I have 26 apartments for sale throughout NYC...

You should create a website, and add property addresses.

you should have properties in manhattan, staten island, bronx, inwood, queens...sorry

You should have done this a year ago.

"... I'm a 'collector' (i.e. investor)..."

Well, if you're a 'collector,' you need a much better curator, because you obviously have no idea what the hell you're doing. If you're an 'investor,' well, then you need....oh forget it - you really don't know what the hell you're doing, do you?

This must be a joke (albeit a really bad one). Who writes copy like this? Who invests in real estate like this?

You think this might be perfitz? He seems to have a history of posting under alias...

someonewhoknows - it's suddenly clear to me why you are bullish on real estate. though i'm still puzzled as to why you haven't spent the time to connect the dots on how the credit crisis is affecting real estate/economy/market. hopefully you're a broker and those apartments are not yours. if not, best of luck trying to unload them in this market (and i don't mean that sarcastically).

"Oh come on, admit it. The adventuresome side of you has always wanted to live on Staten Island."

I'd rather bunji-jump off the Brooklyn Bridge without a cord.

hey, everyone, don't you think the odds of selling the above portfolio are better than the odds of selling a portfolio of over-million-dollar one-bedroom condos?

I've already had some fun with SomeonewhoKnows over #25.
http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/3793-apparently-foreclosures-do-happen-in-prime-manhattan-neighborhoods

Malraux: Who writes copy like this, you ask? Bloggers, that's who. Snark and irony are the tools of the trade. I think SwK does the style well, but it might not sell real estate.

Thank you for the kind words W81, and phooey to the rest of you meanies! :)

I am indeed really an investor. I am not a broker, agent or salesperson; don't have any such license. I own at least a share of every one of the above apartments (with the exception of #25, as W81 pointed out).

It's not a joke. I've been flipping co-ops and condos throughout the five boros for the past five and a half years. I write all of my ads in this 'style'.. and yes, it works. I've flipped close to 100 apartments in the past five and a half years, and while my current inventory is higher than I've ever held at one time (and is therefore a bit nervewracking) the business has been largely successful, thanks for asking, and pooh-poohing.

There's something about an anonymous venue like an internet message board. It emboldens people - even highly intelligent people who come to a site devoted to in-depth and reasoned discussion - to drop any sense of tact and just be...nasty. Perhaps you and your real estate investing endeavors and ideology haven't compelled you to invest in such a wide and disparate series of area, Malraux. Perhaps you have not ever tried to utilize a somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach to selling real estate, W81. That's fine. We all have our preferences and peccadillos.

My approach - making my real estate endeavors a truly city-wide exercise, and introducing customers to a disparate area of areas - have enabled me to sell apartments to people in neighborhoods they had never heard of, much less ever considered. The pool of buyers is thus greater than what I would have gotten using a local broker or traditional sales methods. In fact, in the 2 days since this ad went up I already got one bid on unit on this list and a contract back on one where an offer was already pending (though none of the activity came from this ad here on StreetEasy, unfortunately.) Not bad for a Sunday/Monday in which Wall Street is going through its worst crisis in 70+ years.

...all I can tell you after 5 and a half years is, the somewhat unconventional means that I use seem to work....

Now please, Bear/Lehman/Merrill/AIG etc...please, don't ruin it!

SwK: That actually makes sense, for a New York audience - especially if you're selling to the young, hip, cynical crowd that's most likely to do the pioneer thing in an off-the radar neighborhood.

SWK, I would expect that by tomorow you will be posting some revised asking prices.

someonewhoknows: i am interested in number 12. since i live on the west coast, please explain to me about the rent stabilized apartment. can i live there? in the future, can i rent it out a week at a time?

I'm sorry, I don't quite "get" the tone of these posts about the above listed properties. I know the locations of all but one of them. They are all priced fairly, and the losers are those people who sneer at the idea of living somewhere based on their perception of a location they know nothing about. But it does indicate why certain neighborhoods command higher prices than others, for no logical reason. It's called prestige. The higher one gets on the pyramid of status symbols, the smaller the neighborhood gets. That also means that one's relationship to the rest of humanity progressively narrows.

lookingtobuy: Your chances of evicting an 88-year-old stabilized tenant from your coveted pied-a-terre on the basis of the "personal use" provisions of the Rent Stabilization Code are basically nil. You're stuck as long as the tenant lives. The Social Security Administration estimates your wait at 4-5 years:
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html

If the tenant is healthy - especially a healthy woman - you should expect her to linger even longer. The worst case would be that her daughter moves in to care for her, establishes residency, and either gets her name added to the next lease extension or contests eviction after her mother's death. Either of these scenarios would extend your wait - perhaps until 2050 - and force you to incur legal expenses if you chose to fight. As an out-of-state absentee landlord, you aren't a very sympathetic plaintiff. Even if DHCR sides with you, there's still a good chance you would lose in court.

