It’s that time of year. Monday is officially the first day of Spring and that means opening day at the Central Park tennis courts. Located mid park at 93th street, they are home to 26 Har tru courts and five hardcourt courts which are used for teaching once the season starts. The hardcourts stay open all year long and are free out of season. You just need to put your name on a sign in sheet.
Continue reading Central Park tennis center to open April 2nd
According to numerous sources, including Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development and seasoned developer TF Cornerstone, the luxury market has topped out. In some of the soaring supertalls mostly clustered around Midtown, prices can start as high as $15 mm. Chinese buyers, Russian plutocrats and other high net worth individuals have left the market without as much demand as in the recent years.
Smartly, some developers including Extell are now focusing on affordable luxury with apartments sometimes starting as low the 6 figures range. Certainly, land prices which have soared in recent years make it difficult to bring product to the market that does not sell for at least $4000 per square foot. However, several conversions will tap into the market in the next few months to year.
56 Leonard, the Herzog & de Meuron Jenga like tower with 145 condos, seems to be almost finished. The building features a 75′ lap pool, gym, screening room and playroom among it’s 75,000 sqft of amenities. Each apartment has 11′-14′ ceilings and outdoor space.
Prices ranged from just under $3 million for a 1027 sqft 1 bedroom to a 4bd/4.5 ba with nearly 8k of interior space in the penthouse for $47mm.
Al listings on streeteasy are in contract.
Hindsight is always 20-20. You can look back and say “I wish I bought in” Soho 40 years ago or in Harlem 15 years ago or Bed-Stuy 8 years ago. Neighborhoods are constantly changing and transforming and various metrics are hypothesized as to be indicators of a pending transformation. Starbucks, farm to table restaurants or art galleries usually can indicate a transformation about to happen.
The NYT takes a look at four NYC neighborhoods that maybe worth getting into now before it’s too late. I agree with a couple of their recommendations and I would also add in the Bronx. It’s too close to Manhattan to not become extremely valuable in the next few years/decade. A lot of investors are already planting their stakes there.
According to LINK, Eastern Mountain Sports will be closing their Upper West side location on Broadway at the corner of West 76 street by February 24th. The 15,000 square foot store was opened in the fall of 2011.
In other related news, Cafe Lalo on West 84th street may also close. The site of the famous scene with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail”, between Broadway and Amsterdam, serves nearly 100 types of desserts. According to the co-chair of CB7, the owner told him business is terrible but he does not want to close.
A near record breaking 26.8″ fell in Central Park this weekend. Here are some photos from Central Park on Saturday(below) and Times Square(above) early Sunday morning. Subway service hopefully will be fully restored by Monday.
Sunday’s NYT ask real estate column talks about a person who lives in a co-op where the apartment is too hot as a result of being on the ground floor and directly below the heating pipes of the building. As a result, even with all of the radiators off, the apartment is a sultry 80 degrees. What about if your apartment is on the other end of the extreme and is too cold? The article outlines the steps you can take to bring the temperature into a more reasonable range.
Several keyless entry systems are now catching on in NYC buildings. The app for these systems lets you use your smart phone to gain access to your apartment or common areas such as the gym or amenity spaces. The benefit is that you do not have to worry about giving keys to dog walkers, delivery people etc… and having to track the keys down. Also access to the buildings amenities can be added or subtracted with ease. In our building like many others, we use Building Link which allows you to go online and give/take away access easily. Also, we have finger scanners for storage and our gym which work quite well.
The only potential downside of the keyless system is that you will need to figure out what to do if your phone battery dies but according to the article many of the systems have a keypad and you can just enter your custom code anytime.
As we celebrate the last few days of 2015 and face the uncertainties of the new year ahead, at least we can look back on 2015 as the year that several records were broken or even shattered in NYC real estate. We saw the most expensive residential sale in Manhattan’s history take place at Extell’s One57 on Manhattan’s Billionaire’s Row of West 57th street. $100.47 million dollar was the sale price of the two floors totaling just over 10,000 square feet. A few floors down two floors another apartment known as the Winter Garden with a 2500 square foot atrium also sold for over $90mm.
Co-ops, and townhouses also broke records including Woody Johnson the owner of the NY Jets’ sale of a co-op which sold for $77.5mm for a duplex at 834 Fifth avenue.
Will this pace continue? Will 2016 see more records? What is your opinion?
I was reading somewhere that during Halloween in a suburban area someone had set aside a phone that was to be used to call the person inside the house. The children didn’t call and when asked why they responded that they didn’t know how to dial.
I wonder how many of these scenes you will see in New York City in the coming years. This phone booth was found on West end avenue near 104th street on Manhattan’s Upper west side.
I had attended a event earlier this year through the French American Chamber of Commerce where the CTO for NYC had actually said that there was a plan to convert existing phones to wifi hot spots.
