Open House Report 5/4/08

How was the volume of visitors?

dco, it's hard to tell with Halstead's sign-in sheets. There's only room for three names on a page, and I was third, so maybe there were 4 total with the person that came after me, or maybe there had been other sheets filled out before I arrived. No way to know.

39 Gramercy Park North, 3E. - 1250sqft 2bed 2bath apartment in estate condition. newly listed last week at 999K. I went to the first open house on friday. There was another one today, which I did not go to. The open house on friday was from 12-1:30. When I arrived at around 12:30, there were already people in the lobby and outside discussing with their brokers. Inside the unit, there were about 10 people in 3 or 4 different groups. The listing broker was talking endlessly with a group of interested viewers. The sign-in sheet was full. The apartment did feel like 1200+ sqft - large bedrooms, spacious living room with a dining alcove that leads to an 80sqft balcony. Bathrooms are small, but standard for 50's/60's construction. Anyone who purchases this unit would want to do a gut renovation. I think there are many possibilities for the layout, especially for the kitchen. This building is located at the corner of 3rd Ave and east 21st, so it doesn't face the park, but does get the key to the park. At $799/sqft and $1.12/ft maintenance, this apartment seems like a steal. 11E on the same line was sold at 1.51M last October. The negatives I see are 1) it requires renovation that could easily cost over $200K, but everything are still functional so the buyer could choose to move in and do the renovations over time, 2) the unit is on the third floor facing the corner of third ave and 21st, so street noise could be an issue, 3) this coop requires 40% down, but this is not unusual for a coop on a desirable park block and the same restriction applies to comparables in the building. The only comparable building in the area is 32 Gramercy Park South at the corner of 20th and 3rd. Both are postwar buildings from the 60's. 32 requires only 20% down and has newer lobby and hallways, but much higher maintenance than 39. The broker mentioned that 39 is planning to redo the lobby and hallways very soon. I think this unit is very well priced for buyers who don't mind doing renovation and the street noise. I'm interested to see how quickly this list moves and if it gets bid above asking. If it lingers on the market or gets sold significantly below ask, then we can definitely declare that prices are falling. Has anyone else seen this apartment?

masterd - I was looking at an apartment here a month or two ago. The unit I was looking at was a 1 br, needed some work, but was maybe $900 per sq ft. Great price (in my opinion) w key to the park. But then I did some research. There's a new construction that will be going up right behind the building on the southwest corner of 22nd and 3rd. There's a row of 3 or 4 buildings on 3rd south of 22nd that are going to be torn down for the new building. I'll see if I can find the renderings again and post it.

http://www.kaish.com/gramercy.html

ITM - thanks for the info. wow, this project looks ambitious, with 2 of the existing buildings kept in the middle. I wonder if this explains the low asking prices at 39 GPN. The 1bed unit you saw is probably 7A. It just got reduced by 90K to 775K.

Here are some brief reports from open houses on the Uppoer West Side:

639 West End Avenue, #2A
↓ $1,550,000 2 beds 2 baths Co-op
Traffic: Very light; the only other visitor was a broker.

This corner classic six offers a lot of flexibility for the price because of its huge dining room and abundance of outward-facing windows. It would be possible to turn this into a small four-bedroom, without drastic modification, and still have a decent-sized dining area. Kitchen and baths need updating, even if the buyer decides to leave the layout as-is. The apartment is currently besieged by scaffolding, but the agent assured me it’s coming down in a week. After three price cuts (from $1.795M), this one seems like good value for the area. Prospective buyers should check the status of the Greek Orthodox Church that comprises most of the view. It's a pretty building, but the congregation seems to have dwindled to the point where the future might be in doubt.

771 West End Avenue, #7-A
$2,950,000 3 beds 2 baths Co-op
Traffic: Very light. I had Susan Nierenberg to myself for about fifteen minutes.

The online listing features a drab, greenish shot of the living room that has probably turned off several browsers. That photo doesn’t do justice to this big, handsome classic-seven estate sale. The late owners did a high-end restoration in the 90s, and everything seems to be in good shape, including a big kitchen with two ovens. For a buyer that likes traditional layouts and finishes, and who likes to cook for a crowd, this apartment could be very attractive. On the other hand, buyers who would just as soon swap the 300 square foot dining room for bigger closets and bathrooms might do better elsewhere.

