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This Week in Comments

From comments posted this week on The Real Deal’s daily blog.
1. Brokers split on future of Manhattan home market

Thursday, October 2

The overall slowdown in the market place is a good thing as it will flush out the businesses that don’t have a solid business plan, or the staying power to ride out this crisis. This will yield opportunities to pick up some great investments as we near rock bottom (if you have the cash). I’m on the optimistic side of the fence.

2. Contractors cut corners

Friday, October 3
Construction costs are rising mostly due to unions. Union laborers make upwards of $70 per hour; to be exact they make $67.18. Therefore, contractors try to cut corners and “value engineer” to save money and increase profits. What would you do if you had to pay $70 for some guy to sweep the floor and pick up debris from the construction site?

3. Brooklyn’s Morris Manor opens

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Thursday, October 2
It is great to see at least some form of affordable housing being built but is it just me or is 46 units of studio apartments not realistic. Can a single mother going through hard times raise her one or two children in a studio apartment? It is also a little disheartening to see the poor and working poor constantly having to put up with things that just don’t make sense. It just seems like it is an $8.4 million dollar boarding house.

4. Toll Brothers secures $157M for Williamsburg project

Thursday, October 2
A real estate professional told me yesterday that all the condos in Williamsburg should start to do well because people with multi million dollar homes in Manhattan will need to downsize to a more affordable location. An interesting theory, but just spin as far as I am concerned. Everyone that I know who has sold in Manhattan recently is looking to rent until the housing market bottoms.

5. What’s next for Astoria’s condo boomlet?

Tuesday, September 30
With the state of today’s economy, most of these new condos are going to go begging by next year. Astoria hasn’t been able to support the new influx of hipsters and Wall Streeters and now they can barely afford to rent, much less buy into these overpriced, shoddily constructed, abysmally equipped and poorly located structures.

6. Couple evicts low-rent tenants to make way for mansion

Friday, October 3
You really want us to feel sorry for someone who has been paying $400 or less in rent for what must be decades? You won’t get any pity from me.