Apartment Hunter, Heal Thyself!

Nothing equalizes people like an infectious disease. Even the emotional wounds of a tumultuous love triangle can be soothed when all three scorned and pained lovers take a good look at one another and realize that they all have the same cold sore, just on opposite sides.

Is it too far a stretch, then, to believe that the healing of the ailing New York City real estate market could begin with apartment “buyers, sellers, agents, lenders, and any other stakeholder that has the propensity to allow emotions to enter their decision-making process” admitting to a shared unflattering and unsightly disease?

Realtor Denny Grimes tells Real Estate Radio USA that until all of the players involved in each and every NYC apartment purchase admit to their advanced case of what he calls “expectation-itis”, the real estate market cannot begin to heal. According to Mr. Grimes, "expectation-itis" is an infectious little bug of a mental disorder that’s primary symptom is “wishing things were one way, when in fact, they are not.” Once we get that under control, he says, the market will take care of itself:

“[L]ike water will seek its own level, supply and demand will equalize with some predictability, if the human factor can be minimized. [...] One of the best ways to keep your emotions in check is to keep your expectations in check.”

So how do you know if you're infected and unknowingly spreading expectation-itis to everyone you bump up against in your NYC apartment dealings? Mr. Grimes has a handy checklist of questions with which you can diagnose himself, but it requires you to be brutally honest with your self:

Do you often say, "I don't want to give my home away"?
If yes, then you are a seller who has tested positive for expectation-itis. You believe that you are not getting a fair price for the property you are selling.

Do you believe "today's buyers are bottom feeders"?
If yes, then you are a broker who has tested positive for expectation-itis. You are tired of dealing with buyers who want to pay as little as possible for an apartment and sellers who want to get the highest price possible.

Have you missed out on good property deals because you automatically offered 20% below a very reasonable asking price?
If yes, then you are a buyer who has tested positive for expectation-itis. You believe you should pay less than the asking price no matter how low it is.

Are you waiting for prices to continue to fall before you purchase?
If yes, then you are a "fence-sitting buyer" who has tested positive for perhaps the most grave strain of expectation-itis. You are waiting for NYC apartment prices to fall further, but it might not matter anymore, because financing will be so difficult to come by.

In short, every one walks away from the transaction feeling like a chump, and no one feels more like a chump in NYC's confusing real estate market. So what do you do now? Well don't expect any star-studded telethons or anonymous support groups forming anytime soon. Just be sure you're not looking at that NYC apartment transaction through expectation-colored glasses.



Image: Esophageal Herpes, courtesy of Alex Brollo
GNU Free Documentation License

The New York City Apartment Underground

In a city like New York, “underground” can mean a lot of good things: cutting edge music, avant guard art, exclusive happenings, and/or harmless fun of the illegal variety. When it comes to NYC apartments, however, “underground” is much more likely to mean: illegal sublet, mildew, powerful enemies (real and/or imagined), relapse, outstanding warrants, overgrown alligators, a career in the arts, and almost certainly sharing the bathroom with one or more cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers (CHUDs).

But according to the New York Times, in the hands of developers of NYC luxury apartment buildings underground space increasingly means 10-foot ceilings with track lighting and imported wood flooring and your very own sauna, indoor pool, gym, movie theater, wine bar, game room, artist studio, and/or tasting room--no word on what flavors they can build those in yet.

Some of these subterranean rooms even have glass bricks set into the sidewalk above that reportedly let in a great deal of sunlight, although one can easily imagine your view of pedestrians walking over your skylight can occasionally taking a disturbing turn toward the Lohan.

The catch in scoring one of these super-deluxe basements, is that it comes with the garden-level apartment above it. According to the NYC building code, underground space that lacks natural light and ventilation is considered “cellar space” and “uninhabitable”, so it is illegal to rent or sell an underground unit as freestanding NYC apartment or bedroom, luxury or no. To discourage this practice, developers cannot put full bathrooms in below ground apartments, just half-baths. As if that’s going to discourage CHUDs—it doesn’t even discourage most non-cannibalistic families! According to one broker:

"[B]uyers often wind up renovating and create full baths and guest rooms or bedrooms. […] Although it’s not prescribed to be used that way, a couple might have a child and decide to use it as a dwelling area even though legally it’s not living space."

When it comes time to sell the property, the owners must market it as a one-bedroom with basement space […] but other families will see it as a two-bedroom that’s selling for $150,000 less than a real two-bedroom, so why not? It’s an unwritten rule of thumb.”

