REAL ESTATE IN THE NEWS
Metro Living in the New York Daily News
If your pain is finding an affordable starter home in New York City, then Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Yvette Brown feels it.
She recently launched Metro Living Solutions, an organization that gives weekly no-charge tours of affordable new condominium developments in the immediate New York vicinity.
Departing every Sunday at 11: 45 am from 19 Union Square West at 15th Street in front of American Eagle Outfitters, the private van tours hit up to five developments where one bedrooms can sell as low as $397,000. A Harlem native and resident, Brown wants New Yorkers to see more of their city and at the same time understand what's available in their price range.
"I would take clients up to Harlem who had never been there and they were shocked at the apartment prices," says Brown, a four-year Elliman agent who ran a retail fashion Web site. "So many people live in New York and have never been to Brooklyn or Queens. There are affordable options in the city."
"We want to show people the diversity of the new buildings going up," says Brown. "Some have doormen and high-end amenities and others are boutique buildings with privacy and space."
For more information, go to www.metrolivinggroup.com.
http://www.nydailynews.com/real_estate/2008/06/19/2008-06-19_the_closer.html
The Real Deal
Developers cross the river to Newark
Despite Newark's reputation, formed mainly in the wake of the 1967 riots, as a blighted inner city that investors wouldn't touch, a wave of Manhattan-based developers is now crossing the Hudson River and doing deals. Since the beginning of 2008, several New York-based investors including Apollo Real Estate Advisors and TreeTop Development have acquired major residential properties in New Jersey's biggest city. The firms plan to erect new apartment and office towers and convert old buildings into luxury rentals. Apollo, a real estate investment fund manager headquartered at the Time Warner Center, teamed up with Radiant Property Management in January to buy a 724- unit block of rental properties in the city's South Ward for $43 million.
The Brooklyn Paper
Up and coming Designers urn Dunbo into new Fashion mecca
The area down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass is known for expensive furniture, coffee table books and a few destination eateries, but as the weather warms, DUMBO is revealing a new side of itself: fashion Mecca. Walking between the art galleries and coffee shops on Front Street, the neighborhood’s main drag, a striking number of stores are selling clothes for the bohemian artist and million-dollar condo-dweller alike. So wear your comfy shoes, grab a coffee from Retreat [147 Front St. at Jay Street] and get ready to shop.Dumbo Fashion
The New York Times
Finding your first apartment
THE dream: finding a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment in an elevator building with a doorman in Greenwich Village for $2,000 a month. The reality: nearly impossible. Spring is the season when newly minted college graduates flock to New York City to start their careers. They begin the search for their dream apartment, brokers say, with the same single-minded determination that earned them their degrees and landed them their jobs in the first place. But that determination only goes so far when it comes to Manhattan real estate.
“Almost every single person I’ve worked with thinks there’s a golden nugget of an apartment waiting right for them,” said Paul Hunt, an agent at Citi Habitats who specializes in rentals. “They all want to be in the Village, and they all want the ‘Sex and the City’ apartment.”
The first shock for a first-time renter will probably be the prices. Look Here!
The International Herald Tribune
A Bold New Skyline Emerges in New York
The HL23 tower, planned for a site on 23rd Street in Chelsea, is the kind of commission Neil Denari has being waiting for his entire working life. Denari, a Los Angeles architect who once ran the Southern California Institute of Architecture, has labored on the profession's periphery for decades. But because of a recent demand for name-brand residential architecture in New York, he is finally getting a chance to test his ideas in the real world.
And Denari is not alone here. His building is part of an eruption of luxury residential towers already constructed or being designed by the profession's most celebrated luminaries. In the last five years more than a dozen have been completed; maybe a dozen more are scheduled to break ground this year. They range from soaring, elaborately decorated towers by international celebrities like Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry to smaller but equally ambitious architectural statements by lesser-known talents like Denari. Bold New York
