During the boom, New Yorkers increasingly relied on “price-per-square-foot” as a way to compare rapidly rising apartment values.
The metric is even more popular in the downturn, as discount-crazed buyers look for good deals.
But price-per-square-foot isn’t as reliable a measure as they think. Unbeknownst to many shoppers, it’s extremely difficult to determine the true square footage of a Manhattan property, experts say.
“When it comes to square footage in New York City, it’s the Wild West,” Bill Staniford, the CEO of real estate data Web site PropertyShark. “It’s measured in so many different ways.”
And in the current downturn, the difficulty of determining square footage is contributing to a number of other problems, from low appraisals to ruined deals.
Staniford, who constantly fields questions from brokers about inaccurate square footage data on file with the city, said using price-per-square-foot as a measure of value is “totally pointless.”
That puts “every single broker in a very difficult situation, unless they want to break out the measuring tape,” he said.
Even then, they might still be wrong.
It’s fairly easy to determine the square footage of a suburban single-family home: measure the footprint of the house, factor in the number of stories, and you’re done.
Manhattan apartments are a different story. [more]

Marcus & Millichap’s Adelaide Polsinelli is out working today in the snow

“Snowicane” or not, New York City real estate brokers are hard at work. Unlike teachers or other professionals who can stay home when the weather gets bad, brokers must be prepared to show properties to eager home-seeking clients, rain or shine. “Real estate is like the post office: neither sleet nor rain nor dark of night will keep us indoors,” said Paul Purcell, co-founder of Manhattan’s Charles Rutenberg Realty, who made sure the firm’s office on East 56th Street was open today. (To see a list of today’s real estate office openings and closings, click here.) “We work seven days a week and 24 hours a day,” said Leonard Steinberg, an executive vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman, who was on his way to show a $14 million listing and had competed two showings this morning. On snow days, “the only difference is that I wear very different shoes,” said Steinberg, who donned heavy-duty waterproof boots to help navigate piles of slush. On days like this, he sometimes hires a four-wheel drive vehicle from a car service to ferry clients from one listing to another. [more]

Howard Milstein is the head of Milstein Properties.

From the February issue: On a winter afternoon last month, sunshine streamed through the windows on the 33rd story of 30 Lincoln Plaza, illuminating the cleaning supplies and paint cans that occupy the high-ceilinged space. Innocuous though it may seem, this out-of-the-way spot is at the center of a bitter dispute now raging between the building”s tenants and the developer, the Milstein real estate family. In their quest to prevent the Milsteins from converting the rental building into condos, tenants have filed a lawsuit claiming that when 30 Lincoln Plaza was constructed three decades ago, the developer ignored city permits and added an illegal extra floor — the 33rd. Litigation is nothing new for the Milsteins. They are one of the city’s oldest and most successful real estate families, but also among the most controversial.  [more]

From left: Jonathan Isaacs and Steve Ganz of Aligned Real Estate

At a time when a bevy of new business models have sprung up to capitalize on the real estate downturn, a residential brokerage launched by two former Core agents has revived the idea of discounted commissions. Steve Ganz, a former Core managing director, and Jonathan Isaacs, a former Core vice president, left the boutique brokerage in December 2009 to launch a new company, Aligned Real Estate. Based at 315 Fifth Avenue at 32nd Street, the new firm has a total of five agents, Isaacs said, though he expects the company to grow. Aligned has dispensed with the 6 percent commission model that real estate brokers historically receive for each sale, the founders said. Instead, they’ve devised a complex fee structure based on factors like the size of the apartment, how long it takes to sell, whether it sells above the asking price, and whether the customer chooses to pay the full commission at closing or in monthly installments. [more]

Douglas Heddings of the Heddings Property Group at Charles Rutenberg Realty; Tamir Shemesh at Prudential Douglas Elliman; Michael Signet at Bond New York Real Estate; Fabienne Lecole at the Corcoran Group; Leigh Zaph at Manhattan Homes; Shebrelle Hunter-Green at the Corcoran Group; and Rena Goldstein at Halstead Property

The Real Deal asked a number of residential real estate agents what the strangest thing is that they’ve seen at an open house. The responses ran the gamut from breast feeding to naked people to a dog taking a house tour. Here is a sampling of what the agents have encountered:

