Monthly Taxes

Years ago lived in a duplex apartment with a regular staircase and elevator access on both floors. Found we didn’t use all the rooms all the time. Also checked out some interesting brownstone possibilities. Just realized that most brownstones have the kitchen on the garden level and the living room and dining room on the parlor level, which for me is not the most appealing and practical layout. Owners get around this by having a “family” room created on the garden level near the kitchen, not great for entertaining. That’s leaving aside the nuisance of bringing things up to the bedrooms from the garden and parlor levels.
My current space, in an apartment building, is sort of like a double wide brownstone, but on one level, with windows on both sides- move easily between rooms and use them all.

Years ago lived in a duplex apartment with a regular staircase and elevator access on both floors. Found we didn’t use all the rooms all the time. Also checked out some interesting brownstone possibilities. Just realized that most brownstones have the kitchen on the garden level and the living room and dining room on the parlor level, which for me is not the most appealing and practical layout. Owners get around this by having a “family” room created on the garden level near the kitchen, not great for entertaining. That’s leaving aside the nuisance of bringing things up to the bedrooms from the garden and parlor levels.
My current space, in an apartment building, is sort of like a double wide brownstone, but on one level, with windows on both sides- move easily between rooms and use them all.

Left to my own devices, I would trap my husband in studio apartment, but he is energetic, social and LOVES houseguests. He could be persuaded to townhouse in the city; he likes space and was the driving force behind moving to slightly bigger place in Beekman. He likes stringing my NY dream along.

Brownstone taxes can be very low, as in Brooklyn. This particular property is very overpriced. The building next door is a concert, wedding, and event venue. This is why it has had 6 owners since 1996, and soon to be 7. It's about the worst location in the W Village

Smart man - didn’t want to have to share bathroom with house guests

And then again, your NY apartment is a pied a terre, not a full time residence. That makes a big difference in choices.

I have noted the high turnover with this property, and the location does seem devoid of charm, but as far as town houses go in the West Village, it seems to be the only one that is priced anywhere near what is within the remote realm of possibility.

@ph41 - He doesn't even like to share a bathroom with me, plus he wanted me to have a dedicated office because I always took over the dining table that was in the living room of the last place with files whenever we there for any length of time. My favorite line of his when the realtor showed us the apartment we just sold was "How on earth could you advertise this as having an eat-in kitchen? I don't see anywhere in this entire apartment that one could eat, let alone in the kitchen." I really love small spaces; him, not so much.

This was an absolutely charming little house in the Village that just sold a few days ago for $4.95m after falling off the market. Prior owner paid $4.90 in 2016, so I guess that's a positive result, right?

Only problem with this house was that the rear had a partial view of 7th Ave, so there was some noise. Also the kitchen had no freezer; the owner was on some strange diet that involved nothing frozen (and presumably no ice cubes).

https://www.compass.com/listing/41-barrow-street-manhattan-ny-10014/251265333120245521/

>George- now that one is really cute (tho anyone who doesn’t live in NY would say $4.95m for CUTE?

MCR - not sharing a bathroom can sometimes be a path to marital peace. And it should definitely be possible that he finds a nice place to eat in the new apartment .

And it is sort of incredible that an apartment for $1-2 m and more will not have a w/d in the apartment . That is definitely an only in NY thing

That 41 Barrow Street is right on the mark; noise doesn't bother us.

Re the washer/dryer, we thought we could handle that, but bought one of the maid's rooms in the building a few years after we moved in and realized no w/d is a NY thing we just could not adapt to. The maids' rooms in our building are awesome; they are all different. Ours is long and narrow (8x15) and had a little closet kitchen that we converted into a w/d closet. We use the room itself for a treadmill.

My husband is warming to NY, but it is definitely not for everyone. After 10+ years he still can not get over the fact that the city does not have a system for trash better than just putting the bags on the sidewalks. It is hilarious to get him going on that point alone.

So you still have to leave your apartment to do your laundry. Again only in NY do you buy a Separate space for a w/d

In Chicago all the apartment buildings and brown stones have alleys behind them where the garbage is put out for collection - you don’t see mounds of garbage on city streets there

But Chicago has no back gardens, or very limited since the alleys have garages.