Averaging 30 to 50 percent less than above ground space, subterranean NYC luxury properties may not remotely resemble their CHUD-infested, hell-hole brethren, but buyers certainly benefit from their troubled brethren's reputations.

NYC Apartment Buyers, Set Your Alarms: June 30, 2009!

In recent months, even the most unflaggingly optimistic New York City real estate insiders have been finding it increasingly difficult to pass off the NYC real estate market’s symptoms of the property value pox devaluing the rest of the nation as an empathy pimple.

As in medieval times, when hair-shirted Europeans flogged themselves to appease angry gods and hasten an end to the Black Death, many nervous NYC apartment buyers and sellers are ready to entertain supernaturally divined reassurance that there is meaning in their acid reflux and that their vexation is finite.

Enter James Cramer, New York Magazine’s “resident financial expert”, wearing a comically over-sized turban that even Johnny Carson would consider ethnically insensitive when Mr. Cramer then clutches at his crystal balls and boldly asserts, “I got your prediction—right here!—June 30th, 2009, total NYC real estate market turn around!”

OK, maybe he didn't announce it quite like that, my imagination has an overactive costume department. But to those who have come to see the NYC real estate market’s empathy pimples as a pox of biblical proportions, Mr. Cramer’s claim to know the precise date on which NYC property values will reverse their downward slide may seem no less wacky. In his actual words, Mr. Cramer states:

“The converted bears, as well as the panicked sellers desperate to bail out and nervous buyers afraid to jump in, will be dead wrong nine months from now, when housing prices bottom. In fact, I’ll call the precise date of the housing-market turnaround. It will begin on June 30, 2009.”

So according to Mr. Cramer, if you purchase your NYC apartment on June 30, 2009, you will potentially see the greatest possible return on your investment since NYC real estate values tanked in 1989-1991.

Mr. Cramer offers 10 very compelling—and not at all wacky—reasons he believes you should be on the phone with your favorite real estate broker no later than June 29, 2009. Here are his top three reasons, nutshelled:

1) The rate of new come construction has slowed waaay down...

"By next June we won’t be building enough homes to accommodate demand, and the gap between supply and demand won’t be made up by unsold inventory."

2) Troubled homeowners will begin benefiting from federal bailouts...

"By nine months from now, the FHA will have taken millions in terrible floating-rate loans with high interest rates and turned them into 30-year mortgages with much lower rates. That’s going to reduce the number of foreclosed homes, and the supply of available homes, dramatically."

3) Bargains! Sweet, sweet, cut-rate, dirt-cheap, fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck NYC apartments!

"[B]y June of next year, I believe real-estate prices will have fallen 25 percent nationwide from their previous highs, with some of the hardest-hit areas of the country down as much as 50 percent. At those price levels, homes will seem irresistible to the many millions of potential buyers who have stayed on the sidelines."

AUGUST LINX Extreme Thrills And Chills In NYC

When it comes to danger, without the threat of imminent natural disasters or even indigenous poisonous critters that many other major metropolitan areas of the US enjoy, for decades, crime was really all New York City ever had to make living here exhilarating in that death-defying sorta way.

But now that the FBI has rated NYC America’s Safest Large City for several years running, your cozy Manhattan apartment or twee Brooklyn condo may no longer be the thrilling residential experience you’d been pumped for.

But fear not! There’s still fear to be had in NYC if you're willing to take your fear-mongering 'tude to the extreme!

EARTHQUAKES!
According to the New York Times, new research has revealed there is “some danger”:

“New York City may seem immune to earthquakes, at least compared with its West Coast megacity counterpart, Los Angeles. But there is some danger.”

But if you’d like to find a New York City apartment in a neighborhood where you can maximize your earthquake potential, move to Coney Island and prepare to have your dishes righteously rattled every 100 years!

“[A] magnitude-5 earthquake in or around the city occurs on average once a century… The historical record includes three earthquakes of magnitude-5 or larger, the most recent in 1884. That quake originated offshore near Coney Island and toppled chimneys in the city.”

FLOODS!
A new storm surge modeling system can help you find NYC real estate designated as future beach-front property with this graphic.

“If a category-3 hurricane hit NYC, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that nearly 30% of the south side of Manhattan would be flooded.”

But if you’re mega hardcore and want an awesome rush, city officials recommend a Brooklyn or lower Manhattan apartment within 10 blocks of the water:

“If you live within 10 blocks of a coastal area, it is more likely that you will be directed to evacuate before a severe coastal storm or hurricane.”

BLOODSUCKERS!
No, not the sad-eyed, misunderstood undead like Edward and Lestat. Think smaller. And itchier...

