The ivy is a crawler, not a sprinter, but she'll do.

Ron Dewhurst may just have left global investment management firm Legg Mason after being passed over for the top spot, but he isn't letting his new-found (f)unemployment get him down: the former banker just picked up a $6.2 million townhouse in the West Village according to city records.

Mr. Dewhurst's new digs at 49 Barrow Street, just off Seventh Avenue, may not be as pricey as his Melbourne mansion, which in 2012 was the city's highest sale at nearly $17 million (in Australian dollars), but it still has quite the pedigree. Built in 1826, when the Village was still a village and a destination for those seeking to flee the yellow fever epidemic that was ravaging the city proper, the house was given a makeover in the '80s by architectural firm SITE. (New Yorkers may know them best for the Shake Shack they designed for Madison Square Park, whereas Mumbaikars might recognize them as the original designers of Antilia, a single-family skyscraper built for Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man.)

"To increase the interior space," the designers wrote of 49 Barrow, "an area under the back yard was excavated and the garden and patio are elevated to form the roof of this addition." The renovation was done for designer and seller Laurie Mallet, who went into business with Willi Smith in the '70s and later founded sock-maker Ozone Design.

"I personally love the quirkiness of the added sculptures and the whimsical detail that [Ms. Mallet] had created," Danny Davis, who brokered the sale with Town Residential, told The Observer. "I also love the incredible amount of natural sunlight," he added, along with "the garden with the huge magnolia tree." (The home was originally listed for nearly $6.5 million.)

Now that Mr. Dewhurst is no longer employed here in the States, he'll likely use the townhouse as something halfway between a pied-à-terre and a primary residence, The Observer learned. We're not sure where he and his family will be spending most of their time, but they could be returning to Australia.

Perhaps Mr. Dewhurst will even take up his old passion: coaching. He coached Australian sprinter Raelene Boyle to a Commonwealth Games gold medal (that's like the Olympics, for people who have Stockholm Syndome-like feelings towards their former colonial overlord).

Try not to get blood all over your Annabelle Selldorf-designed interiors, Marina!

Tilda Swinton may have stolen Marina Abramović voyeuristic thunder at MoMA with her sleeping-in-a-glass-box shows, but when it comes to displaying oneself in glass boxes, Ms. Abramović will not be outdone: the Serbian grand matriarch of performance art just picked up a $2.65 million two-bedroom pad at Philip Johnson's Urban Glass House.

The eighth-floor apartment at 330 Spring Street, in Hudson Square, was asking $2.6 million, but listing broker Suzun Bennet at Town Residential managed to get a bit over the asking price. "It was on the market for quite a while as an investor apartment," Ms. Bennet told The Observer, but as soon as the rental tenant who was living there moved out, it sold. Unfortunately for seller Eliot Ferguson, though, it didn't quite fetch the nearly $2.7 million that he paid for the unit at the end of 2006, at the height of the real estate bubble.

The 1,722-square foot condo's interiors were done by Annabelle Selldorf, an inoffensive choice for a woman who once declared, "Art should be disturbing."

Ms. Abramović's new walls will be delivered sans sang.

Ms. Abramović's new pad is a bit cheaper than her last, which was a fourth-floor loft at 70 Grand Street in SoHo that she sold last year for $3.2 million. And she may use her new place as a pied-à-terre, since Ms. Abramović's latest venture will take her to the town of Hudson, in upstate New York, where Rem Koolhaas-led OMA will be designing her new Marina Abramović Institute building.

Despite Ms. Abramović's aggressively public exposure and the apartment's floor-to-ceiling windows with northern and eastern exposures, the surrounding buildings are all low-rise commercial and industrial structures, so Ms. Abramović should have a bit of privacy. At least, until her neighbors start taking advantage of the Hudson Square rezoning.

The second floor is the only floor with 12-foot ceilings.

Rarely do you find a broker with as much knowledge about an apartment as Town Residential's Paddington Matz has on a full-floor spread she's marketing at 288 West Street, a loft building dating back to 1860. Not only has she sold the unit four times over (she's trying now for a fifth), but the first time she sold it, she actually owned it.

