Your Open House

333 East 109th Street

East 96th Street: How Porous the Border During the Downpour?

“The price I think is the biggest thing driving people higher [uptown],” said J.P. Kirk, a 41-year-old financial salesman shopping for a condo on East 109th Street. “New development has a lot to do with it.”

The New York Times ran a piece last week about the Upper East Side’s boundary blurring, so this week we decided to check out some open houses both below and above the traditional East 96th Street border. Read More

Your Open House

Real closets are hard to come by in New York.

Coming Out—Or Not—For Closet Space

“I’ve never had a showing where women didn’t ask about the closets. Men ask often, too, but always the women,” said broker Bill Martin, who was showing 321 East 43rd Street, apartment 314, at an open house on Sunday.

Ample closet space, like an in-unit washer and dryer, is one of those coveted and elusive amenities most Manhattanites aren’t accustomed to. This one-bedroom apartment had plenty of storage space for one person (or two), with closets in the kitchen, hallway, bedroom, bathroom and entrance area. Read More

Your Open House

So not the West Village.

The West Village One-Bedroom Alternative

“Everybody seemed to be targeting the East Village and West Village, but they’re finding prices are better here,” said the Douglas Elliman broker for 226 East 12th Street, apartment 4H, a prewar co-op on a tree-lined street. The one-bedroom apartment is going for $495,000 and was one of the hits of the day—it has a spacious living room and a kitchen big enough to move around in, which is more than we could say for some of the cheaper units we stopped by.

This week for Your Open House we took a look at one-bedrooms in the East Village, and most people we talked to noted that they were drawn to the tree-lined streets and vast entertainment options of the downtown villages, but wanted something less pricey than the west one. Read More

Housekeeping

Hell's Kitchen

Empty Tables in Hell’s Kitchen

An unanswered door at a Hell’s Kitchen open house set the tone for the rest of the afternoon.

Nobody showed up this past Sunday afternoon for three open houses in two Hell’s Kitchen buildings—at least as far as we could tell. Despite a posh lobby and modest prices in the first building, it was slim pickings for the brokers.

“This apartment has been on the market about two months,” said Bryan Tomczuk, a broker for one of the co-ops, adding that at previous open houses he’s seen between three to five prospective buyers.

The studio apartment, located at 430 West 34th Street, was asking only $275,000 and although it was not exactly spacious—the kitchen probably could not fit more than one person at a time—it seemed like a steal considering its surroundings. Read More

NORK, NORK! The Curiousness of Ditmas Park

“There’s really nothing else like this in the city,” said broker Marie-Ange Augustin, pulling the curtain back to reveal white picket fences, sprawling Victorian mansions and a tattooed hipster pushing a baby stroller.

Indeed, Ditmas Park, just across the park from Park Slope, feels more like an upstate suburb than a neighborhood off the Read More

Back-to-School Sales on the Upper East Side

This Sunday on the Upper East Side was filled with sweaty palms, newly ironed shirts and a few jitters about the year to come.

It was the unofficial beginning of open house season, and for brokers who have sat out an unbearably lonely summer, it was time to see if the housing market’s rumored Read More