Half-assed conversions...

underwhelmed, i have a post earlier today on the glass panels that are falling off of 325 Fifth. and that's new construction. at least a conversion probably won't literally fall on your head.

I'm not so sure... Saw a top-floor $2.25m condo (down from $3m original sponsor ask) w/ private roof - there was a big new water leak in the 2nd bedroom (which I was assured they would 'paint'), and upon ascending to the roof realized the building chimney was crumbling and the outside of the building had huge cracks in the stone...facade was a mess. Makes me sick to think of that huge assessment coming down the pike for all the new buyers...as they wouldn't/couldn't answer when any of the roof, elevators, facade re-appointing (landmarked bldg) had been updated last. And, icing on the cake: upon further research found out there is a happy endings massage parlor on the group floor! Outrageous.

make that 'ground' floor [although clearly there are group activities occuring on it!

i stand corrected.

but, regarding the massage parlor, it could meet some buyer's particular need. a really lazy one. i like the group floor typo. every conversion should have one.

underwhelmed.........
We got a little thing in this town called caveat emptor.
There are no laws that say you can't look for a sucker. Don't get so freaked. Thank your lucky stars that your parents taught you how to shop. Don't be outraged, be pleased with your descerning eye.

And yes, there were alot of people who paid 'that' kind of money for that type of shoddy workmanship but, times...they do change.

This has been the case for a very long time. Nothing new to this market, this geography, etc. It's one of the reasons I always say I wouldn't buy in a building built after 1959.

Part of it is because modern construction started to concentrate on "light weight" construction methods. Well, mass is one of the best things you can have for long term stability of a structure (that's just pure engineering/physics). Now you see metal studs rather than wood, sheetrock rather than plaster, etc.

But the other issue with new construction - especially that built within the last boom - is that there just weren't enough qualified trades people to build what needed to be built, and there's no real training program for most trades. Remember, the Italian immigrant who laid the tile and marble in some Lower East Side tenement probably had 10 times teh training than the guys who are working on the highest of high end Condo's today. They started when they were 12 to 14 as apprentices and probably went through a Guild system so that by the time they were working on those low income housing projects, they had tons more experience, and were held to much hogher standards than the guys who are working on the big projects today.

The other thing which leads to crap construction is the knowledge of the developers that during the boom, people are buying off of floorplans and samples so they don't have to give a crap about the buyers seeing what shitty construction they are doing because by the time they finish, it's too late for the buyers to change their minds, and in addition they would be happy to have buyers cancel their contracts because they could turn right around and sell the unit for 20% more.

I can tell you over the past dozen years or so, I have seen contractors who were doing $1,200 jobs turn into guys who wouldn't look at anything under $100,000, and it's not because they sharpened their craft and were doing better quality work.

like used car salesman, patch em' and sell em'