Agreed re leaving the apartment for laundry being just weird.

DC is like Chicago with alleys everywhere for trash collection as well as driveways.

Neither my husband nor I knows anything about urban planning, but the lack of alleys is a constant refrain with him: "I mean, why don't they have alleys? What is the advantage of not having alleys? WHO DOESN'T THINK ALLEYS MAKE ALL THE SENSE IN THE WORLD?"

He is generally a calm individual, but he just can't with the trash bags on the sidewalks.

> George - we lived in chicago and have friends there. The brownstones have front gardens and the alleys with the garages are in the back . The patio decks are built on top of the garages.
The garbage is picked up in the alleys behind the garages. And in our high rise near north the garbage was picked up behind the building. I may be extrapolating from experience Near North and Lincoln Park but you never see garbage on those sidewalks

>mcr - so basically you have your own private laundromat to which you schlep your stuff in bags. At least it’s in the building

Townhouse builders felt people wanted back gardens - not alleys behind the houses, and that came to be the norm.
Chicago had a great fire which allowed more urban planning when rebuilding- even down to the street and avenue numbering system which is WAY better than NY

In the central areas of Chicago, the trash pickup is underground (e.g. lower Wacker, lower Michigan). Otherwise there are alleys between the big buildings for trash pickup. Most of these alleys are gone in NY or never existed. Also Chicago has more containerized rubbish disposal rather than slinging 50 bags into a compactor truck.

As someone who once lived overlooking one of the few remaining alleys in Manhattan I can tell you when crime increases "no alleys" is a huge plus.

Whenever (and I think it is somewhat inevitable that it happens) the NYC Real Estate Tax Code gets changed (DeBlasio made sure that can got kicked down the road again untill after he's gone) brownstones - especially in gentrified/gentrifying areas of Brooklyn - are going to take some big hits tax increase wise. Probably high end condos as well. Especially since I think it will occur at a time office space will be taking a big hit and commercial owners will be spending huge lobbying dollars for more "equitable" distribution of taxes and fear mongering that all businesses will leave NYC if they don't get some outsized tax breaks (Amazon deal logic).

Prior to 2000, commercial properties had paid the bulk of Real Estate Taxes in NYC. But as the budget skyrocketed much more of the increases went to residential than prior ratios had been.

You can already see how NYC has tried to equalize the inequities in the system by looking at the rise in tax rates for Class I properties vs other classes.

>mcr - did you sell your laundry room with the apartment you sold in your building or did you keep it for the new apartment?

We kept laundry room to use with our current apartment. I think this set up is actually going to work well and be the perfect compromise for us (not too big for me; not too small for him), but I am going to continue playing my new townhouse game anyway.

So did the purchasers of your apartment purchase a maids room for a laundry room, assuming one was available?

Or more to the point, did they realize they would have to do that to have a private laundromat?

I am sure they realized the drawback of no w/d because, unlike us, new purchasers of our smaller apt are hard native New Yorkers.

Re getting their own maids' room, none available at the moment (there are only 11 in the building).

However, on a positive note, part of our building's modernization initiative involved opening up the building's basement laundry to direct access from 7am-10pm. Previously you could only access it through the manned service elevator, which involved competition from renovations, moves, trash collection, etc. The basement machines are so awesome that when I was up for the move in early May, I used those rather than using our own. Our Bosch electric ventless dryer is great, but cannot compete with the vented gas industrial dryers in the basement for sheets and towels. Same with size and quantity of basement washing machines as compared to our cute little Bosch.

That part of Downing is fairly rowdy.

58 Downing in contract as of 8/13.

Back on the market.

What happened?

That’s what I want to know. What makes a townhouse contract fall through? I cannot imagine buyer who just went into contract a few weeks ago is walking away from deposit.

Could be some sort of disclosure failure - sell side knows of some defect and rather than being transparent hopes buy side doesn't find it?

Or perhaps it didn't actually go into contract and was prematurely marked?

https://a836-acris.nyc.gov/DS/DocumentSearch/DocumentDetail?doc_id=2020110300868001

So it closed after all - nice! Let's see how long current owners last. Hopefully longer than the past few.