"It was the first loft I'd ever bought," she told The Observer of unit #2W at the Medium Lipstick Building, as it's known. "I bought it in 1996 for $155,000." It had been on the market for double that, but this was before Tribeca became the hot neighborhood that it is today. "Back then there wasn't even a promenade," said Ms. Matz. "There was a cheapo parking lot on the West Side Highway across the street. It had no services whatsoever—the only grocery store was a Food Emporium." (Today, said Food Emporium faces competition from a gleaming new Whole Foods just a few blocks to the south.)

It was a foreclosure property, and the bank wanted to unload it fast, so they tacked a measly five grand onto Ms. Matz's offer of $150,000, and the loft, with its six windows of guaranteed riverfront views, was hers.

Two years and one gut renovation later, she got a postcard in the mail from a broker—she herself had not yet gotten her license—telling her that the apartment was worth $800,000. So she called up her friend Parnell O'Connell at Town (whom she trusted because "he only ever told me the bad things [about an apartment]—he never told me how fabulous something was, and he never tried to sell me"), and they eventually sold the apartment—along with the only other unit on the second floor—to Peter Gabriel's daughters, Anna and Melanie. (She got $760,000 for her unit.)

A chalk board, just in case you forgot you were in Tribeca.

By the time the Gabriel sisters were ready to move out, Ms. Matz had gotten her real estate license at the urging of Mr. O'Connell. The post-9/11 lower Manhattan boom was in full effect, and Tribeca had by now established itself as a legitimate luxury contender, so she was able to sell the unit to Tom and Geraldine Nicholson from Virginia who paid $1.1 million for the co-op to use as a pied-à-terre.

Ms. Matz stayed friends with the couple, and they even hired Todd Zwigard, her ex-husband, the architect who had done the first gut reno, to rework the apartment yet again. "He gut renovated it very much the way he would have done if he had unlimited funds," said Ms. Matz.

When Mr. Nicholson passed away and Ms. Nicholson no longer needed the apartment, Ms. Matz sold it onward yet again in 2011, this time to Colleen Hess, from Texas, for nearly $2.5 million. From 1996 to 2011, the unit appreciated on average 20 percent per year.

And so we arrive at the present day. Ms. Hess is asking $3 million for the unit, or $3.2 million furnished. And as an added bonus, Ms. Matz got permission to list the other unit on the floor at the same time—$2.8 million on its own, or $5.8 million as a 4,000-square foot, four-bedroom keyed-elevator combo.

"Ideally I would like to sell both to one person," Ms. Matz said. "Selfishly, because I think it would make an amazing full floor loft."

Sounds like Ms. Matz wishes she could move back in herself.

I don't think we're in Greenpoint anymore, Hannah.

Girls cinematographer Tim Ives has been receiving his latest paychecks thanks to northern Brooklyn's most famous show, but he's poised to collect an exceptionally fat check from the sale of his South Brooklyn townhouse. Mr. Ives and wife Sonia have just listed their Cobble Hill home for a healthy $3.5 million (it may be a bit too late for Christine Quinn to save this neighborhood).

The couple picked up the South Brooklyn pad, at 173 Warren Street, in 2003 for a mere $1.4 million, according to city records, so they should be able to buy themselves something nice with the difference. Maybe something a little more womanly? Like a Tribeca loft?

Besides the fact that Cobble Hill townhouses are now trading for $6 million, what might help the couple rake in more than double what they paid?

Definitely not a vinyl-sided rowhouse.

"The crown moldings are all original," Terry Naini, the Town Residential broker who has the listing, said of the 1860s Greek Revival (Ms. Naini schooled The Observer on the difference between Federal Style and Greek Revival: the latter has bottom-level brownstone facade with brick above, whereas Federal Style homes are all brick.) "Which these days is hard to find, because either people ruin them, or they're not in good shape."

The parlor level also retains its original full-length windows, rare in such an old home.

Despite the original detailing, the home is not entirely old-fashioned, but has plenty of modern amenities, including an en-suite bathroom off the master bedroom. It also features a backyard addition, which allows room for a separate kitchen (two of them, in fact!)—a rarity give the loft-like open kitchen trend of late.

The home is currently subdivided, with a garden apartment level sitting below the main triplex, though it will be delivered vacant, so the future owner is free to either combine the units for a spacious 3,825 square feet or keep the units separate and rent out the bottom to offset the purchase price. Alternately, the basement apartment may also prove a convenient place to stash the in-laws ("We thought you'd enjoy the privacy!" is a good line to use when you're shunting your wife's parents off to the "garden" level).