CBHK’s marketing of this apartment emphasizes the flexibility of the space (for example, the possibility of slicing up that dining room and converting the current kitchen into a bedroom). I don't get it. The alternative floorplans are fine, but I think the strength of this listing apart is its as-is appeal to traditionalists who entertain big groups the old-fashioned way. I don’t see much point in telling a buyer, “Put a half-million into this place, and it could be like an apartment in Ariel.” That might be true, but so what? Send the new-construction buyers around the corner to 99th and Broadway. They'll just be miserable here anyway.

309 West 90th Street
↓ $5,250,000 5-unit Townhouse, to be delivered vacant.
Traffic: Very light. I was the only visitor. The broker’s assistant showed me around, and apologized profusely for the broker’s late arrival. He still hadn’t shown up when I left.

I know nothing about townhouses, but was curious how the economics compare to coops and condos, and I had a few minutes to kill. The owner’s duplex is a pretty space with a well-executed bottom-floor extension and a nice little garden, but it needs a new kitchen and a lot of other work, as everything is either dated or decaying. For a family to inhabit the duplex, the layout would require extensive redesign. (Few parents want to sleep in an open loft overlooking the living room, where their children might hear them, uh, snoring.) The four tiny, vacant one-bedroom units on the top two floors need gutting. The good news here is that a rich buyer could convert this building to single-family use without discarding anything of value, because all the units need renovation anyway. The bad news is that a lot of money needs to go into this building just to make it viable in its current, five-unit configuration. The $125K projected annual rent roll for the four one-bedrooms might be achievable, but only after a fair amount of investment.

221 West 82nd Street, #11D
$1,875,000 2 beds 2 baths Condop
Traffic: Not applicable. A half hour after the open house was supposed to begin, the broker hadn’t shown up. It’s probably safe to say traffic was light, since the doorman told me he had only turned one other person away.

203 West 81st Street, #4A
$1,895,000 3 beds 1.5 baths Condo
Traffic: Moderate.

This is a cute, smallish prewar condo six with nice original details. Fans of wainscoting and paneling may like it, if they aren’t prone to claustrophobia. The floors may be a problem: they’ve been refinished but appear to need major repairs. The kitchen is good and the bathrooms are OK. Space is tight everywhere. The Barrington is a nice, friendly building that doesn’t stand out in any way. I think $1.9MM buys more elsewhere at the moment.

515 West End Avenue
↓ $1,245,000 2 beds 2 baths Co-op
Traffic: Light

This prewar 4.5-room was listed a month ago at $1.395MM, and has already been reduced twice. The strength here is the bedrooms, which are both corners with en-suite baths. The weakness is the public spaces: ugly little kitchen, tiny dining room, small living room with a view of nothing. This could be a good apartment for a quiet family with one child - or two children of the same gender – that doesn’t entertain much.

161 West 86th Street - Apt: 8A
$3,800.000 4 beds 3 baths Co-op
Traffic: Light-moderate

This 10+ room, 3,100 square foot estate sale will be spectacular after somebody puts serious money into it. The bedrooms are large and plentiful; the public spaces are grand, and the views are pretty good for 86th between Columbus and Amsterdam. The place isn’t a wreck. For example, the herringbone floors are in fine shape - the ones that aren’t covered with ugly carpeting, at least. But everything about the apartment is dreary, and it shows rather poorly. It’s the kind of place that looks OK at first, but then you open a linen closet and see splintering, water-stained bare wood shelves with bait traps for roaches. The huge kitchen could be a set from a Tim Burton movie: a cavernous expanse of painted cabinetry and decaying old appliances, with a Viking stove plunked down incongruously in the middle of it. At least it will be easy to discard the moldy old dishwasher, because it's on wheels.

I don’t know how many buyers with this kind of money want to live on this block. Still, $1200/square foot isn’t bad for a huge apartment with great bones in decent estate condition.