According to the New York City Health Department, there have been six cases of West Nile Virus in humans and one fatality so far this year, down from 18 cases and six fatalities this time last year. But just because there's less virus to go around this summer, doesn't mean you can't open every window and every screen in your NYC apartment and feel the intense rush of risking infection to the max!

And be sure NOT to follow these other buzz-killing recommendations by the NYC Health Department for avoiding infection:

• Use an approved insect repellent containing DEET
• Wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts when and where mosquitos are most active.
• Eliminate or clean standing water

Dude, that would be like doing motocross with a helmet, totally not extreme...


GHOSTS!
Lots of people die in NYC apartments every day... But knowing how hard it can be to find a great place, can your really blame them for not wanting to go?

Apparently horror writer H.P. Lovecraft—dead since 1937—has no intention of giving up his huge, 2-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, even though his lack of affection for his neighborhood was evident in his short story, "The Horror at Red Hook." But nor do the apartment’s living/paying tenants have any intentions of moving on, despite the creepy and apparently bigoted ghost’s best efforts to make them leave. After all, truly great NYC real estate deals don’t come along all that often.

Best. Staycation. EVER!

If the word “staycation” (“staying home” + “vacation”) were a person? By now it would probably be a chalk-outlined stain and peculiar odor on the doorstep of a NYC apartment building where the neighbors didn’t see or hear nothing. And if you happen to be one of the 36% of New Yorkers forced to postpone or cancel this summer's travel plans due to high gas prices and the weak dollar, I wouldn't be surprised if the suspicious stain trail lead straight from the crime scene right to your NYC apartment door.

But even if it was you who bumped off that cutesy term for “summer of suck”, Americans work longer hours (New Yorkers, the longest) and get far fewer vacation days than the citizens of any other industrialized nation. What jury of your peers would convict you of lexi-cide?

So maybe there never was a word more lucky not to be a person than “staycation.” But then just maybe, there never was a person luckier to be a “staycationer” than you. See, all you had to do was fall out of bed in your NYC apartment, and you’ve already landed in the Number One Vacation destination in the US! Sure people are falling out of bed in Orlando and Las Vegas, but since last year, they’ve been landing in Number Two (or Three, whatever that is).

Yep, in 2007, New York City beat out the Mouse and the House for the top spot and NYC will probably eat both cities' Velveeta this year as well. With an estimated 12.5 million fanny-packers swarming our shores this summer alone, even New Yorkers who left Manhattan apartments to live in Brooklyn apartments and to be smug about things like the tourists in Manhattan can no longer escape the slow-walking hoards. It's important to remember however, not matter what neighborhood you live in that the tourists will eventually go home, leaving billions of their dollars behind in our fair city...

Still, most New Yorkers would prefer a refreshing water-boarding to staycationing with record numbers of tourists in their neighborhoods. We've all been there: the minute you step outside of your Brooklyn condo and you are cursed in a foreign tongue by a family in matching track suits who don't believe you don't know where Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is. Nevermind they almost punched you in the face when carelessly unfurling their map in the middle of a busy sidewalk... But remember, they're off to Times Square tourist traps, but not you.

Nope, you're clever enough to find an NYC apartment, so you're clever enough to find fun stuff on NYC's funkier To-Do lists like Flavorpill and FreeNYC, social sites like Yelp, MetroMix, and Going, and even off-the-beaten-path day trips in NYC, upstate NY, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And, the city estimates that the local economy will take in an additional $1,365,000 for every 1000 New Yorkers who take a one-week stacation.

REAL WORLD, RED HOOK: Let the Shooting Begin!

Few NYC apartment dwellers can probably recollect being more nostalgic for the “bad old days” of the violence- and vice-ridden Brooklyn waterfront than when they heard MTV would be installing the The Real World’s ragtag cast of equal opportunity racist, sexist, and homophobic moppets in a renovated luxury apartment on Red Hook’s Pier 41. But walling off the drunken twenty-somethings in a relatively isolated NYC neighborhood and on a concrete slab jutting a hundred feet into the East River, is also acceptable—though less sporting—than seeing how they would fare as the most dangerous game of all.

Back in May, when MTV announced that the 21st season of The Real World’s cast would be unleashing their “meaningful conflict and powerful stories” upon an unspecified Brooklyn neighborhood, the ever-frisky Brooklyn blog-o-sphere just about seized from a heady mixture of joy, contempt, and sweet, sweet speculation. Executive producer, Jim Johnston tells the Times:

“Generally we don’t like to announce where we are. We like to work in complete anonymity when we can.”