Douglas Heddings, associate broker and founder of the Heddings Property Group at Charles Rutenberg Realty: How about a five-year old breast feeding? Here are some less shocking examples: A drying rack full of panties in a living room, a toilet seat that was taped closed so that open house attendees could not use the facilities, of course the [Upper West Side] robbery [of an open house Heddings was hosting] that was highly publicized and a spray painted wall saying “monkey nipple” on a teenager’s bedroom wall, which the seller refused to remove. Click here for more. Compiled by Lauren Elkies
[more]

From the December issue: If real estate brokers occasionally suffer from a bad rap, attorneys are surely afflicted with the same problem. But according to Joseph Ferrara, an attorney specializing in real estate and intellectual property for 28 years, those two professions can make a winning combination. That’s the idea behind Ferrarra’s New York Real Estate Advocates, a new residential brokerage group — with a tentative early 2010 launch date — that will be run by real estate attorneys, with licensed agents making the sales. “We’re trying to model it after a law office somewhat [and] we’re coming to the table with legal knowledge that other brokers don’t have,” Ferrara said. “Because we know real estate law, we know how to save [clients money] on transfer taxes, et cetera.”

From left: Studley’s soiree was in its new offices at 399 Park Avenue; Charles
Rutenberg Realty celebrated the holidays at bowling alley Lucky Strike
Lanes, and Halstead Property held its bash at Guastavino’s at 409 East
59th Street, where Brown Harris Stevens also celebrated the season

In a real estate market that’s been challenging at best, knowing how to celebrate the bounty of the holidays is a tricky thing.

Celebrate too much and you risk looking out of touch with the economic climate. Too little, and your firm could look like it’s struggling.

“Perception is everything,” said Cindy Seidowitz, a senior vice president at Studley. It could seem terribly gauche, for example, “if [people] are canceling parties and scaling back and you’re throwing this lavish bash,” she added.

Most years commercial real estate firm Studley would decamp to a restaurant or club for its annual Christmas party — this year, it stuck to its home base. The firm, which is planning to move into its new 11th-floor office at 399 Park Avenue in the first quarter of 2010, decided to celebrate the holidays and its relocation to the 60,000-square-foot space by holding its annual holiday bash there. [more]

Leigh Zaph is planning on registering his three-person firm, Manhattan Homes, as a Virtual Office Web site.

From the December issue:
A new breed of online brokerage is springing up in New York, altering
the landscape of real estate sales in Manhattan and worrying
traditional firms, who fear the changes may hurt their business. In the past, New York firms have contended with Web aggregators
like StreetEasy and Trulia, which gather and post information on local
brokerage listings. But thanks to a recent settlement between the federal Department of
Justice and the National Association of Realtors, the Real Estate Board
of New York is now sharing all of its members’ listings directly with
online brokerages, known as “Virtual Office Web sites.” These VOWs, as they are called, allow consumers to view those listings — including those from other firms — online. Experts say the change will have far-reaching consequences for the
industry in the coming year and beyond. Some believe VOWs could also
pave the way for a comprehensive Multiple Listing Service, which has
long been resisted here.  More

[more]

From the December issue: In New York City real estate, buyers have had the upper hand for a
while. With transactions virtually frozen in the wake of last year’s
collapse of Lehman Brothers, sellers grew alarmed, dropping prices and
offering incentives to tempt purchasers. For the first time in a year, however, New York is no longer a
buyer’s market, brokers say. Or at least not the intense buyer’s market
of recent months.
“Neither buyers nor sellers have an obvious upper hand over each
other right now,” said Ric Swezey, a senior associate at the Corcoran
Group.
As the stock market recovered and prices dropped, more buyers –
especially those who put off buying during the financial crisis — came
back into the market, searching for bargain prices. [more]

Looking to drum up some business in these tough times? Try issuing a
market report.

During the roller coaster ride that has been the residential real
estate market of the past year, brokers and consumers have scrambled
for information to interpret rapidly changing market forces. In
response, real estate firms have issued a veritable avalanche of
market reports, each hoping to become the consumer’s go-to source for
information, and grow their brand in the process.

But this information overload may now be backfiring, since there are
now so many reports available, often with wildly disparate information.

“All of these firms believe in [issuing reports] as a way of marketing
themselves and separating themselves from the competition,” said Paul
Purcell, a partner at real estate consultancy Braddock + Purcell and
the co-founder of Charles Rutenberg Realty in New York. “It simply
serves to confuse the consumer, and make them wonder why each firm has
different information.” [more]