Our sources indicate that Mr. Ives and his wife will be staying in Brooklyn (sorry, New Orleans, but this Treme cinematographer will not be buying in the Ninth Ward), though they're waiting to sell the house to decide where exactly. (Maybe Brooklyn Heights, to be close to Lena Dunham?)

Normally we wouldn't suggest a vinyl-sheathed 'hood like Greenpoint, but we're always struck by the stunning brownstones that form the backdrop of Girls (that isn't really Greenpoint, is it?!). Well, Mr. Ives would know.

A bike might be your best bet for moving these days (Amsterdamized, flickr).

Joanne Russo felt a sense of panic when she awoke on October 29 to a rain-soaked, wind-battered city and reports that the worst was yet to come. It wasn't the storm anxiety causing hearts to race around the city—Ms. Russo and her roommate were scheduled to move that morning. Their lease was up on October 31st and their landlord had been unpleasantly insistent that they clear out early. The couple who were moving into their apartment had left their place the week before and were living in a temporary unit downstairs. Ms. Russo felt that she couldn't stay until after the hurricane, but she wasn't sure if she could leave either.

"The last thing we wanted was to get stuck," said Ms. Russo. "We were afraid the movers would bail on us and then we wouldn't be able to leave for days."

She was relieved when Imperial Moving called at 8 a.m. to say that they would be there in an hour. As businesses shut down and traffic vanished, the movers emptied the women's two-bedroom on East 31st Street and carted their belongings to their new sixth-floor apartment at 20th Street and First Avenue. They finished shortly before the electricity went out and the elevator shuddered to a stop. Ms. Russo knows she was lucky, even if she and her roommate can only unpack in the daylight, hauling the empty boxes down the darkened stairwell.

"When my phone service finally came back I had a text message from my landlord asking, 'Did you vacate yet?'" Ms. Russo said. "I'm so glad we're not still in the old apartment. I'd be filled with anxiety about when we'd be able to move."

Calling it a rough week barely begins to describe New York after Hurricane Sandy. People's homes are flooded, burned down, blown away, gone. That some people were inconvenienced in their moving plans seems minor in the grand scheme of things, but it is also a reminder of how a disaster like this effects us all in so many ways. It is also a reminder that life will return to normal at some point, maybe even some point soon. This is is a town of renters, millions of them, with many thousands of leases coming due the same day a hurricane was bearing down on the city.

It would have been bad enough to be one of the unlucky renters who would be missing Halloween because their leases expired on October 31, but not any more. Relocation plans have been delayed as renters wait for electricity to return, elevators to run and similarly-stuck tenants to clear out of the apartments that they inked a November 1 lease for.

Downtown, buildings and stairwells remain dark and keys difficult to retrieve from shuttered management companies. Movers have postponed countless appointments because of gas shortages and workers stranded in the outer boroughs. Many landlords have been understanding, but even the most accommodating are anxious to see tenants who stopped paying rent on Halloween depart.

"The logistics are a nightmare," said Citi Habitats president Gary Malin, whose firm oversees more rental listings than any other brokerage in the city. "We have people who signed leases and can't move out, people who signed leases and can't move in, people whose movers have rescheduled, people who are in hotels. We've been getting calls from clients who want to know if their rent will be pro-rated. Everyone's in limbo. It's a stalled system."

Citi Habitats broker Shannon Aalai has spent the last few days trying to negotiate between owners, management companies and stranded tenants.

"It's very frustrating," Ms. Aalai told The Observer. "People were calling me in the middle of the storm asking what would happen with their leases and move-in dates. People need to move, they need to get out, their leases are up."

Ms. Aalai said that she'd recently received a call from the owner of a luxury condo at the Gramercy Stark asking if his tenant was going to move in on November 1st. And if not, would she still be paying rent starting on the first?

"The apartment has no heat, no hot water and no elevator," said Ms. Aalai. "It's only the fifth floor and it's furnished, but the renter still has stuff, and she'd need to carry it up five flights of stairs."

As for the would-be tenant, she was staying in a hotel uptown, with her belongings in a friend's Gold Street apartment, very much disinclined to shuttle her possessions from one cold, dark apartment to the next.

Nor has the storm slackened New Yorkers' appetite for apartment hunting. In the midst of all the craziness, Ms. Aalai has been trying to set-up showings for a woman who is relocating to city and wants to see downtown apartments on Friday and Saturday, undeterred by the fact that management companies are closed, keys are unavailable and none of the buildings have power.

