A Time to Rent

While the financial crisis have curtailed

STARS! And Salacious Headlines Related to NYC Real Estate (sorta)

Fluffing The Cradle For The Child Bride!
The super creepy circumstances surrounding Soon-Yi Previn and Woody Allen’s introduction (she was Allen’s girlfriend's 10-year-old daughter), courtship (Allen began taking nude photographs of her in her late teens), and marriage (they've since adopted 2 fiancees, um, I mean 'daughters') make it hard to evaluate almost any aspect of their relationship objectively.

But really, what are we to make of the Architectural Digest photographs of their newly decorated East 70th Street townhouse when there are paintings of Mickey and Minnie Mouse in the same room as grandpa-looking rocking chair? Why not just refill the Airwick with Dirty Old Man Smell?

Chelsea Clinton And Jimmy Fallon Like It Rough!
"Jesstin?" "Justica?" Is hard to know what they’re calling them these days, but before long someone in an NYC luxury apartment just might have the honor of calling Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake “neighbor.” The couple has recently been spotted touring NYC apartments, and Timberlake was quoted in the New York Post describing a 3-bedroom, 5-TV duplex condo in Chelsea as “smooth.”

Apparently Chelsea Clinton and Jimmy Fallon like it a bit rougher as both passed on the place...

It's Hard Out There For A Gimp!
Maybe he didn't know there was an elevator? Why else would freshly damaged Quarterback Tom Brady recently list his 3-bedroom, luxury apartment on the 65th floor of the Time Warner building for $18.29 million? Surely the only reason he spends so much time at his supermodel girlfreind's West Village townhouse is that there are only four floors...

It's the Acronym, DUMBO!

Amazing. If there ever were lessons to take away from the effects of acronyms on NYC real estate values, we know from SoHo, NoHo, TriBeCa, NoLIta, etc., that cute acronyms are like catnip to luxury apartment developers. But a cute acronym, plus the evocation of the lovable misfit of a baby elephant that most New Yorkers—secretly—fancy themselves to be, plus industrial-strength industrial chic, and you’ve got yourself a veritable NYC real estate black hole that not even ennui that comes with gentrification can emerge from!

So why on earth did the artistic types who moved into the inexpensive industrial spaces on Brooklyn’s Fulton Landing actually believe that they could camouflage their wedge-shaped neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges from developers by calling it DUMBO [Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass]?!

But to be fair, the New York Post reports that even before DUMBO was coined as a defensive measure in 1978, developers David and Jed Walentas—the father-and-son team who run Two Tree Management—had been quietly buying up property in the Brooklyn neighborhood since the early 1970s. To this day, the Walentas own and/or control more than half of DUMBO. And just as the creator of the original Dumbo was rumored to not have been entirely evil, many of the changes made or facilitated by the Walentas have also brought joy—at a price.

In the last decade, Brooklyn Bridge Park has replaced a chain-linked truck lot with snarling junkyard dogs, industrial/Gothic warehouses and factories have been preserved through luxury apartment and condo conversions, the neighborhood has been declared a historical district ensuring the integrity of it’s industrial chic for generations to come, and the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) reports the average price per square foot in DUMBO is now the most expensive in Brooklyn, at $917, having risen 25% between the second quarters of 2007 and 2008.

DUMBO rents are also some of the most expensive any NYC apartment. According to a representative from Two Trees, the very least expensive one-bedroom apartments rent for $2800. per month and the most expensive three-bedrooms go for $8000.

Why so expensive? According to the New York Post, just like the lovable Disney character, DUMBO is cute:

Visiting the area is like stepping back in time. Sections of obsolete train track, which once carted raw materials from the water inland, push up through narrow cobblestone streets. Looming brick warehouses give way to views of the Brooklyn Bridge. And, whether you're at DUMBO's waterfront parks or just peering out a window, Manhattan plays backdrop to it all - stretched out just beyond the water, so close and yet totally removed.

Like Dumbo, DUMBO is hip:

As happening as DUMBO is, it can also be completely unassuming. Its restaurants and boutiques don't scream out to be noticed, but instead sit on nearly vacant blocks patiently awaiting those in the know.

Like Dumbo, DUMBO is the product of calculating, imperialist genius:

But DUMBO, with its industrial aesthetic and low-key lifestyle, didn't evolve naturally. It was carefully planned. [...] David Walentas began investing in the neighborhood in the '70s; he opened 1 Main, the area's first major residential conversion, in 1998. Since then, Two Trees has slowly continued to convert historic buildings into residences, ever careful to preserve their character.

And, like Dumbo, DUMBO’s creators discriminate:

And though DUMBO has gourmet-food shops and a mom-and-pop drugstore, there isn't a Key Food or Duane Reade in sight. [...] [T] he Walentas family is extremely picky about tenants, preferring to give preferential rent to mom-and-pop shops and local chefs than to fill spaces with big-box stores and chain restaurants. It isn't uncommon for them to give a local storefront to a working artist (rent-free) until a suitable tenant shows up.

Uncanny.

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

You know you're a true New Yorker when you start having that reoccurring dream most NYC apartment dwellers have. No, rude tourists aren't bursting into flames, it's even better!

You are rattling around your small apartment, when suddenly you see a familiar door... Maybe you always assumed that the door was to a cupboard or a brick wall, but you honestly can't remember... So you open the door and- lo and behold!- there is a huge room with sunshine streaming through the windows, chirping birds, an indoor fountain with shiny leaping fish... And every single one of those beautiful, thousands of square feet is yours! And Dorothy, it was yours all along, you just didn't know it...

But according to New York Magazine, Amanda Maisel actually lived out this NYC apartment fantasy while roaming around her family home one afternoon:

"It's kind of in the mezzanine between the first and second floors.[...] It's a cool little room. I don't know why they don't use it. It is just kind of full of pieces of mirror."

So no fountain and leaping fish, but still - a whole found room she never knew existed! But then, why would she when the home she shares with only her parents is a 72-room, 35,000 square foot, former bank on the Lower East Side.

Dry heaving with fits of NYC real estate envy yet? Better keep that brown paper bag close: the owner, photographer Jay Maisel, paid only $102, 000 for the six-story building when he purchased it in 1966. Deep breaths - deep, deep breaths...

On the bright side - in that NYC real estate schadenfreude kinda way-it was years before Maisel had the luxury of taking deep breaths in his own home in which filth seemed to be an ever-renewing and abundant resource:

"I had to shovel sh*t against the tide. [...] Every single thing that can come out of a human body has been left on my doorstep. But it was more disgusting than dangerous."

Eeeeew... But while his trial by excrement may have ended, he's still battles vandals. Since the 1898 building was granted landmark status in 2002, Maisel must stay now one step ahead of the "gaffiti police."

Still, small price to pay. NYC real estate brokers estimate Maisel's 72-room home is now worth anywhere from $30 to $70 million. And that only includes the rooms they know about.