The Smart Money had Williamsburg, where the neighborhood’s population of skinny-jeaned hipsters celebrate their own "meaningful conflicts" and "powerful stories" every day in the unending, unflatteringly edited episode of The Real World that is their real world. But the Smart Money would have lost. Like most NYC apartment hunters, however, not even MTV probably could have predicted exactly where they'd finally end up.

The first Brooklyn apartment show producers contracted for was a two-story, five bedroom, 6,000-square-foot penthouse in the 27-story art deco-style BellTel Lofts in Downtown Brooklyn. MTV’s Remote Control Blog refers to BelTel’s Downtown location as their “original Fort Green-ish digs,” but according to the Times, BelTel is Downtown, Old Skool:

“Not near downtown, like Brooklyn Heights, but downtown-downtown, hard by the state and federal courthouses, the city’s emergency-response command center and the rows of barber shops, check-cashing services, fast-food joints and vendors selling counterfeit DVDs, religious statues and floor soaps that promise to remove jinxes.”

But a spokesman for BellTel Lofts tells the Times that MTV can help rescue Downtown Brooklyn from all that:

“It’s a chance to market the kind of MTV lifestyle to people who want to live like this. People have a chance to live an MTV lifestyle. People who buy apartments in the building. We think this building will continue to gentrify Brooklyn, and certainly having MTV there will only accelerate that. We expect that it will increase property values.”

MTV lifestyle, indeed… According to the Brooklyn Paper, other than the addition of a Jacuzzi, many of the major renovations planned for the $6 million dollar Brooklyn apartment were intended to prevent cast members from interacting with and irritating the 100 families who already call BellTel home, such as a separate elevator for accessing their retro-fitted aerie.

But then came word from the Brownstoner that BellTel was unable to complete the necessary renovations on the duplex penthouse in time for cast members to move in and to begin shooting the show by mid-August, and later that day, the Real Deal reported that MTV packed up all of it’s film equipment and moved it to 116 Third Place, a beautiful, six-floor, five-unit brick building on a quiet leafy street in Carroll Gardens. According to Curbed:

“The real question is: will cranky Carroll Gardens residents greet Real World with pitchforks & torches if they try to set up shop on one of their quiet ‘place streets’?”

Yeeesss. Yes, they would.

And so, Children, under threat of fork and fire, the cast members of The Real World: Brooklyn now find themselves out on Pier 41 in Red Hook. And while most renters and buyers would be happy to find themselves in a luxury Brooklyn apartment in Red Hook at the end of the exhaustive NYC apartment search, it might be a little tough on our seven Real World exhibitionists. In their new palatial but isolated digs, only Ikea and the camera crew will hear them drunkenly scream about hook-ups in real time. Everyone else will have to wait for the 13 cruelly edited episodes that will begin airing in January, 2009.

Better the Thermometer Than the RENT-O-Meter!

Yep, a New York City heat wave’s truly amazing ability to turn all forms of matter—animal, vegetable, mineral, gaseous (I’m looking right at YOU, gaseous!)—sticky, stinky, and angry should have earned it an honorary Law of Thermodynamics all its own by now. But until that day when every physics textbook is rewritten, only those who’ve experienced soaring temperatures in virtually any NYC neighborhood really get what the Lovin Spoonful meant when they sang:

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

The good news is that heat waves are only a few days out of the year—not so the monthly rent you agree to pay when you sign a lease on an apartment. So how do you know whether the amount of rent you’re locking into for a year or more is the dollar equivalent of an NYC heat wave? According to the New York Sun—the newspaper, not the gaseous fireball that has unleashed its brutal wrath on NYC this week—just consult the Rentometer.

To see how the rent you are being charged for your studio, one-bedroom, or multi-bedroom apartment compares to what your neighbors are paying for similar apartments in similar buildings, just enter your address, apartment size, number of units in your building, and voilá! The Rentometer will read low, median, or high.

Keep in mind, however, that while the Rentometer bases its readings on actual rents being charged in any NYC neighborhood you enter, it’s still a fairly blunt instrument. For example, the Rentometer doesn’t consider whether or not an apartment is in a doorman building, has appliances and luxury amenities or if it has bullet holes, rat turds, and free-standing toilet in the kitchen.

The Rentometer also cannot gauge what you might personally value in an apartment, so if that free-standing toilet in the kitchen is your one must-have, than you might be happy to pay way over the neighborhood's average rent for the comfort and convenience of washing dishes while you pee (at least happier than your dinner guests will be). Also, rent stabilized and controlled apartments in many neighborhoods may skew the median far below market rate for newly rented, renovated apartments.

