From the November issue:
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Douglas Heddings, president of Heddings Property Group, has defended a blog post he wrote late last month that called for overhauling the Hamptons market in an interview with Curbed. He wrote the post following his firm’s entrance into the Hamptons market earlier this year. In the blog post, titled “Hamptons Market Philosophy is Bass Ackwards,” he pointed to several problems he had identified in the market related to the collection of listings and accurate pricing. In his discussion with Curbed, Heddings said he was disappointed with the lack of constructive reaction to his post. [more]

From the August issue: When temperatures rise in New York City, apartment buyers skip town — or so goes the conventional wisdom. That leads many sellers to believe that they are better off waiting for the fall to list new properties. But this summer, it’s not so clear-cut. Today’s market is more unpredictable than ever. As a result, more brokers are choosing to list properties in August rather than face the unknown in the fall. This month, The Real Deal asked industry experts to weigh in on the pros and cons of listing a new property during the dog days of summer. Here’s what they had to say: [more]

Small details which affect the appearance of an apartment can change the ultimate sales price by 5 to 10 percent, brokers told the New York Times. While chipped plaster or broken bathroom tiles can knock $500 to $5,000 off an offer, $1,500 floating walls can add $50,000 to $70,000, and a $10,000 paint job easily adds $50,000 to the price, according to an informal survey of New York City brokers. According to Douglas Heddings, founder of Heddings Property Group, cluttered apartments can linger longer on the market and sell for less. [more]

From the May issue: A year ago this month, New York’s real estate community experienced one of the darker moments of the recession when Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy — one of the city’s largest and most established firms — announced it would close. However, CBHK turned out to be the only major firm that disappeared. Business, meanwhile, has steadily improved for months. “New York has had a very good rebound,” said Pamela Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group. [more]

From left: Richard Grossman, Fred Peters, and Douglas Heddings

At Manhattan’s luxury buildings, doormen don’t just hold the doors — they hold the keys.

Which is why an impending strike, set to begin at midnight, could turn a lot of desirable listings into pumpkins, according to industry insiders. Without doormen, many apartments may be off limits.

So far, ongoing contract negotiations haven’t panned out between the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union, which represents around 30,000 building service workers, and the building owners’ Realty Advisory Board.

This has some in the industry nervous, according to Douglas Heddings, founder of Heddings Property Group, an affiliate of Charles Rutenberg Realty. Heddings said that the threat of a possible strike has emboldened many buyers to get in while they can.

“We have buyers now who are saying ‘I want to get in today,’ because they’re worried about having access tomorrow,” Heddings said. “Some buildings are prohibiting showings during the strike.” [more]

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]

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
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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]

From left: Kathy Braddock and Paul Purcell of Charles Rutenberg Realty, and Jonas Lee, who has founded several internet startups, have launched TopAgentGuide.com

Ask any Manhattan resident how to go about finding the right real estate agent, and you’ll likely get a flood of horror stories about high-pressure sales and terrible apartments.

A new Web site is trying to change that.

TopAgentGuide.com, newly launched by the founders of real estate consultancy Braddock + Purcell, aims to function as a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal for real estate, by prescreening agents and pointing users to the best ones.

“We’ve got thousands of agents in New York, but there’s really no way to find the best one,” said Kathy Braddock, executive consultant at TopAgentGuide.com. “Hopefully the site will make the consumer more aware of the fabulous agents out there.”

But Braddock has even loftier aspirations for the venture. [more]