Lots of other stuff could go wrong, but I think you get the point. If you want a pied-a-terre, buy a pied-a-terre. Buying regulated apartments and gambling on deregulating them is a game for specialists, and even they fail more often than they succeed.

As for renting out your apartment week-by-week after you wrest it from your tenant's cold, dead hands, that's a function of the building's bylaws. If it's a coop (likely), forget it. If it's a condo, read the fine print.

W81 is correct in (almost!) everything he wrote. The reason the apartment is priced so cheaply is because it is occupied with a tenant who has a legal right to remain in the premises as long as she wants, provided that she pays the rent (and she always does, on-time, every month). She has resided in the apartment since the mid-1970s, and although she has repeatedly told me that shes 'not married to the apartment' and has expressed a willingness to move out if she can find suitable alternate space, it's not exactly easy to find 1,000 sf of space on E 57th st. for $1600 a month, which is what she's paying now.

Technically, the owner of an apartment with a rent-stabilized tenant has a right to begin eviction proceedings IF the owner intends to use the apartment for his own residency purposes. But, as W81 correctly alluded to, the disconnect between what one's technical rights are and practical implementation of those rights is a different story. I have never evicted an 88 year old from her home of 30+ years, but I can only imagine it would not be easy from a legal standpoint, to say nothing of the moral and ethical implications. At the risk of sounding a bit morbid (but practical!), one buys a stabilized apartment with the intention of outliving the tenant; I would never advise anyone to buy a stabilized apartment if your intention is to evict.

Hence, the cheap price. The advantage of this apartment over many other stabilized units is that there is a negligible difference between the monthly maintenance and the tenant's stabilized rent (around $40 per month). In many, if not most, other stabilized apartments, the shortfall between what the owner has to pay in maintenance and the rent he receives from the tenant can run into the many hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars every month. That can make holding on to such an apartment for an extended period quite painful, even if one is buying it for a significant discount. With this unit, provided you can afford to let the original investment sit for a while, the carrying cost is minimal and the payout when the apartment does become vacat (barring a crash!) is significant.

For what it's worth, the woman in the unit has grown, married children with grown children of their own -- none of whom have expressed any interest in residing in the apartment with her or even after she moves on. Further, as a high-floor apartment smack in the middle of midtown in a long-established luxury building, this is the type of property (one hopes!) would always be considered desirable in spite of downturns in the market. And finally, although it is a co-op, it DOES permit sublets, and since I have sponsor's rights, any buyer of mine who continues to operate it as a rental does not need board approval to purchase, sell, or re-sublet the unit.

Hope that helps!

Wow.

This stuff is genius. I should take notes.

Why do you find it necessary to be so exceedingly obnoxious? Does the anonymity of this venue embolden your inner maverick to the point of being nasty?

nope.

i, for one, find your posts immensely entertaining.

And I find you to be an obnoxious prick, who takes great pride and joy in maligning others, so long as you are protected by the warm, embracing glow of your computer monitor.

I'm glad we elicit such strong feelings in one another.

oy...

If you have the capital to buy these I don't understand why you wouldn't just take that money and invest in an income producing property (multifamily rental, commercial rental etc). I can't speak for anyone else but I'd rather be sitting on my ass watching the money come in on regularly then have to deal with flipping apts in marginal neighborhoods.

It's a valid question, but I don't want to be a landlord, and don't have any interest in being a long-term speculator. I buy on the cheap and then re-sell for slightly under market prices. The only times I'm ever holding on to things long-term is when I buy a package of stabilized units, and even then make every effort to offer tenants to leave so that I can re-sell immediately. I don't have a long-term crystal ball and have no interest in letting money sit invested for years and years, even if I'm collecting rent in the interim.

Good Stuff SWK....

Thanks for the info and keep it up - Best wishes on your investments...

I also find the Attacking HATERS a hoot. But, that's the net for ya.

I agree with Reaper- this is one of the more interesting threads on streeteasy recently. The doom and gloom scenarious, although I may agree with them, are getting a little old, thanks for posting it, SWK. You are on the front lines - good luck to you.

ooops - meant to write - scenarios

Guy makes a living and probably made a pretty penny the past 5+ years and people have the gall to come to a thread and basically call him an idiot without having any clue.

This place is a riot.

"It's a valid question, but I don't want to be a landlord, and don't have any interest in being a long-term speculator". Landlords? That is a little small time. You generally have managing agents, supers etc. to take care of the actual operations. I'm not sure what you mean by "long-term speculation" exactly. I'm certainly not advocating buying something at a 2% cap rate with the idea that in 15 years it will be a serious money maker.

Based on the aggregate value of your listings, your "assets" (asking prices) are pushing $9MM. Backed out to a 6% cap rate (not particularly aggressive) you are looking at an NOI close to $500k a year. Not bad for not having to do much.

Of course being that I couldn't find your listings on Craigslist, NY Times or Streeteasy maybe you handle is accurate and you "know". Know what exactly? I'm not sure yet.