The Rentometer is brought to you by Rentomatic.com, a company designed to bring greater transparency to navigating the real estate market for renters and buyers as well as landlords and sellers. Rentomatic also offers services—not all of which are available in NYC yet—designed to facilitate communication, financial transactions, and “feeling the love” between tenants and landlords. It’s a San Francisco-based company so we’ll have to let that last one slide…

Still sticky? Stinky?! ANGRY?! Hang in there! Here's more of the Lovin Spoonful for you:

Cool town, evening in the city
Dressing so fine and looking so pretty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
Gonna look in every corner of the city
Till I'm wheezing like a bus stop
Running up the stairs, gonna meet you on the rooftop

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

Lyrics: The Lovin Spoonful, “Summer in the City” (1966)
Image: NASA, Multiple solar flares on the surface of the sun

Noise Will Be Noise!

Jonathan Prager is a funny guy—“ha-ha” and “strange.” A professional comedian and singer, Prager admits to the New York Times:

“I’m sensitive to noise, emotions, electromagnetic vibrations. You name it, I’m sensitive to it.”

And while navigating the NYC real estate market is never easy, and any single horse in Prager’s personal trifecta of pathos could make finding the downtown Manhattan apartment he sought tough, you'd reckon the severity of his noise allergy would make living in almost any NYC neighborhood an unending nightmare of acoustical anaphylactic shock. He tells the Times:

“[Y]ou know how they use [white noise machines] in therapists’ offices? I have to ask the therapist to turn them off, along with their computers — there’s a little fan inside most computers that goes on and that’s annoying — and their air-conditioners. And then I can’t concentrate because there is always construction noise. […]

"Music playing in the house or a car makes me agitated. […] I have to leave the house if my girlfriend blow-dries her hair.”

Sorry, Ladies, apparently he's off the market. For now.

But professional soundproofers hardly need to rely on such rare acoustic canaries as Prager who insist on living in the noisiest coal mines in New York to keep eggs on their tables. The soundproofing biz is ka-booming. Even seasoned New Yorkers who know to expect a certain amount of noise and/or can easily adapt to different sounds in the urban environment have their limits. And once that threshold—be it high or low—is breached, acoustic engineer Anthony Grimani tells the Times, anxiety sets in:

“You hear something, and flight or fight kicks in and you wonder what or who is creeping up behind you. You think, ‘Is it going to eat me, should I run?’

Eat you! I vote for "eat you!" Don't run, you big baby.

"Sound is putting you in an evaluating condition all the time, and I would say that’s no way to live.”

Noise issues don't seem to dampen the blazing NYC real estate market very much, but trends in the NYC real estate market can help to explain the increase in noise around town. The incessant demand for housing has brought major construction sites and renovation and conversion projects into otherwise quiet residential neighborhoods. The Department of Environmental Protection enacted a new stricter noise code for construction projects in July of 2007, but no one can seriously expect any power tool in the pneumatic family to suddenly become neighborly. [I'm looking at you, Jackhammer—grrrrr!]

The good news is, the Times reports in another article on noise in the city, that the intrusion of construction and most other noises from the street—car horns, sirens, garbage trucks, voices, etc.—can be reduced by 95% by the installing laminated windows.

Another trend in NYC real estate that has affected noise polution in the city is the increasing number of families with small children who are moving to NYC in general, but who are seeking out "quieter" neighborhoods in specific and effectively destroying the peace of other residents with the thudding racket of little feet, the clatter of hurled toys, boo-boo-related screeches, and the ever-popular combo package: the temper tantrum. Complaints of child-related noise have even eclipsed complaints related to music in recent years.

For parents averse to incurring the resentment of their neighbors—although that wouldn't be an accurate description of any of the parents interviewed for the Times article that reported on the child-noise trend—the Times also published this related article on how parents can minimize the transfer of the clamor of their little darlings' good times to their neighbors' bedrooms and private spaces.

But fear not! There are lots of fixes for noise issues in any of the articles linked to above, but here's yet another Times article with excellent suggestions on how to avoid a noisy apartment, condo, co-op, or brownstone in any NYC neighborhood to begin with!


The Dream of Absolute Quiet [NYT]
The Noise Children Make [NYT]
Laminated Windows Keep Out the Din [NYT]
Getting a Handle on Apartment Noise [NYT]
A Place to Play the Piano Forte [NYT]
Checking Out the Noise Level [NYT]

Let’s Face It: You’ll Find Your NYC Apartment Faster If You’re WIRED!