267 West 89th Street, #2B
$2,285,500 3 beds 2 baths Co-op
Traffic: Light-moderate.

Corcoran hasn’t provided a floorplan or square footage for this charming, sweetly renovated little seven yet. I think it feels bigger than it really is. The living/dining area is beautiful, and the open kitchen, though not very big, is laid out quite well. Three bedrooms occupy a separate wing, providing extra privacy. Seems like an excellent apartment for a socially-active family with young kids, though the shortage of play space might be an issue. As the children grow, sharing a bathroom among the three smallish bedrooms could be a problem. The kids might wind up competing for the maid’s room at the other end of the apartment, which has its own bathroom. For what it's worth, the one family bath is quite nice. Although low square footage, the lack of a true master and a view of a garage entrance may knock the price down a bit, this is an easy apartment to like.

masterd - here's an even better rendering. I just couldn't imagine living through the construction nightmare. I have a colleague who had 2 young children while a building next door was going up. I never heard the end of it...from him or his wife who was at home with 2 crying babies.

http://curbed.com/archives/2008/01/22/gramercys_green_giant_is_also_a_fortress_of_solitude.php

West81st, I'll take the liberty of adopting your format. Please tell me if you do mind.
50 West 106, #5D; 800 sf; $599000; maintenance $667/mo
Traffic: pretty good; I was the eighth on the list, 4 cpuples with me in the apartment and the OH had another hour to go.
I was charmed. It's advertised as large 1-bedroom but has a formal dining room, and the layout allows to imagine all kinds of use. It's very light and the blooming trees are in every view. Updated eat-in windowed (trees!) kitchen, very light windowed (trees!) bathroom. Also, from this floor one could see 3 most unbelievably beautiful oak trees reaching out to the 10th floor in a courtyard of a building next block. The apartment is very sweet and has a genuine European flavor (as opposed to strenuous attempts at European flavor). Turns out, the owners are a European couple. The building is about 85 yards from Central Park and the apartment has the air of a country home. I'm planning to see it again and probably put in an offer!

315 West 85, #7F; 750 sf; $699000; maintenance $921/mo
Traffic:: I was fifth on the list; nobody else looking while I was there. I stopped by on my way from West 106.
Somehow one feels that this building can do, and probably does, better. Plain 1-bedroom, no frills, narrow kitchen, and nothing specific to say except that this is a really seriously nice block.

inquirer: No worries; it's public domain. And thanks for including the monthlies. I'll add that info to future write-ups.

These reports are terrific.

One additional UWS report from this evening:

277 West End Avenue, #13C (a.k.a. 12MC, because the 13th floor is superstitiously called 12M)
↓ $2,750,000 3-4 beds 2.5 baths Co-op maint.$2837
URL: http://www.buchbinderwarren.com/printable.php?property_ID=460
Traffic: Light. (Monday evening, 6:20 p.m.)

Streeteasy doesn't crawl the Buchbinder & Warren website, so this 2500-sq.ft., seven-room estate sale hasn't appeared here. The apartment is vacant, and the electricity was shut off over a week ago, which makes for gloomy viewing. By prime UWS standards, it's a lot of space for the money at $2.75MM, or $1100/sq.ft. (reduced from the original, delusional price of $3.25MM/$1300).

First, the good news: the floors are mostly in good shape because they've been covered for decades; and the walls are in decent condition too, though a new owner will probably knock down a lot of them and electrical work will probably require opening up those that remain. The layout isn't bad either: the bedroom wing just needs a little tweaking. Unfortunately, the apartment needs rewiring, total kitchen/bath replacement, and reconfiguration of the public spaces to maximize the scant light. New climate control is also in order, and options in that department are severely constrained because decorative features on the north exterior of the building rule out through-the-wall AC.

All of these issues are fixable, given sufficient money and time. The one intractable problem here is on the outside and beyond the owner's control: after renovation, 12MC will be a grand apartment with a panoramic view of - ugh - Schwab House. A couple of the north-facing rooms actually glimpse a sliver of the Hudson, but only between the towers of the brick octopus across 73rd Street. The south- and east-facing rooms look onto an air shaft that is even uglier than the buildings to the north. As the broker said ruefully when I commented on the view, "Well, it is what it is. People in this line usually splurge on nice window treatments." At the right price, a view of a wall is a sensible trade-off for extra space. I'd just like to think $3MM gets a view of a nicer wall.

inquirer - I saw that place on W 106 too! My inquiry (no pun intended) revealed that for once the brokers were right: the building does have great financials. I would hate to be the one in a bidding war with you...
I also saw a small 1-br in the same building (11B), just because I was there. Judging by the extreme friendliness of people in the building, a lot of the people are new.