What do you suppose was the total drop in value for this list of properties in the past week?

"What do you suppose was the total drop in value for this list of properties in the past week?"

Not yet enough to put the man underwater, I suspect, and less of a drop than some not-quite-closed ne condominiums.

July and August saw a 6-7% drop in both mean and median in Manhattan. I'd say this week did at least that much damage.... so, 8-10%?

Thank you, Reaper and Mrs Buffet, for the kind words. I appreciate it.

The Fed: By long term speculation, I mean that I don't buy properties with the intention of holding on to them in the hopes that the market will rise at some point in the future. I don't buy anything unless I know that the recent comps justify a price much higher NOW than what I'm paying. That model has worked great for the past 5 years since we haven't seen any appreciable declines over that period (I wasn't in the business in the scary early 90s). Now that that appears poised to change, I am, as you might guess, a bit nervous. Particularly with a large inventory (in addition to the list above, I have almost 60 other units that are either occupied, undergoing renovations, I'm waiting for board approval, etc.)

How I actually obtain the properties is generally a deep dark secret :), but I'm sure you can figure it out: a mix of packages from sponsors and other investors, divorces, foreclosures, rent-stabilized units, unrenovated wrecks with people looking to sell, REOs, job relocations, tips from doormen, etc.

As to why you don't see my ads - I sell through Craig's List and individual brokers. The ridiculous part of my business is that I don't have a website, and do everything through email. It's obscenely inefficient, and going to change soon.

Finally, to NYC's point: 'mean' and 'median' sales figures are largely irrelevant. When you're talking about NYC, or even just Manhattan, you're talking about an enormous collection of largely disparate areas that are not all correlated with one another. Further, a glut of sales at buildings like the Plaza and 15 CPW skew things upward in the quarter in which they're sold, and downward when fewer of them are moving.

What IS relevant is mean and median prices in a particular building, block, or even neighborhood. I am constantly checking comps in all the buildings I own apartments and all those in which I intend to buy. And yes, for the first time, over the past few months, I have started to notice declines in several (though not all) buildings. Queens in particular seems to be taking the brunt of the hit (though not at the incredibly high discounts some seem to be predicting), moreso than Brooklyn and the Bronx where the buildings I've researched have stayed stable or continued to rise. I am not heavily exposed in Manhattan, so it's more difficult for me to gauge, but in buildings in which I have had units of late (321 E 48th, 60 E 9th) '08 prices have outperformed '07. We'll see if that continues to the end of the year; the smart money says it won't. But who knows.

w81 and someone who knows: thank you for your information. i am learning a lot by reading these threads. i would never want to evict an old person. i am hoping that perhaps the lady would go to a retirement home or perhaps i can buy her out. i am looking for a one bedroom unit in a good location that i can rent out through a site such as www.vrbo.com when i am not in town. i have talked to a few real estate agents, and they are telling me that if it is a condo i can do as i please. according to some listing agents that i talked to, most condos allow a minimum of a one year lease and the best that i can find is a one month lease. this is really confusing, so i don't know who to believe. i am hoping that someone can give me information on this. thanks.

As a (VERY) general rule, condos will not restrict your ability to sublet your apartment. Co-ops run the gamut from prohibiting sublets altogether to permitting them almost as freely as condos, and everything in between. Generally speaking, you will not face any minimum or maximum sublet time on a condo.

I find SWK's posts somewhat refreshing. It's rare to see an owner (who is only looking to sell) that admits the market is weak and will probably continue. It seems that any seller is a bull and any renter (looking to buy) is a bear. The monotony gets old.

looking to buy,

I disagree with SWK on this point.

Even in a condo, you can't violate New York City hotel laws. If you buy an apartment expecting to sublet a week here and a week there on a site like vrbo, you're not "subletting," you're running an unauthorized hotel.

The condo *might* choose to look the other way, but more likely, your neighbors will complain and the board will put a stop to it.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

You could well be right, Front_Porch, I didn't think of that. Sorry about the bad advice...never really considered the possibility of weekly rentals - I saw 'sublet' and responded in the context of standard, yearly leases.

Sorry bout that.

SomeoneWhoKnows - I actually like your postings - I've seen them on craigslist. More refreshing than inane descriptions some folks offer.

Thank you, tandare. Much obliged. :)

front_porch: since you are a downtown broker, do you have listings that neighbors would not complain if i run an "unauthorized" hotel? what are the nyc hotel laws? thanks.

Lookingtobuy -- I don't have listings like that -- I tend to work high-end (or try to) and try very hard to keep my rep good with the city, not to mention the other residents in those buildings!

Here's a news article with a little more info on the whole "short-term" biz: http://www.chelseanow.com/cn_89/reportdraws.html

ali r.
{downtown broker}

thanks for your link. being an outsider, i am not aware of these things. i guess my best bet is to purchase a condo that will allow a minimum of a 30 day stay and hope that the law will not increase it to a 90 day minimum.