If you’ve been playing the blood sport that is NYC real estate for more than a nanosecond, you’ve probably already learned—the painful way—that the most indispensable piece of protective equipment you’ll need to stay upright in the field is a big, steel-reinforced cup. But once you’ve got that essential bit of armor strapped snugly over your tender emotions, you can calibrate your priorities to those of many professional athletes and make your highest priority staying wired all the time!

Traditionally, cafés with free Wi-Fi were the popular destinations for top Brooklyn condo and SoHo loft draft picks out to sate their voracious appetites for both caffeine and internet access. Recently, however—perhaps in response to the public's increasing disgust with performance enhancing drugs in general, or wait staff’s increasing exasperation with the dwindling tips due to slow table turn-over by the laptop set—cafés offering free internet access are increasingly restricting the hours during which you can troll your broker’s site for apartments.

That said, as one might imagine, staying wired in most NYC neighborhoods is easy—if you know where to go... Cafés may be changing their ways, but many bars are all too happy to pick up the slack and to be your home hunting “hot spot.” Lolita on the Lower East Side is comfortable and quiet during the late afternoons and even has coffee so that you won’t have to alter your performance enhancing drug regimen too drastically. Eater.com recently published this map of bars that offer free Wi-Fi and they are updating it as per readers’ nominations of deserving places to add.

Tawk, Gawk, and Order Cawffee Like a Native

If you’re doing it right, your search for a new home should take you through NYC neighborhoods you probably never visited before. If the very thought of the ground you’ll be covering exhausts you, just be glad you’ll be slogging your way through a city as rich in sounds and sights as New York.

Depending on the neighborhood, you’re likely to hear a wide array of accented English. Keep an ear out for the homegrown variety. You never know, you just might find your dream apartment in a neighborhood where everyone speaks the same musically lilting version of Brooklynese that Bugs Bunny made famous throughout the English-speaking world. Follow the link beneath this map that was published in amNew York for an acoustical tour of NYC neighborhoods’ dialects. Wordorigin.org offers a brief survival guide for the local lingo that's definitely worth a quick scroll through. If you're dying for caffeine, knowing how to order a "regular" coffee anywhere outside of a chain store, might just save your life.

And why not make your travels even more interesting with a scavenger hunt for public art? NYC has long been known to nurture the talents of artistic outlaws deep within its dark underbelly. Although you're unlikely to ever see them plying their trade--unless you, yourself are up to no good--shadowy graffiti artists' signature pieces can be spotted throughout the city. Sure, “artist” doesn’t apply to the vast majority of narcissistic jerks who scratch up subway windows or tag surface imaginable, but some have generated a fan base and even parlayed their property crimes into professional art careers. Gridskipper has published a field guide to some of New York’s best known guerrilla scribblers dodging the law today.

How To Talk Dirty To A New Yorker

Despite the uncertainty in the real estate market elsewhere in the country, the New York Post reports that a number of buildings in NYC are offering perky perks and sweet, sweet swag to tempt potential buyers to indulge.

Some buildings allow buyers to charge their down payments on their American Express cards, which can translate into all sorts of goodies through reward points. Said one flushed and giddy buyer:

"[It] was quite shocking… When I was getting ready to write out the check, I was just joking around and said, 'Can I put this on my card?' They said yes. It worked out to a $1,000 gift certificate at Saks."

Down payment on a 0ne-bedroom in Mid-Town: $90,000.
$1000. Giftcard to Saks: priceless

Real estate developers are also getting into the pot-sweetening game. All you have to add is the throaty whisper.

Buildings are picking up closing costs. Or they have on-site mortgage brokers who will instantly approve you for a mortgage - and shave points off your rate. A few require just 5 percent down. Some are throwing in a washer/dryer or a parking space.

Hmmm… So after all this romance will there be the real estate equivalent of a Crying Game-type surprise like, say, no bathroom? Nope. But, according to one developer, the sweet talk might be the seller’s tactic to move things along:

"[I]t's new developments that are priced a little higher than they should be, or the developer wants to get rid of the last few units. You get concessions not from the beginning, not when they first start up - it's when they want to get the business wrapped up.”

Don’t worry. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t as good for them as it was you.

“It’s more than just fluff.”

Things Get Harry at #1 Morton Square

Residents of the most fashionable, high-end NYC apartments have made an art of being unimpressed by the celebrities next door, even when the inevitable hijinks ensue.

After all, enduring the deranged shrieking of a high-profile nervous breakdown or stepping over the burnt-out candle stubs and puckered photographs of an impromptu shrine are minor inconveniences when compared to the sharp increase in real estate value that inevitably befalls a building brushed with greatness[NYM].