Even moves in relatively unaffected corners of the boroughs were complicated by Sandy. Mike Mishkin, a broker with the Oxford Property Group said that while all of his clients this month were moving from one Upper West Side apartment to another, one  was stuck in the Catskills without MetroNorth service and couldn't make it back by the first.

Landlords and management companies have been understanding for the most part, brokers say, but some have insisted on timely departures in spite of the trying circumstances (to be fair, many are under intense pressure from new tenants who need to move in).

"I had a client with no power, a less-than-thoughtful landlord and a lease that ended November one who needed to move into a townhouse in the West Village," Town Residential senior vice president Bo Poulsen said in an email. "I got the keys for her from my place in pitch-black Tribeca last night and rode my bike up to inspect the townhouse this morning to make sure it had not suffered any storm damage. Was able to get her the keys this afternoon. I have quite a few clients who are displaced and am doing my best to find them temporary or permanent housing as quickly as I can.”

Even those willing to move in such a disordered city have been at the mercy of moving companies operating at greatly diminished capacity—a huge problem in a city where most residents don't own vehicles.

"I can't even open the office,"  said Alex Sardon, the owner of Chelsea Moving. "I'm doing my best and people are understanding, but it's very tough." The only silver lining was that water hadn't seeped into any of his storage units, he said, before excusing himself , as he was driving around in search of gas and needed to get off the phone.

UHaul also had to close its Chelsea location, which is partially underwater. "We're trying to get other trucks in, but gas is an issue and all of our surrounding states that normally would have helped are having the same problems," said a spokesperson for the company.

Daniel Norber, the president of Imperial Moving, told The Observer that his company has been handling all its scheduled jobs and even picking up last-minute ones for people whose companies cancelled on them. But the moves have been more difficult than normal with traffic jams and a lack of lights (one job required a flashlight). At the moment, he sees gas shortages as the biggest challenge.

"That's the most difficult situation," sighed Mr. Norber. "The places we usually work with can't supply it, but we'll go to New Jersey or Long Island if we have to. Or drive the trucks until they run out of gas."

Some renters narrowly missed a miserable moving experience. Bloomberg News food critic Ryan Sutton said that he'd requested a one-month lease extension on his Kips Bay apartment a week before Sandy hit.

"Didn't know about the storm, just got lucky. Very very lucky," Mr. Sutton wrote in an email. "Trying to figure out whether this whole situation will create a short term price spike because now more people will be looking in November than otherwise because of the extensions." Still, even carrying his bike up and down eleven flights of stairs didn't seem so bad in light of the alternative.

Some out-of-town residents decided to proceed with their scheduled moves into Manhattan regardless of Sandy. New York is not, after all, a city that attracts the weak-willed. Samantha Hoover and her boyfriend, both writers, had already signed a November 1st lease for a fourth-floor apartment in Kips Bay, rented a car and started the drive from New Orleans when Sandy whacked New York.

"It was either find a place to stay outside the city or move in," said Ms. Hoover. "We just decided to move in, although the whole trip was a lot more stressful than we'd expected."

Fortunately for the couple, the George Washington Bridge was the only crossing into Manhattan not restricted to vehicles with at least three people, so their loaded car with only two was waved through. But the excitement did not end there. The person who had the key to their apartment had spent the storm in Rockaway Beach and lost it, though another copy was located. They had at least counted on having lights in the stairwell for moving, but as with so many other routine tasks undertaken these past few days, they manged to schlep everything upstairs thanks to candlelight.

"This summer we had to evacuate New Orleans for Hurricane Isaac," Ms. Hoover said. "You don't really budget for two hurricanes a year." But at least they knew what to do in a power outage; they'd lost electricity for a week during Isaac. And it made for a unique introduction to the city.

"Driving through Manhattan with the streetlights out was kind of a once in a lifetime experience," she said.

kvelsey@observer.com

The 3,610-square-foot condo, listed at Town Residential, features unobstructed views of the Hudson and the Empire State Building, four beds with one room convertable to a fifth, and four and a half baths described as "opulent." In addition to the LEED stamp of approval, the property further boosts its environmentalist cred with Energy Star certified appliances alongside custom cabenitry and white quartzite countertops.

SLIDESHOW: The $17 million environmentally friendly condo >>