joedavis & others interested in harlem market

I'll be interested too. I was thinking yesterday that the best thing that can happen to Harlem buyers will be having someone like west 81st. There is plenty of differences between Harlem and the rest of Manhattan. The glut of condos. The 300% run in 5 years. The fact that the most known brokers there invested heavily in the nabe, and continue pricing high in spite of no sales, the fact that one block can be a good investment and the same house in the next a bad one...to mention some of them.

clearly the market is in for a nasty bath. the question becomes, for people who like the area and may be buyers eventually:

1) what will happen to the pace of change in the neighborhood - by that I mean more services (restaurants, shops, etc.). will it stop entirely? will it reverse? or will in continue, albeit at a slower place, as all of those condos become rentals, brining more people to the area.

2) at what price might one consider buying? i don't think the 300% run in 5 years is sustainable - but i am not sure prices will fall all the way back either.

well i am interested too, since 7 month i my do house hunting . Whats killing me sometimes is the bad quality of development and if its not that, than the cheap built-ins/electronic stuff. So to have a yahoo or google group for those interested to buy in the harlem marked would be great.

Sorry -- I ended up being too busy to set this up
It is now set up
please go to groups.yahoo.com
then search for group
harlembuyers
then join it

currently I have it set up so only members can see messages and participate, and I have to approve postings but not replies to postings.

Will try to make sure that the group stays on focus with providing information and will only censor members/posts that seem to be offensive in some way

Hope we can have fun with this and don't ever have to censor anyone
I can change prefs to make it possible for all members to post as well

Thanks joedavis - I just joined.

I am hoping people who join this group stay away from deliberatly inflammatory comment about Harlem, so doubt we'll have to censor.

Looking forward to sharing thoughts/impressions on the Harlem market.

I restricted membership so I can approve or reject applications. However, I am not sure how I can evaluate who is who and whether they are legitimate buyers with interest vs brokers etc, and also who should be allowed.
Perhaps if people can put their SE name I can judge very quickly.
Any other suggestions as to how to make this a productive group are most welcome
Thx kspeak

People on SE and Curbed etc who only dump on Harlem basically don't live there and have never lived there. Ditto for other neighborhoods (LIC, Wburg, etc.) I can't ever think of someone saying "OMG I HAAAATE THAT PLACE I LIVED THERE FOR TEN YEARS STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!"

Thank you joedavis - i joined too.

Ok so we now have 3 members
Jason -- I did not understand your post -- this yahoo group is for anybody actually interested in Harlem. If there is an indication that a Harlem hater or noisebox joins the group, we'll vote to expel the person

As soon as we hit 5+ members we can set up some protocols as to what we post, how we share information on new listings and discuss them etc

Is there a reason to have this outside SE?
Perhaps the answer is manifest in Jason's post.

Also, I would like to think that if we have a buyer group we can cooperate and achieve desired results for each of us, instead of blindly competing (potentially) with each other