But what can residents of #1 Morton Square expect when young Daniel Radcliff moves into his $4.9 million, three-bedroom corner digs [NYT]?

Best known for his role as Harry Potter in the enormously popular movie franchise, some news sources are playfully speculating whether Mr. Radcliff’s new neighbors will have to steel their nerves for an influx of mythical beasts and otherworldly creatures--but that’s just silly, of course. With Amy Poehler and the Olson twins already living in the building, residents of #1 Morton Square have been dealing with an elf problem for a while now.

Beauty Pageant Carpetbagger Boosts "Miss Brooklyn"

Sorry, Leigh-Taylor Smith, aka "Miss Brooklyn" 2008, but there is no NYC neighborhood or borough called “Whateversville” in the middle of the East River, you either live in Brooklyn, or you don't—and you don't. Ms. Smith tells the Daily News:

“I’m only one stop away [from Brooklyn]…”

NYC Geography 101: "One stop away from Brooklyn" is not Brooklyn. It is one stop away from Brooklyn. In Ms. Smith’s case, this would be Manhattan. But then she’d know that if she didn’t just move to NYC from Virginia.

"I'm still thrilled to represent Brooklyn and I hope to represent it well."

Hopefully, Ms. Smith will “represent Brooklyn” in the NYC sense of "to represent" one's home: roughly translated, to honor or embody its spirit with loyalty and affection. That would mean better than she “represented” Hampton-Newport News in 2006 and Arlington in 2007. Not because she lost both years' bids for Miss Virginia, but because no sooner had her term as Miss Arlington 2007 run out, then she packed up her carpetbags and moved to NYC—just in time for the first Miss Brooklyn pageant since 1991. May the area of her Manhattan studio apartment be surpassed only by the depth of her allegiance.

In all fairness to Ms. Smith, Virginia is Pageant Country and the competition can be brutal. Relocation to a city that—outside of the drag queen community—has little interest in beauty pageants may be her only shot at eventually clawing her way up to Miss America.

"Hopefully, the people of Brooklyn can get behind me. Maybe we'll be making the trip to Miss America in Vegas. It would be fantastic."

Dear Ms. Smith:
You are new here. That you’ve already put yourself in front of the people of Brooklyn to fulfill your ambitions to leave, is exactly why you do not want the people of Brooklyn anywhere behind you right now…

Margot Agostini from Prospect Heights, who won't be Miss Brooklyn this year, probably spoke many New Yorkers' minds when she told the Daily News:

“She’s still a tourist. Brooklyn is full of beautiful women."

But perhaps Jestina Cumberbatch of Bedford-Stuyvesant, who also won’t be Miss Brooklyn this year, spoke most Brooklynites' hearts:

"[The judges] weren't looking hard enough, otherwise they would've found me."

Miss Brooklyn Linx:
Note what's listed under her picture after Talent:
Pageant "Swag"

Drunk People Assert Claim To Ancestal Homeland

"The Bowery" was once synonymous with the natural habitat for intoxicated ne'er-do-wells whose rich language and traditions and legendary hospitality toward outsiders were celebrated in the lyrics of a popular ditty:

The Bow'ry, the Bow'ry
They say such things and they do strange things,
On the Bow'ry! The Bow'ry!
I'll never go there any more.
-"The Bowery", by Charles H. Hoyt and Percy Gaunt

In the early 1960s, however, an influx of bohemians, artists, writers and musicians dramatically shifted the demographics of the neighborhood due east of Greenwich Village away from the lovable, comically hiccuping and staggering tramps to a new breed of vainglorious substance abuser--and the East Village was born!

According to the New York Times, the East Village's unchecked proliferation of bars, clubs and lounges is luring a new generation of sloppy, noisy inebriates back to the homeland of their forebears. In an ironic reversal of fortune worthy of a lugubrious spoken word poem, it is now the the diverse, bohemian culture that is being driven from the land, due--in part--to the resurgent hearty partiers and their deep-pocketed backers, the Bank of Mom and Dad.

But the near extinction of the East Village Bohemian is a result of many irreversible changes in the neighborhood's eco-system, and the introduction of invasive, well-heeled species is but one. Initiatives to preserve the neighborhood's unique character through historical preservation and subsidized housing for artists are--fortunately--underway.

LINX
If you live in Apt. #665, just guess who lives next door... (NYT)
Shoplifters Look Forward To Easier Commute (BP)
What's a home without a nosebleed? (Sun)

BYO Hazmat Suit

Ok, picture this: a creepy little guy surrounded by porno mags and skin-flicks he "produced" himself, living steps from playgrounds and schools in a double-wide with a leaky roof... Hey, come back here! Did I say "picture Florida?"

