bloomberg administration, the City Council, housing advocates, lenders and real estate developers had hashed out a measure intended to revamp a popular tax-break program so it would generate more relatively affordable housing while restricting subsidies to luxury high-rises like Trump World Tower. It was all done with a minimum of grousing.

Then the bill governing what is known as the 421-a program went to Albany. And suddenly, on the Legislature’s last day in session last week, an amended version passed both houses, extending special tax breaks to the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn and scuttling the city’s efforts to build middle-class housing at Queens West on the East River and other areas. Critics say it could also undermine efforts to build apartments for residents of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods.

Now the city is asking Gov. Eliot Spitzer to veto the bill if the Bloomberg administration cannot persuade legislators to make substantive changes. What went wrong?

Nearly everything, city officials, Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and others involved in the negotiations say.

Many supporters of the city’s version are blaming Assemblyman Vito Lopez of Brooklyn, the chairman of the Housing Committee, who introduced the amended bill on June 18 in the frantic four days before the Assembly adjourned.

Mr. Lopez, who did not consult many of the advocates and builders who had worked on the city’s proposal, defended his legislation, saying it aimed at housing for poor and working-class New Yorkers. Middle-class families were just “not as high a priority,‿ he said.

But many advocates, city officials and even some Senate Republicans are saying that Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, betrayed the city’s effort. By all accounts, Mr. Spinola, the leading industry lobbyist, played a major role in negotiating the compromises and the tax deals for Atlantic Yards and other developments that led to Senate approval.

“This was a backroom deal,‿ said Liz Krueger, one of only two state senators who voted against the bill.

Some critics also suggested that the Bloomberg administration underestimated the importance of forming alliances with powerful members of the Assembly, in this case Mr. Lopez. Those critics say the city has made that mistake before: In 2005, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver killed the mayor’s plan to build a $2.2 billion football stadium and convention center on the Far West Side of Manhattan.

“We thought we had the makings of a good deal, and we thought it would get modestly better in Albany,‿ said Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development. “Instead it emerged with a bunch of loopholes.‿

City officials contend that Mr. Lopez rebuffed their efforts to engage in meaningful discussions, although the city’s housing commissioner, Shaun Donovan, and Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff testified before his committee. The bill, they say, is seriously flawed.

“We are concerned that the 421-a bill passed by the State Legislature will discourage the construction of affordable housing in some of the city neighborhoods where it is most needed,‿ Mr. Donovan said. “At the same time it provides hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary tax breaks to a few select developers.‿

Mr. Donovan said that Mr. Lopez’s bill would take away the city’s discretion in granting tax benefits for 10,000 middle-income apartments now in the pipeline, including Queens West in Long Island City, and prohibit the city from spending money from a housing fund on 2,000 apartments planned for poor neighborhoods.

The Assembly has not yet sent the Lopez bill to the governor for his signature.

The 421-a housing program was created during a bleak period in the 1970s. It was designed to spur housing development throughout the city by providing developers with an exemption for 10 to 15 years on any increase in real estate taxes after their projects were built. During the real estate boom in the 1980s, the program was revised to require developers in central Manhattan to reserve 20 percent of the units in a building for lower-income people in order to qualify for the tax breaks.

The program generated tens of thousands of apartments for poor and moderate-income families. But it cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues and came under criticism, in the latest boom, as a giveaway for luxury developers in fashionable neighborhoods.

With housing prices soaring across the city, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed a task force early last year to look into additional changes. In December, the City Council passed a plan that significantly extended the areas in which developers had to set aside affordable units in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, much of Harlem, Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

The city’s plan also established a $400 million fund for developing low- and moderately priced housing in 15 of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and authorized the city to grant tax breaks for certain middle-income projects, like Queens West.

Because the 421-a program, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the year, is part of the state’s property tax code, the Bloomberg administration sent the proposed bill to Albany. What emerged from the Assembly was quite different.

At Mr. Lopez’s urging, the Assembly passed a bill that added Riverdale, Red Hook, Upper Manhattan and many struggling neighborhoods like West Farms in the Bronx and Crown Heights in Brooklyn to the zones in which developers must build affordable housing to qualify for tax breaks. Mr. Lopez’s version also reserved subsidized apartments for people making a lower income than currently specified in the law.

Mr. Lopez said in an interview that many of these working-class and minority neighborhoods were experiencing gentrification. “Somebody needs to find housing for working-class public servants,‿ he said. “My bill has targeted that group.‿

But the bill would also provide what the city estimates are an additional $300 million in tax breaks for the vast Atlantic Yards complex being developed by Forest City Ratner Companies, the development partner with The New York Times Company in the Times’ new Midtown headquarters, without getting any additional affordable units in return. Mr. Lopez said it was a concession sought during negotiations with Mr. Spinola and the Senate over his bill.

State Senator Martin J. Golden, a Republican from Brooklyn, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, acknowledged yesterday that Mr. Spinola “may have had a little bit more of a role than most,‿ in negotiating the bill. But, he added, “Everybody was checked with.‿

Yet, State Senator Frank Padavan, a fellow Republican, contends that the Senate bill was rushed through with little discussion of the special deals for developers like Forest City. “It didn’t pass the smell test,‿ he said.

Real estate developers say that the real estate board, whose leading members are active in Manhattan, was principally concerned with extending the 421-a program beyond Dec. 31, and had little interest in the impact of the bill on development in the other boroughs. Mr. Spinola was on vacation this week and unavailable for comment.

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“Zero! Zero! Shame! Shame!” tenant advocates screamed, drowning out speeches given by board members.

The increases are slightly smaller than last year’s hikes of 4.25% for one-year leases and 7.25% for two-year leases.

Both tenants and landlords were unhappy with the decision, and Board Chairman Marvin Markus admitted the process was flawed because it doesn’t help the poorest tenants or the most cash-strapped landlords.

The board approved the hikes by a 5-to-4 vote. Tenant representatives, who wanted smaller or no increases, voted against it. Landlord representatives, who wanted increases of 5% and 9%, also voted against it.

“It gets harder and harder,” said tenant Gloria Horlick, 77, who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment in Rego Park, Queens, with her husband.

But Joe Strasburg of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents property owners, said a 3% increase will not cover the rising costs for landlords.

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