W81,

One of our traders was telling me about a friend who just bid 20% below on an estate sale, and the sellers hit the bid. That would take your $3mm apt down to $2.2mm.

20% off $3mm is $2.4mm.

The $3mm that W81 referred to is actually $2.75mm. Read her post -- she was shorthanding it, and I followed her lead, but used actual numbers.

KISS - I think estate sales might be the wild cards of the prime Manhattan market - more so than foreclosures. A seller with a low basis and no debt is dangerous competition. And there could be a lot of them coming on the market. Sadly, the Greatest Generation is dying, and many never downsized from the apartments where they raised their children.

W81 -- Agreed, but a seller with no emotional or physical connection with a place may be equally motivated to go for a quicker resolution -- similar to the situations involving divorce, job loss, job relocation, etc. Also throw in the fact that many estate apts are not updated, eliminating many buyers with more more money than time who'd rather not hassle with a big renovation.

I've looked at a lot of estate sales on the UWS and I do see more and more coming on the market. What has been challenging is trying to determine exactly how much the rennovations are going to cost. I've had contractors make estimates but am not completely confident that they are not just submitting low ball estimates. Does anyone have any experience/knowlege in this area?

39 Worth Street 3BR Co-op for $1.995M. There were over 40 (yes 4-0) people on the sign up list, and a line to get up the elevator. People still swarm OH that seem reasonably priced. Apartment was a bit funky with all Northern views to be blocked by the NY Law School Bldg. Other OH I attended were absolutely dead . . .

EAO: My wife and I have redone three kitchens, but we always kept the scope of the work to the minimum necessary, and our tastes are pretty simple. As a result, all three jobs were under $10K. I think lowball bids are less of a problem than grand ambitions and scope creep.

West81st, it's nice to hear you say that. Whenever I speak to wealthier friends they always have these exorbitant estimations of any kind of reno (though I did have one tell me $10k for a simple bathroom). If I find a place I like that needs work and I want to redo kitchen and bath, I'll just need something solid and attractive, I won't need top-of-the-line everything.

If you don't mind, I may ask to pick your brain on this in the future.

West81st. I am surprised that you are able to renovate a kitchen for under $10k. If you factors in mid-range appliances ($4k) and cabinets ($6k), you are already at $10k. You also need to add countertop ($3k to 4k if you use granite or man-made granite) and labor (minimum $5k for a simple job). At the minimum, I see is $20k. I would appreciate the name and number of your contractor because I want to hire him!!!!

Thanks for the feedback. My biggest concern with these estate sales is the cost of upgrading the apartment i.e. electrical and plumbing, as well as skim coating the walls, repairing the floors and burrying the wires. I have also done more "cosemetic rennovations" which seem much easier to manage from a budget standpoint.

JimmyT/tenemental: One factor for us in keeping costs down was that we retained the stuff that still had useful life, if it wasn't too unsightly: cabinets in one of the kitchens; the floors and certain appliances in the the other two. We also got lucky on the toughest job, salvaging some beautiful old oak cabinets from an apartment downstairs that was being modernized/gutted by the same contractor.

Unfortunately, the great guy from New Rochelle who did the first two jobs for us no longer takes business in the city. He says it's just too big a hassle/expense. So our experience in 1996 and 1999 may not be repeatable in 2008.

EAO: We've only done relatively minor electric and plumbing work, like installing GFI outlets, a disposal and a dishwasher where there wasn't one before.

Ten: I just remembered that I saw the one that sold last year and was shocked at how small it looked compared to the photos (there was essentially no dining area). The vandalism near the 4th floor window was not a plus. I recall it went into contract very quickly. I agree, 500 sq ft tops.

update on 39 Gramercy Park North, 3E - offer accepted according to the listing broker. no open house this weekend.

i know it is from long ago. but i absolutely adored west 81st review of 277 west end 12mc. we felt exactly the same way. any thoughts on why apt 6c would come to market at 2.95M? seems high. we keep meaning to see it but it did not have an open house yet. btw what do you think 12mc is in contract for?