Nope, that would be New York City rainwater pouring through the roof of Bob Guccione's 22,000 square foot double-wide Penthouse--I mean, combined townhouses--and possibly reconstituting decades worth of untold body fluids and odors. According to the New York Post's Braden Keil, someone just ponied almost $60 million for the privilege of raising their "test-tube twins" in that wriggling Petri dish.

Woman Attributes Apartment Find To Being Special-er

Now that she is comfortably settled in her sweet-deal-of-a-one-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights, actress-turned-interior designer, Catherine Brophy, tells the New York Times that it was her unique ability to sense the feng shui, or the flow of energy through the apartments she saw during her hunt that guided her to her present gem.

“[The apartment she sought] had to have the perfect energy and good bones.”

But other than satisfy Ms. Brophy’s ghoulish demand for bones, it would seem her special sensibilities did little to guide her that smart, NYC apartment hunters’ common sense could not.

For example, Ms. Brophy says she applied to a cute, inexpensive apartment because the northwest facing front door indicated good feng shui. And yet, the apartment’s mysterious mojo—the working fireplace? the claw-foot tub?—wasn’t lost on the many other applicants who probably wouldn’t have cared if the front door faced a portal to hell, and one of whom is living there now since the management company “lost” Ms. Brophy’s application.

Most apartment hunters' street smarts were probably also equally matched against Ms. Brophy's ability to read feng shui when it came to dodging overpriced-hell-hole bullets. Luckily for her, among the apartments that didn't pass feng shui muster were apartments that were: out her price range, way too far away from work, in scary places to come home to at night, overlooking garbage, within an arm's length of subway tracks, really ugly, or dangerous.

But where Ms. Brophy seems most satisfied that her specialness merited her the awesome apartment she lives in now, was in her ability to know that she had finally found "the one." Of course it would be extremely difficult to demonstrate that this was not the case. After all, without a search warrant or probable cause, no one will ever know exactly how many good bones she has away in there.

LINX
Aw, c'mon! But he's barely even Down Under yet! (NYM)
'Cause then you'll be all like BFFs?(NYM)
Chelsea may move west of Chelsea (NYM)

Manhattan Real Estate Best Purchased With Booty

While real estate firms are reporting that apartment prices topped record highs in 2007, some critics claim these dollar-based values belie Manhattan properties’ actual, plummeting value as measured in secret buried treasure. In an article appearing in the NY Sun, Julie Satow reports:

None of the reports from the real estate industry values the apartments in gold, but the gold value of apartments — and other assets — is being glanced at more frequently by sound-money advocates and others…

Among those casting increasingly frequent, eye-patched glances toward the gold value of property is Peter Schiff, the president of financial brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital:

…Apartments in New York City [will lose] 90% of their value in terms of gold. […] The dollar is a deceptive way to measure the value of any asset, because the dollar itself is losing value, so prices have to rise just to stay constant.

Yikes! But of course, there are two sides to every doubloon. Ms. Satow further reports:

Not all economists worry about the collapse of the dollar against gold. […] They see its soaring price in dollars reflecting a variety of factors affecting other commodities, including a booming industrial sector in some parts of the world.

Foreign buyers plundering Manhattan’s shores and luxury market also keep the dollar values of apartments high. Aaarrrgh!

Shiver me timbers! This can't be good...
(Link to graph)

"Dude, I totally subprimed my NYRE exam..."

Earlier this year, the American Dialect Society (ADS) announced the winner of its 18th annual Word of the Year award at a catered affair in a subterranean “ballroom” at the Chicago Hilton.

The 2007 honoree was “subprime”, an adjective that over the past year has become many Americans’ shorthand description for shady mortgages that consumers agree to because lenders deliberately minimize the appearance of risk.

Reincarnated as a verb, “to subprime” has come to mean to devastate or destroy something or “to tank” as in to fail completely, especially at great cost.

Subprime declined to make an acceptance speech in deference to the striking writers whose unflagging commitment to the fuelling of hysteria to the point of numb complacency guaranteed subprime’s ubiquity in lexical pop culture.

2007 Word of the Year also-rans include:

Googlegänger: A person with your name who shows up when you google yourself.

Wide stance, to have a: To be hypocritical or to express two conflicting points of view. [When Senator Larry Craig was arrested in a public restroom and accused of making signals with his foot that police said meant he was in search of a anonymous sex, Craig said it was a misunderstanding and that he just had a wide stance when using the toilet.]

For the complete list of winners dating back to 1990, please see the ADS’s press release for the 2007 Word of the Year.